Monday Coffee News

Happy Monday! A couple coffee-related news items from the past week: Dunkin’ Donuts adds two new coffee flavors to their menu for Valentine’s Day, Starbucks released a promise to hire 10,000 refugees over the next 5 years, and 2 students in the UK nearly died after accidentally being given the caffeine equivalent of 300 cups of coffee at once. 

Once again Dunkin’ Donuts is embracing the Valentine’s Day season by adding a couple new Valentine’s themed items to their menu for a limited time. This year that includes two new coffee flavors, Fudge Brownie Swirl and Vanilla Cupcake Swirl , available in hot or iced coffees, lattes, and macchiatos. They’re also bringing back their heart-shaped donuts in two new flavors: Chocolate-Covered Raspberry Heart Donut (frosted with chocolate icing and drizzled with strawberry-flavored icing and filled with a raspberry filling) and Brownie Batter Crumble Heart Donut (frosted with chocolate icing and sprinkled with brownie crumble and filled with a brownie batter flavored buttercreme filling). The Fudge Croissant Donut (a glazed croissant donut topped with chocolate and white icing drizzle and filled with a fudge filling) is also being brought back as well.

In answer to these troubled times, Starbucks released a statement which included a promise to hire 10,000 refuges within the next 5 years in the 75 countries around the world where Starbucks does business. According to the release, the plan is to “start this effort here in the U.S. by making the initial focus of our hiring efforts on those individuals who have served with U.S. troops as interpreters and support personnel in the various countries where our military has asked for such support”.

Northumbria University in the U.K was fined £400,000 (~$500,325 US) after two students involved in a laboratory experiment were accidentally given the caffeine equivalent of 300 cups of coffee at once. The students were supposed to be given 0.3 grams of caffeine in a study that looked at the effects of caffeine on exercise, but a misplaced decimal in the calculations resulted in the students being given 30.0 grams, the equivalent of 300 cups of coffee and well past the lethal limit. Both students were placed in intensive care for dialysis and eventually made a full recovery after one student spent 2 days in the hospital and lost 22lbs, while the other student spent 6 days in the hospital, lost 26.5 lbs, and reported short-term memory loss.