Ashley, I hope you know by now from my comments on your newsletter posts, how much I value your work - and as I think you also know, this is with me not even being a coffee drinker... like almost never, save for maybe no more than a couple espressos per year.
(Ok, full disclosure: my wife of many decades is a passionate coffee drinker, and it through her that I vicariously experience all coffee things, although I have more recently turned her toward my passion, tea.)
And so what really excites me about your newsletter and interviews is your perspective on and careful analysis of the socioeconomic realities of coffee: as an agricultural product that is commonly grown and harvested by artisanal farmers as well as a extremely popular developed world consumable with a conflicted cultural aurora (lots of consumer passion... and also much workplace exploitation of a folks that have become a kind of cultural icon: baristas), purchased at hugely popular chains (Starbucks of course, and here out west, Peets) as well as small (artisanal?) neighborhood businesses. The labor issues and unionization drives that you have so brilliantly described and analysed have been central then.
It is these very features of the coffee world that has so many parallels with other wordly goods/products (seafood being my fave example) that makes your newsletter, its great interviews, and the podcasts so interesting and valuable... even to someone who really does not much like to drink coffee lol.
Thx for everything, and best wishes for you much more success in 2023!
Ashley, I hope you know by now from my comments on your newsletter posts, how much I value your work - and as I think you also know, this is with me not even being a coffee drinker... like almost never, save for maybe no more than a couple espressos per year.
(Ok, full disclosure: my wife of many decades is a passionate coffee drinker, and it through her that I vicariously experience all coffee things, although I have more recently turned her toward my passion, tea.)
And so what really excites me about your newsletter and interviews is your perspective on and careful analysis of the socioeconomic realities of coffee: as an agricultural product that is commonly grown and harvested by artisanal farmers as well as a extremely popular developed world consumable with a conflicted cultural aurora (lots of consumer passion... and also much workplace exploitation of a folks that have become a kind of cultural icon: baristas), purchased at hugely popular chains (Starbucks of course, and here out west, Peets) as well as small (artisanal?) neighborhood businesses. The labor issues and unionization drives that you have so brilliantly described and analysed have been central then.
It is these very features of the coffee world that has so many parallels with other wordly goods/products (seafood being my fave example) that makes your newsletter, its great interviews, and the podcasts so interesting and valuable... even to someone who really does not much like to drink coffee lol.
Thx for everything, and best wishes for you much more success in 2023!