Being a coffee shop owner puts you in a unique position to make decisions that affect the world beyond your your front door. Consumers are increasingly making their voices heard by having their purchases speak for them, choosing one coffee shop over another because they feel that shop's values are shared with their own. When all things are equal, retailers can further distinguish themselves by investing in causes that will ultimately affect their future.

As those of you who roast your own coffee already know, freshness is everything. Coffee tastes best one or two days after roasting if stored airtight, and remains near that peak for only a few days afterward, so be sure to rotate your fresh coffee supply so that all beans are used within 10-14 days of roasting.

Coffees like Lavazza remain fresh for a year because they are packaged using a gas washing and vacuum packaging process.

After years of auditing coffee quality in coffee shops and restaurants, one brewing error consistently stands out: The grind is too coarse, resulting in an under-extracted, less-than-great pour.

A great, basic tutorial on green coffee processing. Full article appears on forbes.com. 

As a follow up to our coffee cupping guide, here's a handy guide for taking cupping notes — which, for the novice cupper, can sometimes seem like five ways to say the same thing.

Thanks to the proliferation of cold brew coffee, cocktails are maturing.

Thanks to the near ubiquity of cold brew coffee, coffee cocktails are growing—and growing up. More, and better, third wave bean-toned beverages are proliferating in bars from coast to coast, and these highbrow tipples are far cry from the original Espresso Martini. Pardon the pun, but this trend has been percolating for years, some might even say for decades or centuries.

Lavazza is our flagship espresso brand here at Intermix Beverage.

We love it, we crave it, and we drink it every day.

And it’s all because of Luigi.