Meantime, an unexpected economic side effect from Katrina... coffee prices could rise. Warehouses in New Orleans store on the order of a hundred million pounds of coffee beans, about a sixth of the nation's coffee storage capacity, because a lot of coffee from Latin America comes up through the Gulf. As of right now, industry reps have no way of knowing whether those supplies are damaged. Aerial footage doesn't show a lot of external damage to the warehouses, but if they were flooded, some or a lot of the coffee could be unusable.
I'm very fond of Cafe du Monde's Coffee with Chicory (just made some this weekend) and certainly hope it will remain available. This is of course not a high priority compared to so many other things. It's just one more ripple.
