We have two overseas stories about coffee-shop owners in the wars:
Standard & Poor's, the multibillion-dollar publisher of financial information, has filed a lawsuit against the Standard & Pours, a coffee shop and live music venue in South Dallas, Texas. The immensely-rich organisation is demanding compensation from the single-mother barista-owner for alleged confusion to customers over the similar names. A Texas attorney has offered to defend the coffee shop without charge, and says: ‘nobody has yet walked into Standard & Poor's office in Manhattan and asked for an espresso, and nobody's walked into this coffee house and asked for financial advice’.
Meanwhile, in Canada, the Pup’n’Cup Doggie Boutique Cafe, a dog and human-friendly coffee-shop, lasted one day before receiving a shut-down threat from the environmental health people. The café was opened to sell pet equipment, and provide food for dogs while their owners could get a drink – but the Vancouver Island Health Authority (a district noted for its coffee culture!) called to announce that their licence to trade had been revoked. The café owners have pointed out that in their successful application for a licence, they showed exactly what they were going to do, and have put in place stringent hygiene procedures. The health people, who apparently didn’t read the application, say they cannot prepare dog food and coffee for humans at the same time.
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