Live-Blogging the Starbucks Annual Meeting: Starbucks Buys the Clover

We should have seen it coming with the Pike Place Roast announcement . Not only is Starbucks directing its attentions towards a super-premium coffee blend, but the newest super-premium way to brew it.

Starbucks closed the annual meeting by announcing it would be acquiring The Coffee Equipment Company, the makers of the Clover Brewing System.

What is the Clover? It's a coffee machine - for lack of a more sophisticated term - that is all the rage in the coffee community these days (check out the New York Times article from earlier this year).

Up until now the astronomically expensive machines - which provide a commercial way to produce coffee akin to what's made at home in a french press - have only been in use in only a handful of coffee shops, which charge a large premium for the brew that they make.

Coffee wonks go nuts over this machine, as the brewed coffee it creates is supposedly leaps and bounds above all else in terms of flavor. No specifics out of Starbucks in terms of when and how widely these babies will be rolled out in stores.

by Liz Gunnison