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Central Perk, the iconic coffee shop of the classic American sitcom Friends can now be found – not in New York, not in a Hollywood studio – but in downtown Beijing. The replica is the completely self-funded project of Du Xin, who first watched the show when it ended in 2004, as reported by Xinhuanet.

Du began watching the show on a friend’s recommendation after his girlfriend broke up with him. “I fell in love with the six friends’ life and stepped out of loneliness,” he said. “As true fans know, the show is more than about just making people laugh. It shows people the existence of happiness and friendship.”

After four years in the Netherlands, Du returned to Beijing to begin his own business. He looked for a coffee shop like Central Perk where he could hang out with friends, but was unsuccessful, so he decided to open one himself in November 2009.

With scene captures from the show and collected pictures from Facebook, YouTube and Flickr,  Du set out to find a suitable decoration team to reproduce the original set. Every piece of furniture in his coffee shop is customized.

Du, who calls himself Gunther after the show’s Central Perk manager, worked with his team of workers from 9 am to midnight for five months. The coffee shop opened on March 28.

Central Perk had very few customers the first month, but his fortunes changed one day when a student from Peking University visited before and wrote an article about the coffee shop and posted it to the campus bulletin. Soon after, word spread through online blogs and forums about “China’s Central Perk.”

Next month, Du plans to recruit a “Phoebe,” one of the show’s main characters who often performed self-composed guitar songs at the coffee shop.

“My dream is to create a room for (people) to open up and enjoy themselves without any masks,” he said. “I hope it can be the fourth place where people feel safe, after their homes, schools and workplaces.”

Those interested in becoming the next Phoebe must perform two songs from the show and an original song with a guitar.

Brewing up  enough coffee every day for even a few cups uses a lot of grounds. Most likely, most of those spent coffee grounds get thrown in the trash, or maybe even composted. But did you know that those used coffee grounds have alternative uses? Below are a couple of pointers to make you think twice before tossing those ground beans in the trash.

Removing Odors From Your Hands

After cooking with certain foods such as garlic or fish you might have a strong odor on your hands that regular soap won’t remove. Rub a few coffee beans in your hands and the oils being released from the beans will absorb the foul smell.

Kitchen Drains

Drains tend to get smelly from having leftover food put down them.  Slowly pour a cup of coffee grounds, mixed with boiling water, down the drain and the odor will disappear.

Cleaning Around the House

Coffee grounds can be used to clean any stain resistant surface.  The grounds are extremely abrasive and acidic, giving them the edge when it comes to difficult cleaning, but they have a mild and gentle element and smell super fresh.  This technique is particularly useful for cleaning greasy kitchen surfaces. Simply mix them with a little bit of water, and then scrub with a firm brush. Do make sure that the dirty items are stain-resistant.

Gardening

Adding coffee to the soil used for your plants can be an effective way of helping them thrive.  This is best done in small amounts of soil and by simply adding the coffee grounds onto your compost pile.

Freshen Your Breath

If you’re all out of Altoids, suck on a coffee bean and your mouth and breath will smell clean and fresh.

Dye

Used coffee grounds can serve as a great brown dye on anything from fabric to paper or even Easter eggs. Take the coffee grounds and band them in either a filter or a nylon. Soak the grounds in two cups of hot water for five to ten minutes. Once you have done this, you have a dye ready for action. When dyeing a larger piece of fabric, simply increase the amount of water and the amount of grounds. If you have brown furniture, a dye made from coffee grounds can also be used to cover up unwanted blemishes.

Pest Repellant

Used coffee grounds can help keep stray cats out of your garden. Simply mix the coffee grounds well with used orange peels and then spread them around the outside of your garden. Since cats dislike the smell of coffee, as well as any citrus smells, this mixture will drive them away quickly!

Ants also dislike the smell and, most likely, the acidity of the coffee. If you have an ant problem and some spare time, spread your coffee grounds over each ant hill. After about a week of persistently spreading the grounds, most of those pesky ants will find a new place to live!

Deodorizer

Coffee grounds attract and trap unwanted odors, without imparting that unmistakable coffee scent. After you have dried them, preferably on a cookie sheet or foil, place your coffee grounds in old pantyhose. Tie the hose off, and then simply place them in any closet or area that needs freshening up. Results should last for a few weeks or even an entire month.

Muslims are to be allowed to drink the world’s most expensive coffee which happens to be extracted from the excrement of the Asian Palm Civet, a weasel-like mammal, reports the Jakarta Post.

The Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI) declared Tuesday that civet coffee (otherwise known as Kopi Luwak coffee) is allowed to be consumed by Muslims as long as farmers clean the beans thoroughly before grinding them. Luwak coffee is made from hard beans that have been eaten by the Palm Civets and then fermented in their stomachs before it is excreted and roasted.

Civet Coffee Most Expensive In The World

The civet’s stomach enzymes break down proteins in the beans giving the coffee a less bitter taste, and smooth flavor. Highly sought after, the “cat crap” coffee can go for well over $440 per kilo.

The acting head of the MUI, Maruf Amien said the coffee beans that were excreted by the civet cat were considered mutanajis (afflicted with something unclean).“Nevertheless, the farmers do not have to cleanse the beans with water seven times as Islam is told. As long as the beans are spotless, they are okay,”said Maruf Amien. However, Amien did go go on to say that cracked beans were still considered unclean [hiram] and could not be consumed.

Read the original story here.

Starbucks’ reported months ago that it’s profits rose 24 percent to $391 million during its fiscal year ended September 2009. However, recent filings in the United Kingdom show it’s on the opposite trajectory there, losing more than $15 million during the same period, the Guardian of London reports.

The U.K. is one of Starbucks’ largest overseas markets, with 712 of its 16,635 locations, only surpassed by Canada and Japan. The Guardian suggests the business has been losing ground to strongly performing Costa Coffee, the rival chain owned by British leisure group Whitbread. Starbuck’s performance contrasts with figures from Costa which showed comparable sales growth of 3.9% for the 39 weeks to the end of November last year. Since then the pace of Costa growth has accelerated to 8.5%.

The Guardian also speculates that Starbucks’ performance underlines concerns raised by chief executive Howard Schultz a year ago when he delivered a damning, off-the-cuff assessment of the UK economy. “The place that concerns us most is western Europe and, specifically, the UK,” he said. “The UK is in a spiral.”

Asked about his biggest concerns, Schultz said: “Unemployment, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, particularly in the UK, and I think consumer confidence, particularly in the UK, is very, very poor.”

A small town is Saskatchewan is home to a 150,000 cup coffee pot. The town of Davidson, Saskatchewan,  (pop. 1000) is known as a stopping place for those driving in Saskatchewan, along the province’s busiest highway. Currently, the Town of Davidson has the bragging rights to the largest coffee pot and cup in the world. The 24-foot-high (or 7.3-metre high) roadside attraction, known as “Canada’s Largest Coffee Pot,” symbolizes Davidson’s friendliness and hospitality, says Mayor Mary Jane Morrison.

This monument has direct significance to the ‘Midway Town” where people often stop for coffee en route to either Regina or Saskatoon.

Davidson marks the junction of Highways #11 and #44, roughly half way between Saskatchewan’s three major cities: a 75-minute drive to Saskatoon, a 90-minute drive to Regina, and about the same to Moose Jaw.

The coffee pot was constructed of sheet metal in 1996, as a result of a major community effort, says Morrison. Kelly Thorsen of Holdfast painted scenes depicting transportation, farming, and rural life. It shows themes of the community, symbolized by images such as a curling rock and ball glove, and the town’s heritage, commemorated by the train, combine, and bi-plane symbolizing World War II training.

On July 5, 2010, Canada Post made a commemorative stamp of the Coffee Pot as part of its Roadside Attractions collection.

This fall, Canadians will be able to walk into Burger King and order a fresh cup of Seattle’s Best Coffee. The two companies announced plans this week to begin serving the Seattle’s Best brand at restaurants throughout Canada.

Starbucks-owned Seattle’s Best prides itself on 40 years of serving quality coffee. Coffee is the number one beverage consumed at quick-serve restaurants in Canada, so it makes sense for Burger King to partner with Seattle’s Best. The company is well known in the US, but slowly gaining popularity in Canada.

The agreement could boost market share for Seattle’s Best, which is owned by Seattle-based Starbucks. It also could help Burger King remain competitive in the fast-food industry by offering more beverage options, company officials have said.

Burger King operates more than 12,100 restaurants and franchise operations worldwide. Seattle’s Best is served at more than 550 specialty coffee cafes and kiosks in the U.S. and Canada. It is also sold at stores throughout the U.S. and Canada.

From picking to roasting to the electricity for grinding them and boiling the water, a carbon off setting company from Canada has recently calculated that 400-gram bag of french roast coffee from Nicaragua produces 1,807-grams of carbon dioxide, the equivalent to driving 170 km in a mid size car.

The final tally might not sound like much, but it quickly adds up if you do the math. A Coffee Association of Canada survey from 2003 suggested the average coffee drinker here consumes 2.6 cups a day. That means a year of drinking  Nicaraguan coffee with an average of each bag brewing about 50 cups, would produce about 34,000 grams of carbon dioxide, which is about the same as driving a mid-sized car for 170 kilometres. Two-thirds of that total is produced by consumers brewing the coffee at home and then throwing out the used grounds.

Every aspect of the coffee-making process was examined, including:

• Farming the beans in Nicaragua.
• Transporting them.
• Roasting and packaging them on Salt Spring Island.
• Distributing and selling the coffee.
• Brewing the coffee on a consumer’s kitchen counter.
• More often than not, tossing the used grounds in the garbage.

The company who commissioned the study, Salt Spring Coffee, has been buying carbon offsets to make its operations carbon neutral since 2007, but that hasn’t included the farming of the beans or the footprint of consumers. On Tuesday, the company announced bags of its Nicaraguan French roast will also include offsets for the farming, picking and pre-processing in Nicaragua — which account for just two per cent of the total.

The company said that makes it the first carbon neutral coffee in Canada until the beans are sold to consumers.

For the remaining 64 per cent of the emissions, the company is urging its customers to reduce their footprint by making simple changes, such as ensuring they only use the amount of water they need and composting the used grounds instead of throwing them away.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2010/06/30/con-carbon-coffee.html#ixzz0tQLKLwyM

It’s a little known fact that between 1957-1961, Jim Henson made 179 hysterically violent coffee commercials for Wilkins Instant Coffee each around 10 seconds long. They were starring some of his early creations, Cheerful Wilkins and Grumpy Wilkins.

Although there’s nothing funny about the BP oil spill, but the people trying to “clean up” and “contain” the mess have acted in such a way it’s easy to make fun of them. Such is the case with the “BP spills coffee” video, which has gone viral on the internet.  The skit prepared by UCB Comedy takes a look at several things that BP did to try to fix the oil spill,  using a coffee spill as a metaphor.

The video starts as a group of executives at “BP” are in a meeting.  One spills a cup of coffee and the chaos ensues.  Unsure what to do, a woman places her hand in front of the spill which is approaching a laptop.  The workers freak out about “The fish” (someone’s sushi lunch) and “my map of Louisiana.” Amid the frenzy someone spills a second cup of coffee, and mass panic ensues. You can see the video here on Youtube.

The world’s biggest foodmaker, Nestle said it began legal action against Sara Lee Corp. in France for alleged patent violations on its Nespresso single serve espresso coffee making system. The Swiss company said it was acting “to defend our intellectual property rights.”

Sara Lee started selling L’OR Espresso capsules that are compatible with Nespresso single serve espresso coffee machines in French stores in April. The Downers Grove, Illinois-based company is “confident our product complies with all applicable legal and regulatory requirements,” said a spokesman for Sara Lee.

Single Serve Coffee At A High Cost

“Sara Lee and the others are now trying to piggyback the system that Nestle has taken decades to establish with the associated high investment costs,” said James Amoroso, a food- industry consultant based in Walchwil, Switzerland.

Nestle first sold single serve espresso for machines that don’t need cleaning 24 years ago. The Swiss company cultivates an exclusive image for Nespresso through boutiques that boast tasting salons in locations such as Paris’s Champs-Elysees and via a magazine sent to the homes of some of its 7 million Nespresso Club members twice a year.

Sara Lee has sold 12 million coffee capsules since it introduced the product in France two months ago, Duran said. “We see no reason why Nespresso would take legal action against us and are confident about the outcome of the proceedings.”

“Due to ongoing legal proceedings, we are unable to make any further comment at this stage,” Nestle said in a statement.