#specialty-coffee

#specialty-coffee

Coffee blended with fruits and flowers and tea drinks topped with clouds are some of the fun offerings at a new cafe in Oakland, Olivia Coffee & Flower. The walk-by-quick-and-you'll-miss-it spot opened this fall in the city's Pill Hill neighborhood, amid plentiful clinics and medical buildings. Tired workers looking for a pick-me-up will find espresso drinks, matcha and pour-over coffee, plus sandwiches and Asian-inspired snacks like kimchi toast with garlic-butter-chive spread ($8) and Korean melon and green-grape burrata salad ($13).

"My space is a place for activism. My space is a place for women of color to feel safe," Arana told Daily Coffee News. "It's a place for the Latino community to feel seen and represented, and just a safe space for anybody."

NPR: What Lies in Coffee's Future? An NPR story this week explored the mounting challenges facing coffee growers, including rising temperatures, shrinking arable land, droughts driven by climate change, financial pressures, generational labor shortages, international market volatility and over-reliance on arabica production. "Most immediately, the Trump administration's tariffs, which threaten their sales, add to the ongoing challenges of pests and diseases for coffee production," the piece states. "In the longer term, experts say the coffee industry can't continue with business as usual."

Last year, the New York Times crowned Rose Pizzeria one of the best pizza spots in the United States. Now, the team behind the celebrated Berkeley staple has opened the doors to a new venture, Cafe Brusco, right down the street from the pizzeria. The all-day cafe features house-made bagels baked in the sister restaurant's pizza ovens along with coffee and pastries from other local vendors, including Good Luck Bakery. Cafe Brusco will also begin offering wine in the near future.

Klatch Coffee will expand its partnership with Sprouts Farmers Market, opening 20 new cafes inside its stores, according to a news release from the Rancho Cucamonga chain. The expansion will include Klatch's first location in San Diego County and more than double the number of its cafes. It currently has 12 in San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange and Los Angeles counties, the farthest from home being in Redondo Beach.

The team behind Hell's Kitchen fast-casual Filipino spot Tradisyon opened a new restaurant with a Filipino Spanish bent this week. Tradicionale opened in Chelsea at 156 Ninth Avenue, between West 19th and 20th streets, on Tuesday, September 16. The menu features Filipino Spanish dishes, drawing from the Philippines' history as a colony of Spain, by chef Anton Dayrit. This means baby octopus adobo, longanisa fried rice with crab, prawns in the coconutty alavar sauce, and a take on his mother's lengua, a stew.

Beneath a ring of suspended greenery that catches light from front windows, lounge seating invites lingering, while a standing-height counter accommodates European-style quick sips. Further inside, leather banquette seating lines walls lit by modern vertical sconces. Floor tiling shifts from calm patterns to busier designs as it approaches the 30-foot bar fronted with ice-grey artificial quartz. Permanently parked on a cobblestone patio in the back is a green Jeep Willys, another nod to coffee's agricultural origins.

Federal's ever-inventive serves may have coffee purists spluttering into their pour-overs, but they've been a rip-roaring success, with queues forming at weekends. First opened in the Northern Quarter in 2014 by New Zealander Jon Perry and Portuguese-born Claudio Ribeiro, Federal is an affable, warm hug of a café, which has since opened outposts on Deansgate, Oxford Road and, as of 2025, Leeds.

Overall, what drives improved coffee flavor is relatively unknown, with likely many complex factors being involved,

Specialty coffee and craft beer, two beverage birds of a feather, are flocking together in Kelowna, British Columbia, with Red Bird Roasting opening inside the Vice and Virtue Brewing building. The new roastery cafe is just down the block from Red Bird Brewing, which acquired Vice and Virtue earlier this year and hatched the coffee plans in an unused portion of the V&V brewery. Occupying approximately 1,000 square feet, the coffee shop and roastery opened last month.

A coffee cupping is not just a casual sip; it's an involved ritual that allows for a clear picture of the drink's taste, body, and nuances.