CoffeeMate launches Girl Scout Cookie-Flavored Creamers

Girl Scout Cookies are a beloved treat that most of us look forward to every year, when Girl Scouts across the country start selling them outside malls and grocery stores. Part of the reason that the cookies are so appealing is that you can’t get them any other time of year, which only seems to make people want them more. If you can’t wait until the next cookie season to get your Girl Scout cookie fix, you might want to pick up a bottle of Coffee-mate’s just-launched Thin Mints® and Caramel & Coconut coffee creamers. One is based on the Girl Scouts’ best selling Thin Mints, while the other is based on the popular Samoas cookies. The creamer should be available at Target, and as it rolls out to more retailers, you should be able to pick up bottles at other grocery stores in your neighborhood.

Starbucks Frappuccino Summer Lounge Party

The beach in Santa Monica is one of the best places to spend a summer evening, with all kinds of shops and restaurants to choose from and a steady crowd of locals and tourists enjoying the cool sea air. It is even better if you’re there for a party and I was fortunate enough to be down at the beach the other day for Starbucks’ Frappuccino Summer Lounge Party to celebrate the launch of their new summer drink, the Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino.

The party was a chance to try the drink and learn some fun facts about frappuccinos – such as the fact that there are some 36,000 different ingredient combinations that you could potentially put together to customize your frappuccino! Aside from occasionally getting soy milk instead of regular for a change of pace, I tend to keep frappuccinos simple when I order then and was surprised that there were so many possibilities.

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Smuckers launches Life is Good coffee

Coffee always makes a day look a little bit sunnier, but a new line of coffee from JM Smuckers – makers of Folgers, Millstone, and Dunkin’ Donuts packaged coffees – literally says “life is good” on the packaging. The new coffee is an extension of the popular Life is Good lifestyle brand, better known for their clothing products bearing their logo, and its first UTZ certified sustainable coffee. UTZ promotes more environmentally friendly farming methods, as well as improved working conditions for farmers and their families. Smuckers is one of the largest coffee buyers in the world and moving towards farmer-friendly coffee potentially could have a big impact for both small and large coffee growing operations.

The new Life is Good coffee line is being launched with five flavors: Light Hearted light roast; Happy Medium medium roast; Dark & Daring dark roast; S’more to Love s’mores-flavored coffee; and Banana Bread Bliss banana-bread-flavored coffee. 10% of the net proceeds from the sale of the coffees will go to the nonprofit Life is Good Kids Foundation.

Latte art at a new level, from Kazuki Yamamoto

Many baristas – both home baristas and pro baristas – have struggled to master the art of latte art, getting the perfect microfoam to allow you to create beautiful, rippling designs on the top of your lattes and cappuccinos. I know that I gave myself a huge pat on the back the first time I pulled off a perfect heart (and cried a little inside when I completely missed the mark on the next four or five after that one good one), but as happy as I am with my own progress, the bar for latte art is being raised every day. Kazuki Yamamoto is someone who is taking the bar far out of reach for most of us with some truly amazing and very creative coffee creations.

The milk foam kitty pictured above is my own personal favorite, but the collection of Peanuts characters gives you a little more insight into just how detailed his works can get. For more, check out his Twitter feed, which is updated regularly with all kinds of impressive art – including portraits in coffee of everyone from anime characters to world leaders.

Pay it forward with Suspended Coffee

“Suspended coffee” is a concept that is catching on across the European Union. The term refers to when one customer pays for two cups of coffee – one for him/her and one for someone less fortunate who might come through the cafe later in the day. It’s doing a good deed for someone you don’t know, and it’s not a new concept. The tradition has been around in Naples for more than 100 years.

Caffè sospeso, as it is know in Italian, was a tradition that marked the generosity of the Italians, but it waned in popularity during World War II and after the reconstruction. It got to the point where coffees were only shared during the Christmas season and not the rest of the year. But the past few years have seen an upsurge in the trend in Italy and other EU countries, and more and more people are taking part. There is even a movement to start suspended coffee at Starbucks, which just illustrates how much interest there is in such a program. Time will tell if it does catch on at the coffee giant – and if we end up seeing it at US cafes.

This does remind me of a social experiment that Jonathan Stark did some time back, where he loaded up a Starbucks card and put the code online, so people could use and recharge it at will. There were times when it was empty, but in the overall scheme of things there were just as many people who added to the crowd-funded card as those who used it to get drinks. Going global with the suspended coffee movement would test the system, but perhaps this small-scale experiment is a good illustration that things might work out in the long run.