WASHINGTON - Rebecca Witzofsky, a 20-year-old deaf student at Gallaudet University in Washington, and her hearing friend Nikolas Carapellatti wanted to get a coffee.
But on Tuesday, Witzofsky finally didn't have to struggle to make her order understood.
US coffee giant Starbucks opened its first "signing store" in the United States in northeast Washington near the campus of Gallaudet, the world's only university with an entire curriculum designed to accommodate the deaf and hard-of-hearing.
At the store, all staff -- most of them deaf or hard-of-hearing themselves -- are required to communicate with customers using sign language.
The cafe is modeled after a store that opened in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2016.
At first glance, it doesn't look any different from a regular Starbucks, seen on seemingly every other street corner in the US capital.
Employees wearing black shirts and green aprons emblazoned with the company logo scurry behind the counter to serve hot drinks, cold drinks and pastries to an eager clientele.
But despite the crowd -- perhaps unusually big for mid-morning on a Tuesday -- the cafe enjoyed a surprising calm, probably because most conversations were held in silence.
For Witzofsky, it was a revelation.
"It gives deaf people space off-campus, a place to come to and socialize, eat food with other deaf people and meet other deaf people as well, and the deaf employees," she told AFP.
"When I go to a normal Starbucks, I either talk and hope they can hear me and understand, or I show them my order on my phone," she explained.
"Here, your name appears on a screen, which I really, really like, because when they call my order I don't have to try to hear it -- it's right on the screen."
'SIGN OF THE WEEK'
The store has other specific features designed to embrace and celebrate deaf culture -- one is the "sign of the week."
Right now, it's for coffee: two closed fists, one on top of the other, rotating in a move that brings to mind a coffee grinder.
There are also special mugs for sale with designs by a deaf artist, and a transcription of how to sign the logo of the store.
Starbucks says the initiative is aimed at bringing diverse communities together. It comes six months after the arrest of two black men in a Philadelphia store that sparked accusations of racism.
The opening got a boost from the presence of Oscar-winning deaf actress Marlee Matlin.
Seated on an outside patio with their coffees, retired couple Albert and Peggy Hlibok said they had come to the store to "intermingle with the hearing world."
"I think it's a wonderful opportunity for all of us," said Peggy, with the help of an interpreter.
"It will teach people not to be afraid to communicate with deaf people. They can see it's just part of who we are, part of our lives, part of the diversity of life."
source: news.abs-cbn.com
PORTUGALETE, Spain -- Five years ago, a group of university students in Spain's Basque Country decided they wanted to shake up a sector -- any sector -- but preferably one to do with food or drink.
So they picked the most traditional of them all -- and created blue wine, one of several innovations in a deeply conservative industry.
After two years of research at the University of the Basque Country with the help of in-house, professional chemical engineers and an outside center for food innovation, they launched their company Gik Live! in 2015.
It sold 30,000 bottles in its first year and close to 500,000 in 2017. The young company now exports to 21 countries, the United States being its main market, and wine-loving France its second.
From five rookie entrepreneurs, the company has grown to 12 employees.
"We understand that for many people... wine is something sacred that mustn't be changed," says Irish-Basque co-founder Taig Mac Carthy, standing at a bar in the company office in Portugalete, a northern town near Bilbao.
"But we like to change things and we're not afraid to try," he adds, as employees type at their computers in the room next door where a drum kit and guitars stand ready for use in true hipster startup tradition.
Blue recipe
One look at a glass of blue wine can be enough to send sommeliers scurrying.
Electric blue in colour, Gik Blue is made in several wineries in Spain following the traditional winemaking process.
As well as being sold online, some bars, restaurants and shops in Spain sell it.
The recipe? Mix a lot of white wine with a smaller amount of red wine, and a tiny bit of must, or freshly-crushed grape juice.
The blue colour is obtained via a mix of "nature and technology" using two pigments -- anthocyanin, found in the skin of red grapes, and indigo carmine.
The company won't divulge any more of what they say is their "industrial secret."
Gik Live used to use sugar substitutes but now adds dessert wine instead to get a sweet taste.
Other brands have followed suit in Spain including a blue sparkling cava, and the company has created other types.
There is red wine infused with Earl Grey tea, white wine infused with Japanese Sencha tea, or spicy red wine named "Bastarde."
Prices online range roughly from $13 to $15 a bottle and clients are usually aged 25 to 45, men and women alike, says the company.
Chinese counterfeit
The reaction to blue wine has been decidedly mixed.
Jean-Michel Deluc, former head sommelier at the Ritz in Paris, labelled it "surprising."
"It's not what I'd drink but still, it's not bad, it's quite well done," he said in a video posted on the blog of wine-ordering business Le Petit Ballon, which comments on news in the sector.
In an August review, Britain's The Daily Telegraph newspaper decided it was "sweet. Very sweet. Too sweet," calling it a "gimmick."
For Rafael del Rey, director of the Spanish Observatory of the Wine Market, blue wine is one of several innovations in a "conservative" sector that has been losing consumers, including among the young, women and city dwellers.
Factors such as people having less time for meals, needing lighter products and a trend for slightly sweeter flavors have also had an impact.
"Many of them haven't found a wine they find attractive," he says.
That demand, he adds, is generating innovative products like blue wine, or wine with low alcohol content.
In Europe, the company has had to label Gik Blue an "alcoholic drink" as authorities have ruled it isn't wine due to its blue color.
But other countries, including the United States, allow it to be sold as wine.
"We knew from the start that Gik Blue would be a product that would polarise opinion a lot," says 25-year-old Aritz Lopez, another co-founder of Gik Live, speaking as he walks through the rolling vineyards of a winery that makes the blue wine in Zaragoza province.
But he's asked not to reveal the name of the winery, nor the village it's in, to protect it from criticism in the sector.
The company says it is on track to make 1.5 million euros in turnover this year.
And in a surefire gauge of popularity, Mac Carthy says he even found counterfeit replicas of Gik Live's blue wine in Spain -- that had been made in China.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
