Seattle’s Best Coffee is on the lookout for undiscovered talents in the coffee industry. The Starbucks‘ owned company has teamed up with celebrity chef Jeff Mauro to launched a cost-to-coast search for the most extravagant and imaginative coffee drink. The Red Cup Showdown competition has become part of the state fears, which will be travelling across the US this summer—the new contest, fronted by the chief himself, will stop at five locations. Finally, the grand winner will be determined, who will be handed$10,000 and get the chance to have their coffee drink sold Seattle’s Best Coffee cafés across the country.

Global coffee chain Starbucks added two new elements to its rich business picture on Monday, March 19, both of which refer to the company’s affiliates. Yesterday, Seattle’s Best Coffee opened its first drive-thru concept café to offer a range of items including coffee beverages, sandwiches freshly-baked food and snacks to commuters in Northlake, Ill, the suburban Chicago neighborhood, almost round the clock 24/7. The city became the first location where the new concept venue with an easy-to-navigate menu board design and straightforward pricing was opened, and it will serve as “a learning lab for the brand as it evolves its retail presence to meet the growing demand for premium coffee on-the-go,” writes the press release.

While Target is returning its ‘Christmas Chump’ with a bunch of Black Friday tips and other companies and retailers are offering new great deals over the period of pre-Christmas sales, Seattle’s Best Coffee is supporting employees who have to be at their working places almost 24/7 these days, especially shop staff and delivery men. The brand is inviting retail people along with other employees at work on Black Friday, like police, fire and medical workers, to order a free coffee sample on its Facebook page to get extra energy during the hot shopping season, which this year starts on November 25.

People who do good to their communities must be provided with great coffee that can help these activists ‘recharge the batteries.’ In late March, Seattle’s Best Coffee, which recognizes the importance of providing volunteers with high-quality coffee, introduced the Brew-lanthropy Project, allowing their fans to nominate and choose the recipient of the second-ever Brew-lanthropy Award for volunteers (the first one was named at the launch of the program—it was the Blackstone Bicycle Works nonprofit). The public voting on Facebook ended on May 18, and yesterday the brand announced the winner: it is the faculty of Greene County Middle School in Snow Hill, NC, which got the most votes and so will recieve support from the brand.

Coffee makes you feel full of energy, humor does the same. Basing on this fact, Starbucks-owned Seattle’s Best Coffee is kicking off a unique project dubbed ‘Declare Your Level Show’ on Facebook to promote The Level System of coffee blends, introduced in late 2010, and engage the users in creating comedy content together with celebrated improv troupe Second City. The project, which will be launched on April 13 at 1 p.m. Eastern, will see twenty-one trope’s actors and five directors improvising live using the content provided by the audience.

To continue the philanthropic legacy of parent company Starbucks, Seattle’s Best Coffee is giving back to communities nationwide with the launch of the Brew-lanthropy Project. Every day, volunteers across the US do remarkably good work while drinking really bad coffee—and the new initiative is kicked off to address this problem. Seattle’s Best will award nonprofit organizations with a break room makeover, free coffee for a year, $5,000 to continue to brew more good and a chance to tell their story.

Seattle’s Best Coffee®, part of Starbucks Corporation, today announced a radically simplified packaged coffee line designed to change the conventions of the coffee category. The Seattle’s Best Coffee ‘Level’ System delivers great tasting, premium coffee with an expanded blend offering in conjunction with an innovative and bold new packaging concept. The Level System’s unique array of numbers and vivid colors tell consumers exactly what they want to know: which type of coffee fits their taste profile. Seattle’s Best Coffee is the first brand in the coffee category to offer this unique approach, which will begin hitting grocery and retail store shelves in December 2010.