Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com

According to today’s Globe and Mail (Toronto), Kraft’s Maxwell House coffee will soon be airing new Canadian television ads that may do less to promote their coffee than to assuage consumer guilt: globeandmail.com: Selling good feelings, one cup at a time. In short, the idea is for Maxwell House — who, when it comes to Third World exploitation, represents one of the (Big) four horsemen of the Fair Trade apocalypse — will promote how they’re spending only $19,000 to produce a TV ad that typically costs $245,000, passing the savings on to good causes in your name.

As we’ve mentioned before, for some reason coffee is a bizarre lightning rod for consumers with economic, social justice, and environmental causes. (Meanwhile, $29 DVD players made by cheap labor at river-polluting Chinese factories and clothing produced in Haitian and Honduran sweatshops fly off the racks at Wal-Mart with remarkable impunity.) At issue is the consumer marketing and public relations stunt of the new millennium known as corporate social responsibility, or CSR — sister to the “buy green” oxymoron.

In case you’ve been living under a pet rock, “buy green” has given us the perversely mixed messages of green shopping malls and ceramic coffee cups meant to look like environmentally unfriendly (and flavor-unfriendly) paper cups (what happened to “reduce” and “reuse”?). It’s also given us the bogus concept of carbon offsets, a falsely feel-good currency that modernizes the ad pitch “the more you buy, the more you save” by perpetuating the illusion that you can save the planet by consuming more stuff.

The failures of corporate social responsibility

While “buy green” capitalizes on environmental guilt as an unspoken part of a sales pitch, CSR — as so eloquently stated in a recent issue of The Economist — has three main objections: “that it encroaches on what should be the proper business of government; that CSR is a sideshow; and that it involves playing with other people’s money.”

In a legal system that recognizes the rights of corporations as no different from those of a living, breathing person, it’s easy to be cynical about the inherent social value of business — especially in this city. Producing useful and desirable goods and services for society at an attainable cost, employing people with paying jobs to do so, and raising living standards in the process is readily dismissed as a social good. (CSR devalues this more than it does anything else.) So we favor the overly simplistic view that all business is evil business.

At the risk of sounding like the stereotypical liberal arts college freshman/dufus who first discovers Ayn Rand and Objectivism, the problem arises when the when the business of business becomes something other than business — i.e., charitable giving. When that happens, who’s minding the store?

The failures of consumer social responsibility

Instead of telling us you’re going to donate $5 to save alcoholic chimps if we purchase your product, how about following lawful business practices to produce it, getting rid of the overhead of collecting and distributing this extra $5 a pop, charging $6 less for the product by focusing on efficiencies, and reasonably expecting me to get off of my lazy ass and put a check in the mail — funded by the savings and made out to the charity of my choice? (And if those business practices are unacceptable, don’t give the government a free pass but demand a universal law for everyone to follow — instead of supporting a system of under-the-table kickbacks from corporations.)

We can talk the talk about corporate social responsibility, but consumers hold the economic purse strings of this country. Where are consumer social responsibilities in this if, in a world defined by globalization, we effectively outsource our personal responsibility for charitable giving to corporations — some random, third party middleman — because we’re either too lazy or too cheap to do it ourselves?

When Starbucks and the Big Four coffee producers started jumping on the Fair Trade bandwagon — the very companies that were the original impetus for Fair Trade organizers — it arguably did more to discredit Fair Trade than to pump up the images of these corporations. So when the Big Four likes of Maxwell House start proudly wearing CSR badges on their chests, what will be its bigger impact on image: improvements to the Maxwell House brand, or devaluation of CSR itself?

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Tacoma’s The News Tribune published an unusually lengthy bio piece today on Stumptown Coffee Roasters owner and founder, Duane Sorenson: Coffee’s benevolent Mr. Bean | TheNewsTribune.com | Tacoma, WA. One of the big, early supporters of SF’s Ritual Coffee Roasters, Duane is quite a famous character in the industry.

Among many other things, the article mentions how he tends to recruit barista “stereotypes” in Portland (and beyond), how he provides his employees with health care and bus rides to the latest Slayer gig (though he’s an even bigger fan of AC/DC), how he works directly with coffee farmers (Direct Trade) rather than through certification middlemen such as Fair Trade, and even a little of the controversy surrounding Stumptown’s opening in Seattle last year.

You know, I don’t think I’ll be able to listen to the song “Raining Blood” quite the same way again…

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Promising news for anyone who takes the gamble of ordering prepared coffee in restaurants: the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) has recently announced a partnership with Durham, NC’s Counter Culture Coffee to develop a coffee curriculum: newsobserver.com | Coffee partnership forms. (Press release from last week.)

Unlike the closer-to-home CCA (California Culinary Academy) — which has made overtures to become the “Draw Tippy the Turtle” of cooking schools by reportedly whoring itself out to every Food TV watcher/wannabe chef with a checking account — the CIA is held in the highest esteem among America’s top culinary pros. We still feel that many notable chefs suffer a kind of hubris: that demonstrating a mastery in cuisine naturally confers an equivalent expertise with anything put into your mouth (i.e., coffee — let’s keep it clean here, folks!). The fact that the CIA is giving it serious treatment is a real step forward given how far coffee quality standards at restaurants have to improve.

Now we’ve expressed our ambivalence over some of Counter Culture’s Fair-Trade-club-to-the-head marketing, even if their heart is in the right place. (And the next simpleton who says that an argument against Fair Trade is an argument for poverty should be clubbed in the head.) We have even questioned their habit of shoehorning “coffee cupping” into some perverse wine-tasting proxy; even Peet’s has the sense to offer “Comparative Tastings” instead. But by all accounts, they sure do know their beans. Unfortunately they didn’t exist when I lived in Durham briefly back in 1991. (Time to hit my Linden Terrace crew up on my ghettro for a kilo, yo.)

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Today’s London Times published something of a book review of a new four-volume series, Eighteenth-Century Coffee-House Culture (Markman Ellis, editor): Smell the coffee - Times Online. It’s a long-winded article. But compared to the British tolerance for long-winded, academic tomes (it clocks in at a whopping 1,840 pages), the article is a walk in the park — and represents a great savings over the £350 list price (over $720).

Unfortunately, the article’s author spends too much uncritical time on the curious-but-flawed documentary, Black Gold, and its unburdened, one-dimensional representation of Fair Trade as a cure-all. After several paragraphs of this, he suddenly remembers that he’s reviewing a book and not a movie. The question he oddly seems to keep asking — of both the 1600s coffeehouse and the modern Starbucks — is whether coffeehouses are inherent goods or social evils.

More interesting are the roots of the early European coffeehouses of the 17th century as places of literary enlightenment, the exchange of ideas, and the consumption of foul, rancid coffee. But just as often, they were considered places that either sheltered drunkards in need of sobering up — or sent away the sober to the local ale-house, seeking to vanquish the choking smoke. There are tales of symbiotic relationships with the newspapers in the 1700s that soon turned contentious — curiously mirroring the role WiFi Internet access plays in cafés today.

And all the while coffee went from bad to worse: from excessively boiling “badly transported, badly kept, badly roasted and badly brewed” beans to indiscriminately cutting the beans with other roasted beans and peas, chicory, mangelwurzel, and other impurities otherwise used for livestock. In some ways, it makes the coffee quality movement of the past twenty years seem like an unlikely miracle. Think about that the next time you are served a bitter, ashy restaurant espresso filled to the rim.

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The London Times today published a business section interview of Andrea Illy, the head of IllyCaffè: The original Mr Bean - Times Online.

More of a financial/business article, it discusses Illy’s role in the world of specialty coffee — touching on Illy’s technical innovations (some of them regrettable, IMO), brand positioning, and even Mr. Illy’s belief that Fair Trade is “a marketing business” with an unsustainable system that doesn’t reward quality (Illy follows more of the Direct Trade model). And while Illy isn’t gunning to dilute themselves like Starbucks, they have significant expansion plans in mind — whether to compete with Nestlé over the coffee pod market or to expand into the high-end café market with Espressamente.

For the past few days here in Alba, Italy, I’ve been sampling a number of the notable local offerings: from Antico Caffè Calissano and Pasticceria Bar Cignetti (each of whom serve Alba’s local MoKafè), to Vincafè (and their use of Asti’s SlowFood-friendly Caffè Torrefazione Ponchione), to Alba’s installation of Casa del Caffè Vergnano 1882 (selling on-site roasting of Caffè Vergnano beans), and to the many local dining establishments that serve that home province king, Lavazza. The espresso is solid and quite good just about anywhere here. However, the best I’ve had thus far in this gourmet-food-obsessed town comes from the Gambero Rosso-honored, locals-only Ben Tivoglio Cafè that — surprise, surprise — serves Illy under heavy branding. There’s often something about Illy if it doesn’t have to leave the continent.

More for a future post…

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For the latest installments that hash and rehash the pros and cons of Fair Trade, we turn to yesterday’s Oakland Tribune and today’s International Herald Tribune.

The International Herald Tribune covered the big chains and the impact on some growers: ‘Fair trade’ certification yielding benefits for Brazilian coffee farmers - International Herald Tribune. Of particular note were comments from Geoff Watts, coffee buyer for Intelligentsia, who said that Fair Trade is best suited for commercial grade coffee rather than specialty coffee: “Fair trade markets itself as a specialty brand. However, the fair-trade model is far more suited to the commercial market, which is the Sam’s Clubs and the Wal-Marts and Kraft, Folgers and Nestlés of the world.”

Essentially, Mr. Watts — who last year famously broke Fair Trade ranks to pursue what Intelligentsia dubbed Direct Trade as a better alternative — is saying that Fair Trade makes sense if you’re buying indiscriminate, bulk quantities of lower-grade coffee. The kind of stuff they sell at Costco out of cans, buckets, or troughs.

Meanwhile, yesterday the Oakland Tribune published an article on Starbucks‘ questionable use of feel-good labeling and certifications on their specialty coffee: Inside Bay Area - The Coffee Empire. Starbucks’ Black Apron Exclusives (such as their $26-a-pound Ethiopian Sidamo) might espouse the image of charity mission when it comes to the environment and coffee growers, but in practice it’s arguably a lot different (just ask Ethiopian growers what they thought of Starbucks earlier this year).

For example, in the article the owner of an organic coffee company in Massachusetts was inspired to say, “They [Starbucks] put out cleverly crafted material that makes the consumer feel they are doing everything possible. But there is no institutional commitment. They do it to capture a market and shut up the activists.”

Meanwhile in the news from the Starbucks corporate press release machine: Starbucks Celebrates Fair Trade Month, Reinforcing Its Commitment to Supporting Coffee Farming Communities. That’ll be a double-tall, four-pump vanilla caramel macchiato — non-guilt, please.

UPDATE: Feb. 11, 2008
The UK nature & environment news site, scenta, posted commentary today about a recent article in the Guardian Unlimited that raised many of the criticisms around Fair Trade and actions they are internally trying to take to address them: Could do better.

It still seems to come down to Fair Trade being an improvement when it involves massive bulk buyers of consumable coffee. But selective, niche cafés and roasters would do better for the growers, the planet, and their consumers to look elsewhere.

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In the mixed feelings department, the Washington Business Journal recently reported on Counter Culture Coffee’s newest regional training center in D.C.: Counter Culture Coffee opens training center in Adams Morgan - Washington Business Journal:. As with Counter Culture’s other training centers, it is designed to educate industry wonks and general consumers alike on coffee flavors and Fair Trade practices.

On the upside, awareness of what makes good coffee is a very good thing. I wholly support the notion of educating more people on how to make good coffee, from bean to cup. And while Fair Trade practices are hardly secrets anymore, coffee retailers and consumers should be aware of the issues that lead to the creation of Fair Trade.

That said, Counter Culture seems intent on shoehorning the ever-popular wine analogy with coffee consumers. While this is a convenient vehicle for explaining to consumers why a roasted coffee should cost $15 a pound, it’s also very misleading. Consumers are loaded with pre-conceived notions and expectations where the wine tasting model just does not fit — whether it’s the manual skill and chemistry involved in coffee preparation, the completely unromantic ritual of coffee cupping, or the idea of food pairing.

Environmentalism and social justice: today’s marketing jingle?

Counter Culture is avidly Fair Trade at its roots, so it’s no surprise that they actively promote causes they so firmly believe in. But I have personally become further and further disenfranchised with Fair Trade. As with Communism, the devil isn’t in the concept — it is in the detail of how it is executed.

And it’s not just because growers and the environment aren’t being aided to the degree Fair Trade advocates suggest they are. The goals of certification labels such as “Fair Trade” and “organic” have literally been swallowed whole by marketing efforts — not entirely unlike the “buy green” oxymoron. Just as Michael Pollan advised “never trust a food product that makes a health claim” in his book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I’ve recently come to the rather radical conclusion of “never trust a product that makes an environmental or social justice claim”. Unfortunately, it’s gotten this bad — and it’s only going to get worse before it gets better.

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Time Out London just announced their votes for the best London area coffee bars for 2007: Time Out Eating & Drinking Awards winners - Features - Eating-and-drinking-awards-2007 - Time Out London. They named Fernandez & Welles as London’s finest this year — followed by Bullet, Flat White (pretty much Southern Hemisphere for café com leite), the Nordic Bakery, and Sacred Café.

I’ve honestly heard of none of them. Which isn’t necessarily a bad sign; it’s always better to learn something new than to be referred to the nearest Caffè Nero chain. And while Time Out hardly rates with connoisseurs, they are known for digging beyond the surface.

So their recommendations are probably worth checking out — with a few caveats. The article frequently mentions a coffee bar’s use of Fairtrade coffee, and yet that certification has no bearing on coffee quality. London-area roaster and small café chain Monmouth Coffee Company also receives multiple citations of note — and yet their none of their coffee bars made the Time Out list. And, as happens all too often with supposed coffee reviews, there are enough mentions of tarts, snacks, pastries, and sandwiches to make anyone question how much attention they paid on the actual coffee at these places.

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While the relentless drumbeat of blindly obedient Fair Trade support continues — vilifying anything that isn’t certified Fair Trade — we have yet another reason why it doesn’t exactly achieve the results consumers may be expecting. Yesterday’s National Post (Canada) reported on how the minimum prices paid to Fair Trade co-operatives have not changed in 10 years: Fair-trade coffee price unchanged after 10 years. As a person quoted in the article put it, “It’s like not taking a raise in 10 years.”

Meanwhile, alternatives such as Direct Trade are at least starting to get a little attention.

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Today’s New York Times featured an article on how the upper echelon of coffee roasters pursue the finest cup the world over: To Burundi and Beyond for Coffee’s Holy Grail - New York Times. Introducing a number of America’s celebrity roasters, including Stumptown and Intelligentsia, the article touches on some of the key tools of today’s trade: direct trade, professional coffee cuppings (no shoehorned wine-tasting metaphors allowed here), and coffee tasting competitions such as the Cup of Excellence.

Bypassing co-operative-based systems such as Fair Trade, Direct Trade (a term popularized by Intelligentsia’s buyer, Geoff Watts) is a model for how individual roasters can directly buy from farmers. The roasters help ensure living wages, sustainability, social infrastructure, and environmentally friendly practices for the growers they work with. But, unlike Fair Trade, there is a stronger incentive to create truly better quality coffee in the process. (This is precisely the sort of niche green coffee buying that Starbucks is too large to do anymore.)

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