Last month, Starbucks released the bittersweet news of its infamous Unicorn Frappuccino’s official menu departure. Along with the coffee giant’s plans to cut the highly Instagrammable pink and purple drink, it will be eliminating a number of other limited-time item offers by a stealthy 30% in the upcoming year.
As a successful contender in the caffeinated world for the past 54 years, it’s safe to say that California-based coffee chain The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf — with more than 1,200 locations worldwide — is adept in the coffee business. In addition to its strong focus on roasting and pouring quality products, it is also successfully keeping up with industry trends in order to stay above the fold and reach a variety of consumers. How? Most recently, through the implementation of the mobile order-ahead function.
Earlier this month, 31 coffee roasteries from across the country went head to head — or bean to bean — at Coffee Fest's annual 'America's Best Cold Brew Competition' in Portland, OR. The competition, open to roasters in North America, has been developed to determine and acknowledge the best tasting cold brew and nitro coffee across the U.S. and Canada.
The winner? Reborn Coffee at Regency Centers' Village at La Floresta in Brea, CA, took home top honors and the $1,000 purse. The shop, which opened April 20 of this year, uses what it calls 'overclass cold-brew extraction,' technology to preserve each coffee bean's distinct regional flavor and taste and extract the most desirable notes from each variety.