New Phone Booth Coffee Shop; Will Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz Run for President?

Plus, the inventor of Mr. Coffee passes away.

— England's hippest new coffee shop doesn't have to worry about laptop squatters, because well, there is no place to squat. Entrepreneur Jake Hollier recently opened what may be the UK's smallest coffee shop within one of the country's iconic red phone booths. Hollier's Birmingham shop — known simply as Jake's Coffee Box — has already been so successful that he plans on turning other boxes into different types of food stalls. Hollier notes: "Everyone looks at you like I'm crazy but I am getting good responses, good feedback, people walking past and saying it's absolutely brilliant and a good idea. So far so good." In the city of Brighton, other entrepreneurs are converting the red phone booths into ice cream stands. [via @ElizabethOnFood]

— Can the man who introduced Frappuccinos to the world pose a threat to presidential hopefully Hillary Clinton? Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz's friends certainly think so. They apparently want the 62-year-old CEO to join the Democratic primary and run for office. Schultz's friends believe "the time is right for someone who's not a political lifer" to be in office. While people have been saying Schultz should run for president since as early as 2012, Schultz has publicly stated that he has no plans to run for president (at least in 2016).

— Vincent Marotta Sr., the creator of the iconic Mr. Coffee machine, passed away this weekend at the age of 91. Mr. Coffee — which Marotta Sr. invented in the early 1970s — was one of the first "automatic drip coffee makers designed for home use." It the first successful alternative to the percolator — which was often difficult and time consuming to use. The Mr. Coffee machine hit the market in 1972 and by 1979, the company had generated $150 million in annual sales. It originally retailed for $39.99 which is about $226 today. While Marotta changed the face of coffee making, he barely drank it due to the fact that he suffered from stomach ulcers.

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