coffee
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Starbucks is buying back the coffeehouse
The company made coffee a place to go. Then convenience crowded the room. Its return to hospitality comes with a $500 million staffing investment and a lesson in what customers actually buy.
Smucker made a billion dollars by cutting the crust.
A frozen peanut butter sandwich explains The J.M. Smucker Co. better than a jar of jam. Its next lesson comes from a much more expensive snack.
Mark Smucker and the art of leaving home
He left Orrville to study rocks, teach science and work in Argentina. Now Mark Smucker leads the family company, with a billion-dollar sandwich brand, a difficult bet on Hostess and a sideline in house music.
Brian Niccol and the four-minute test
He helped sell America on a Doritos taco, then led Chipotle through six years of growth. At Starbucks, Brian Niccol is testing whether a global brand can recover its welcome, one coffee order at a time.
Royal Cup sells the morning.
The coffee is only part of the order. Royal Cup built its business around everything it takes to keep the next cup coming - and its 2026 expansion makes that bet bigger.
Bob Fish and the distance inside a cup of coffee
He helped turn a former Arby’s into BIGGBY COFFEE. Now Bob Fish and his wife, Michelle, are working backward from the café counter to the farms, with a 2028 deadline and some hard lessons about what a handshake can hold.
Dan Hawkins and the Extra Second at the Window
His mother named The Human Bean. With his wife and a high school friend, Dan Hawkins helped turn an Oregon coffee stand into a national franchise - while trying to keep the exchange at the window personal.
Jeff Hernandez and the Coffee Shop That Learned to Slow Down
He helped turn a 160-square-foot Oregon drive-thru into Black Rock Coffee Bar. Along the way, Jeff Hernandez made room for something a fast coffee business might be tempted to hurry past: the customer.
Alan Lai and the price of knowing
A bag of chia seeds in Uganda gave Alan Lai a question he could not leave alone. His answer became ProfilePrint, an ingredient-scanning business built around the people who still make the final call.
Kopi Kenangan made room for everyday coffee
A tiny Jakarta takeaway counter found the space between instant coffee and an expensive café. More than 1,500 outlets later, the harder trick is making growth pay.
Edward Tirtanata and the price of an everyday pleasure
A small Jakarta coffee shop gave Edward Tirtanata a way to test a large idea: a good cup should be affordable enough to buy again tomorrow. Nine years later, the co-founder of Kopi Kenangan is still learning what to keep, what to change, and when to buy more.
Michael Sharon Turned Coffee Into a Product You Can Text
The former Facebook mobile product leader brought software habits to the beverage aisle: ship early, listen closely, fix the strange taste, and put a phone number where the logo usually goes.
The Jam Company That Quietly Took Over Your Pantry
Smucker spent 129 years turning a horse-drawn apple-butter route into a $9.1 billion portfolio of coffee, frozen sandwiches, pet food and snack cakes. The wager now is that old brands, sharp distribution and one very modern PB&J can keep growing together.
Dutch Bros Coffee
The Oregon drive-thru that turned a pushcart, a windmill logo and a blue energy drink into a $1.6 billion coffee company - one Rebel at a time.
Agridence
Agridence is a Singapore technology company that helps global agri-commodity supply chains prove where their raw materials come from. Born in 2018 as HeveaConnect, a digital B2B marketplace for physical natural rubber, it rebranded in 2022 and expanded into a modular traceability and compliance platform now spanning rubber, palm oil, cocoa, coffee, coconut and more. Its tools trace commodities from the farm plot to the shipment and file the paperwork regulators such as the EU Deforestation Regulation demand, serving tyre makers, food multinationals, traders and industry associations.
Koltiva
Koltiva is a Swiss-Indonesian agritech and climate-tech company that makes agricultural supply chains traceable, inclusive, and climate-smart. Through its KoltiTrace software platform and KoltiSkills field services, it connects smallholder producers to global brands with seed-to-table traceability, farm mapping, deforestation and EUDR compliance, carbon assessments, and digital finance. Founded in 2013 and led by co-founder and CEO Manfred Borer, Koltiva reports work with over 2 million registered producers across dozens of commodities and more than 90 countries.
ProfilePrint - AI-driven Ingredient Quality Platform
ProfilePrint is a Singapore-based B2B platform that turns the molecular signature of a food ingredient into a digital fingerprint and uses AI to predict its identity, origin and quality within seconds. Built on patented digital food Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) technology, it pairs proprietary near-infrared hardware with custom machine-learning models so agribusinesses can grade coffee, cocoa, tea, dairy, oils and other ingredients without slow, subjective lab work. Founded in 2017 by Alan Lai, the company is deployed across roughly 50-60 locations on six continents and counts industry giants such as Cargill, Olam, Louis Dreyfus and Sucafina as investors and customers.
World Market
World Market (legally Cost Plus World Market) is an American specialty retailer that has sold globally sourced furniture, home decor, gourmet foods, wine, coffee and gifts since 1958. From its first shop on San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, it grew into a chain of roughly 240+ stores across the United States plus a fast-growing e-commerce business, built on the idea that a shopper in suburban America can fill a cart with hand-picked goods from dozens of countries at affordable prices.
Fellow
Fellow makes design-led gear for people who take their home coffee seriously - the gooseneck Stagg EKG kettle, the Ode and Opus grinders, vacuum-insulated travel mugs, and a roaster-rotating subscription called Fellow Drops. Founded by Jake Miller in 2013 after a Stanford d.school project, it bootstrapped its way from Kickstarter to a $30M Series B in 2022.
Jake Miller
Jake Miller is the founder of Fellow, a San Francisco-based premium coffee gear company known for design-forward products like the Stagg EKG electric kettle, Ode Brew Grinder, and Carter Move Mug. He launched Fellow as a Stanford MBA class project in 2013, weathered 73 investor rejections and a failed first product, before building a nine-figure consumer brand sold in 45+ countries and backed by $42M in funding. Miller's mission is to transform everyday coffee routines into meaningful rituals by bridging the gap between specialty roasters and home baristas.
James Hoffmann
James Hoffmann is an English barista, YouTuber, author, and co-founder of Square Mile Coffee Roasters. He won the 2007 World Barista Championship in Tokyo and went on to become the most-watched coffee voice on the internet, with a YouTube channel exceeding 2.5 million subscribers. Known for tortoiseshell glasses, knit sweaters and a dry sense of humour, he turned brewing minutiae into mainstream curiosity.
Peter McKinnon
Peter McKinnon is a Toronto-based photographer, cinematographer, and YouTube creator with nearly 6 million subscribers, known for his cinematic visual style and fast-paced, coffee-fueled tutorials. A former magician and Ellusionist Production Manager turned self-taught filmmaker, he built one of YouTube's most distinctive photography channels from a spare bedroom, won the 2019 Shorty Award for Breakout YouTuber of the Year and the 2020 Streamy Award for Cinematography, and had his landscape photography minted on official Canadian currency by the Royal Canadian Mint. Beyond tutorials, he has launched his own multi-tool for photographers, multiple Lightroom preset packs, a signature coffee blend with James Coffee Co., and the 'Pete's Pirate Life' EDC brand.
Marco Arment
Marco Arment is an independent iOS developer, podcaster, and blogger best known for building Overcast (a leading podcast app), co-founding Tumblr, and creating Instapaper. He co-hosts the Accidental Tech Podcast (ATP) with John Siracusa and Casey Liss, and writes at marco.org. His career is defined by principled solo craftsmanship - he operates Overcast entirely alone with no investors or employees, maintains a fierce privacy stance in his apps, and is famous for once pulling a #1 App Store app (Peace) after 36 hours on ethical grounds.