Coffee date with Tim Cook earns $295,000 bid, breaks Bill Clinton’s charity record
Charitybuzz’s offer of a coffee date with Apple CEO Tim Cook may only have entered its third day of bidding, but it has already broken the record for the biggest ever charity auction on the website. With bids totalling more than $295,000, Cook’s auction has surpassed the previous record bid of $255,000 — for a chance to spend a day with former US President Bill Clinton — and there are still 18 days left to bid.
Tim Cook is an expensive date.
» SFB says: (Warning: I’m about to get passionate about local coffee.) I’ve been to most of these places, and a lot of them only get the coffee part right. The part they get wrong is the experience part. There’s this trend in DC of local shops rebelling against wi-fi users, which is stupid because it turns away potential regular customers. Filter, for example, has good coffee but it’s not a good spot to sit and work because it’s very small and always packed (and its Foggy Bottom location offers no wireless). Among the local chains that get the combination right are Bourbon Coffee near Foggy Bottom (which is an international chain, kinda, as it also has locations in NYC and Rwanda), Firehook Bakery in Cleveland Park, Tynan Coffee in Columbia Heights, Sova if you’re willing to go all the way to H Street, and Pound the Hill and Ebeneezer’s — both in Capitol Hill. There’s nothing downtown that’s as good as any of the shops I mentioned, and most of them close before like 9pm, alas. (Murky in Arlington used to be a good local option, but they closed and the owner opened Chinatown Coffee, which is OK.) — Ernie @ SFB
EDIT: I knew I was forgetting one; Big Bear Cafe in Bloomingdale is nice. Thanks foxwithsocks.
SECOND EDIT: This is 100% on the money. It’s not that I want somewhere with wi-fi, though that helps. It’s that I want somewhere that has a good neighborhood vibe on the side of the coffee. DC doesn’t have that.
Asking for a friend. More details:
Fans of Caribou Coffee might want to start loading up on caffeine now, as the Minnesota-based company confirmed today that it’s closing down 88 locations around the U.S. A further 80 will undergo a rebranding makeover and re-emerge as Peet’s Coffee & Tea sometime in the next year or so.
“Over the past few months, we at Caribou have revisited our business strategy, including closely evaluating our performance by market to make decisions that best position us for long-term growth,” the company said in a written statement, via KARE News.
The 88 under-performing stores will be going away quite soon — April 14 is D-Day for those stores, but there’s no list identifying which locations will be shuttered.
Stores getting a makeover are scattered across Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Illinois and Eastern Wisconsin.
It’s worth noting that a ton of people will lose their jobs over this, some of whom are taking to the company’s Facebook page to rip the chain. While I’ll be disappointed about my loss of a coffee chain that was good for writing SFB posts even if their coffee was only “OK” (DC is loaded with chains, and good local shops are hard to come by), my minor frustration is nothing compared to the folks who are about to lose their jobs.
Venti Size Me: This Seattle woman, real name Beautiful Existence, plans to eat nothing but Starbucks for a full year. She’s really going to be sick of the breakfast sandwiches by around March. (ht Gawker)
Actor Patrick Dempsey just bought a Seattle-based coffee company. No, not Starbucks. Dempsey bid $9.15 million for Tully’s Coffee, an amount that beat whatever Starbucks offered during a private auction this week. ”I think some of the players involved in this deal want to take those jobs away, and you’re looking at an economy that’s rough to get jobs,” Dempsey said. “I went by one of the stores yesterday and the employees are deeply concerned. That’s one thing we care deeply about.” (No word on whether Dempsey plans to sell $1 reusable cups.)
In effort to encourage reuse, Starbucks is selling $1 reusable coffee cups: Here’s what they look like. Considering there’s a 10-cent discount each time you use it, it should pay for itself in about a week. (Check out the Thinglink embed above for more info.)
Starbucks’ message to Capitol Hill on the fiscal cliff: Come together, right now, over coffee. They are writing this on every cup ordered near Capitol Hill this week. (image via Twitter user @lyndseyfifield)
The Moscow version of Starbucks is encouraging people with coffee cups to buy postcards that let you cover up the sleeves of knockoff brands to replace with Starbucks. We want this, except with a generic cup brand, so that we can cover up the fact we went to Starbucks.
![theatlantic:
Study of the Day: Why Crowded Coffee Shops Actually Help Creative Thinking
The next time you’re stumped on a creative challenge, head to a bustling coffee shop, not the library. As the researchers write in their paper, “[I]nstead of burying oneself in a quiet room trying to figure out a solution, walking out of one’s comfort zone and getting into a relatively noisy environment may trigger the brain to think abstractly, and thus generate creative ideas.”
Read more. [Image: Global X/Flickr]
Why we work out of coffee shops.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5xkiv2GD51qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
Study of the Day: Why Crowded Coffee Shops Actually Help Creative Thinking
The next time you’re stumped on a creative challenge, head to a bustling coffee shop, not the library. As the researchers write in their paper, “[I]nstead of burying oneself in a quiet room trying to figure out a solution, walking out of one’s comfort zone and getting into a relatively noisy environment may trigger the brain to think abstractly, and thus generate creative ideas.”
Read more. [Image: Global X/Flickr]
Why we work out of coffee shops.
Maybe I shouldn’t do these things, but I’ve worked my life building this company and it’s been successful. I want to enjoy it. Whether it’s living lavishly, I think that’s all relative.Green Mountain Coffee founder Robert Stiller • Discussing the stock sale which cost him the chairmanship of his company earlier this week. Stiller, who founded the company in the 1980s and has seen its fortunes rise with its popular K-Cup machines, abruptly sold 5 million shares last week while the stock was in the midst of a sharp decline. The sale was in violation of company policy. Stiller, who still owns 8 million shares of the company’s stock, also dumped a $50 million stake in Krispy Kreme at roughly the same time. Stiller and another person will remain on the board for now, but had his pay suspended and his leadership role removed.
![Beam me up, coffee table: More exciting than a J.J. Abrams reboot
In case you’re tired of hearing about people dying in Syria, here’s a picture of a coffee table that looks like the Starship Enterprise. It can be yours for a mere $3,100. [h/t Geekologie] source
EDIT: Yes we were trolling. Sorry, all. :P
Follow ShortFormBlog](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyljc1kkX91qas8z9o1_r2_500.jpg)
In case you’re tired of hearing about people dying in Syria, here’s a picture of a coffee table that looks like the Starship Enterprise. It can be yours for a mere $3,100. [h/t Geekologie] source
EDIT: Yes we were trolling. Sorry, all. :P
SFB’s spiritual home changes owners: SFB was essentially built in this coffee shop, crafted out of iced coffees infused with honey. We consider Elliot’s Fair Grounds our home office even though we haven’t stepped foot in there in six months. Elliot’s a fun guy. He’ll be missed.
They say they’re already seeing the effects: Could you imagine a world without Starbucks … or coffee? That’s what officials for the world’s largest caffeine hawker are seriously worried about, especially after a fairly busy hurricane season and more resistant bugs. The company has even considered partly converting many outlets to juice bars. ”What we are really seeing as a company as we look 10, 20, 30 years down the road – if conditions continue as they are – is a potentially significant risk to our supply chain, which is the Arabica coffee bean,” says the company’s sustainability director, Jim Hanna. Three words, Jim: Yerba Mate Frappuccino. (photo via TPEGroup Photography & Design’s Flickr page) source
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