“The powers of a man’s mind are directly proportional to the quantity of coffee he drinks.” – Sir James MacKintosh (1765-1862) If you’ve been hearing all of the fuss lately about Fair Trade Coffee you are not alone. Lately there has been a challenge of sorts – you could call it grassroots – to see if Starbucks is really living up to its standard. That standard is that they’ll make a pot of Fair Trade coffee on request. If you’re not familiar with the term Fair Trade, let me explain. It’s basically a worldwide effort to fairly compensate coffee growers by ensuring a higher minimum price is paid per pound of coffee than your typical load. I think right now 20% of all coffee sold is Fair Trade. Back to that challenge… So people have been going to different Starbucks stores and asking for a cup of Fair Trade coffee just to see what happens. They have seen mixed results however it appears most of the places do have it. That’s cool. Here’s where I think this whole approach is wrong: It implies that Starbucks is in the wrong and that they’re trying to get away with something. I doubt that is true. In all reality they’re probably trying very hard to compensate coffee growers fairly. Why must Starbucks be guilty until proven innocent?
green LA girl 😮 C’mon now, I’m not sayin’ Starbucks is guilty until proven innocent: “When the survey has gathered enough feedback we’ll get in touch with Starbucks and find out what their response is and how they intend to solve the problem, if any. If there’s no problem, then Starbucks gets tons of good free publicity.” Of course, Starbucks has already admitted that they’ve messed up… 0 Reply October 25, 2005
Chris Tingom Wow! I got a response. Thanks for visiting us in the wild west. So yeah, I guess I was a little harsh. The thing is that I constantly see these big companies forced to defend themselves against silly claims. While this isn’t a silly claim, it’s just one more thing and a lot of times these efforts don’t have good intentions. But I think you have good intentions. So sorry for making a fuss and here’s to some good fair trade coffee. Thanks. 0 Reply October 25, 2005
green LA girl With great size comes great responsibility 😉 Especially for big corps 🙂 Seriously — join in! Take the challenge 🙂 0 Reply October 26, 2005
