I'm not a coffee drinker, but the drinks you get at coffee shops seem really confusing to me. Espressos, Lattes, Macchiatos (which I thought was the guy from The Karate Kid), Caffe Mochas, Cafe Breves, Americanos. The terminology might be second hand to someone who works at such a shop (we hope) but I bet can be confusing even to someone who orders the drinks regularly.

Luckily, we have pictures! Lokesh Dhakar has a handy chart that explains what each drink looks like. I really need this to be done with other aspects of my life, so I can keep track of everything and know just what is in the food I eat, the books I read, and the movies I go to see.

[via Boing Boing]

Earlier this month, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz wrote a company memo that expressed concern over what he termed the "Commoditization of the Starbucks Experience." StarbucksGossip.com first posted the memo online and its authenticity was later confirmed by Starbucks, then picked up by more traditional media outlets.

The memo basically said that because of the rapid and wide-reaching expansion of the company, as well as the desire to do so quickly and efficiently, there has been a "watering down of the Starbucks experience." For example, switching to automatic espresso machines removed "much of the romance and theater that was in play with the use of the La Marzocca machines (the manual machines the stores used to have)." Another issue Schultz had was with the store designs, which have become too standard, too sterile and, in some cases, too distanced from actual coffee.

Speed and quality are important to any food service business, but not at the expense of experience of the customers' enjoyment and Shultz is proposing that they start making some changes to recapture that coffee shop experience that Starbucks first offered. There won't be a full-scale reversal in company strategy in pursuit of this goal. Instead, changes will be implemented gradually to move the stores away from the cookie-cutter, fast food chain genre while still chasing a larger global presence. Examples of this include having baristas measure out freshly roasted coffee beans, rather than having them in prepackaged bags, and changing the merchandise to have more coffee-centric merchandise, like grinders and brewers, instead of stuffed animals.

The changes planned for now seem small, but getting the aroma of freshly roasted beans back into the stores is a step in the right direction.

Sex sells. Usually, it sells things like beer, various liquors and - of course - fatty fast food hamburger, but some Seattle area businesses are using it to sell something else entirely: coffee. Espresso joints with names like Natté Latté, Moka Girls Espresso, Cowgirls Espresso, The Sweet Spot and Bikini Espresso have decided to spice up their images with sexy outfits and flirtatious female baristas to try and attract business away from competitors.

At Cowgirls Espresso in Tukwila, WA, for example, barista Candice Law (pictured) says that she and the other baristas dress to different themes for different days. "Everybody's excited to see you," she said, as evidenced by the look on this customer's face on seeing his coffee served by a girl in a corset and thigh-high boots. At other establishments, "hot-pink hot pants and tight white tank tops," lingerie and "fetish" outfits are just part of the dress code.

Dubbed "sexpresso," the combination of sexy outfits and coffee is a relatively new concept and seems to be gaining in popularity as commutes get longer and consumers are more likely to take factors other than simple convenience into account when looking for coffee in the morning. As one (satisfied) customer said "If I'm going to pay $4 for a cup of coffee, I'm not going to get served by a guy." The employees - just about all women - seem to like it, too, citing the friendly customers and huge tips as great incentives.

Starbucks is the latest chain to try to jump on the no-trans fats bandwagon, trying to demonstrate to customers how much they care about health and nutrition. Starting this week, approximately half of the stores in the US, including those in Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Portland, Oregon, will have zero trans fats on their menus.

The company says that they have been planning the switch for two years now and that their nationally distributed pastries, primarily seasonal items like the Gingerbread loaf cake, are already trans-fat free. The rest of their pastries are baked by regional bakeries, which Starbucks contracts to provide pastries for their stores. These pastries vary from region to region, as do the recipes for them, so not every supplier has yet made a switch, but Starbucks seems to anticipate that it will not be long before they do.

Every fall, Starbucks adds their Pumpkin Spice Lattes to their lineup, much to the delight of the many fans of the drink. This year, it is joined by another seasonal drink: the Maple Macchiato. The drink is much like the company's caramel "macchiato," which is a latte with vanilla and caramel sauce added to it, only it uses a maple syrup sauce instead of the other flavors. It even has a little maple drizzle on top.

The drink has been test marketed in Canada and in some parts of the US, so if you live in the North East, you may have sampled the maple-goodness before. It is sweet, satisfying and very evocative of fall. All stores should have it in stock this week. Expect to see some seasonal maple-flavored pastries, as well, as the 'Bucks tends to pair their new coffee drinks with a similarly flavored muffin or scone.

We love coffee - a sentiment that most bloggers probably share - but you cannot subsist on coffee alone and the pastries at coffee shops often leave much to be desired when it comes to flavor, as well as a little extra that we don't desire around our waists. With coffee and better-for-you options already on our minds, the new granola bars from Caribou Coffee caught our attention right away. The bars come in two coffee flavors - Vanilla Latte and Chocolate Mocha - but have only as much caffeine as decaf coffee, despite their taste. Each bar has about 140 calories and 3 grams of fat. Caribou says that they're a good source of calcium and whole grains, too.

Both flavors of bar are available online, so you can pick them up without trying to hunt down a store that carries them.

The news isn't that the Taiwanese government just realized that excessive caffeine can cause symptoms such as upset stomach, dizziness, anxiety, bad moods and trouble at work after a month-long study. Don't people know this already?!?!

The news is that coffee shops in Taiwan have added caffeine-content advisories to their menus with that warning from health officials. It's a color coded system: coffee drinks with more than 200 mg of caffeine get a red mark, caffeine levels of 100-200 mg get yellow, and drinks with less than 100 mg get green.

Starbucks has two new flavors rolling out to its US stores this summer, both based on tea and not on milk/cream, like their other frappuccinos. The first flavor is pomegranate, which is a blend of juice concentrate and green tea. The second is a tangerine-lime flavor, a blend of tea, tangerine and orange juices with a hint of lime. There is even a new "tea blended" category on their website, but no drinks have been added to it as of yet.

It's nice to see something a bit lighter on the menu, not to mention that this will be a big plus for non-dairy drinkers. The drinks sound extremely refreshing, but they also sound like a rerelease of the old Tiazzi and Tazoberry drinks, which were fruity tea frappuccinos as well. Of course, they didn't come in either of these flavors - though citrus, berry and mango all saw some time on the menu board - but the principle is the same.

As a big fan of those older drinks, I'm definitely glad to hear that these are being added to the summer lineup at Starbucks.

I have always wondered why people have problems saying the drink names at Starbucks. I'm not just speaking about the sizes, Tall, Grande and Venti, either. I'm talking about words like "latte." I notice men actually mispronounce the words on purpose. They will plaster a big grin on their face and, sarcastically, say something like "I'll have a 'grand kap-po-see-no.'" I kid you not - and when you come into a Starbucks every single morning, you will learn, at some point, the proper pronunciation of the names. How hard is it to say 'grahn-day,' really.

I generally chalked it up to some sort of testosterone-based insecurity because women almost never do this; the fear of saying a word incorrectly by chance was so great that these men preferred to grossly mispronounce the words on purpose. The question is: why be insecure?

The core market for Dunkin' Donuts is the segment of the population that feels uncomfortable with the word "panini." To accommodate them, the company changed the name of one of their new sandwiches to "stuffed melt," but this isn't the end of their push to make customers more comfortable.

In an article (subscription only) in the Wall Street Journal, the marketing and branding teams of Dunkin' Donuts revealed their research has shown there are two main groups in their potential customer base, dubbed "tribes." In the first tribe, there are people to frequent Starbucks. They like the atmosphere there and want their coffees with a couch; Dunkin' locations are too bare-bones for them. The second tribe is the Dunkin' tribe. These make up the core audience for Dunkin' donuts and are "bewildered and turned off by the atmosphere at Starbucks." When they do, perchance, wander into a Starbucks, they "don't get it." 

To keep the existing customers happy while bringing in new ones, Dunkin' Donuts is making some changes. In addition to renaming some of their products, they are bringing in new foods, like dough-wrapped pork and "Dunkin' Dawgs" to encourage customers to come in at lunch time, as well as cookies and other baked goods to bring them in in the afternoons. The pastry cases and espresso bars will be revamped to look flashier, but there will still be no couches. They don't want customers to feel too comfortable because it actually, according to their research, makes the Dunkin' tribe uncomfortable.

I far prefer to stop at a Starbucks than a fast food restaurant when I am on a long drive because, most of the time, I will pack my own snacks are simply want to get a drink. I'd rather have the extra caffeine of a coffee versus a soda and prefer the far-better taste of freshly prepared coffee than the "coffee" that comes out of a dispenser at the gas station convenience store. Starbucks also generally tend to have well-maintained bathrooms, which I appreciate.  But unless I really need to stretch my legs, I will find myself pulling up to the drive-thru window at many highway-side Starbucks. Driving thru takes about the same amount of time as going inside the store, with the added benefit that you do not have to get up. This is especially useful when it is cold outside and you don't want to put on several layers to walk a few hundred feet to the door.

I went to graduate school in Philadelphia, and lived only a few blocks from the famed La Colombe Torrefaction. I was a student, it was far too hip for me - but I did stop in once or twice for a croissant and what Food & Wine Magazine calls their "silky cappuccino," naming the caffeinated hotspot the top U.S. coffee "bar."

So coffee is served at bars, not shops, now? The magazine also picks Ritual Coffee Roasters in San Francisco, Ninth Street Espresso in the East Village, New York; Aloha Island in Beverly Hills and Ruta Maya in Austin. Naturally I think they're ignoring some legendary spots here in Portland (hello, aren't we coffeeville?), like Stumptown Coffee and Ristretto Roasters.

As I've only quaffed java at one of their top five spots, though, I can hardly be a judge. What do you all think: are they missing anyplace else that's truly paradise in a French Press?