Starbucks got back to me! (My last contact with Starbucks headquarters was on 9/4/05, described at the bottom of this post)
Christine, district manager for the Starbucks by USC (Hoover and Jefferson, pictured left), emailed to clear up a few things:
Starbucks no longer features fair trade coffee as “Coffee of the Day” once a month — the initiative has “changed recently,” Christina says, to “Coffee of the Week” (very creative). Now one coffee is featured in all stores for a week — You can find out what’s brewing here.
So although the uniformity bit of it — you know, all of us sipping the exact same coffee in Starbucks clone stores, whether we live in Dekalb or Los Angeles — is rather frightening, when fair trade coffee makes the schedule, it would be served in Starbucks across the nation (maybe even world?) for a whole week! That’s like, tons of fair trade coffee!
An exciting prospect, except that Christine didn’t say how often fair trade would be featured.
She did, however, say that Starbucks has, does, and will always french press a cup of fair trade coffee upon request. And she talked to the manager at the USC Starbucks “to ensure that he coaches all of his partners” about this policy. Thanks Christine! And I’ll be checking up on that — again –
Christine also gave me a heads-up: Starbucks’ Fair Trade Blend will get a new name, “Café Esteema” (sic). I guess I should let her know that Café Estima is already avaliable, at least in the store she manages, though in her defense, the Starbucks website isn’t updated either.
In any case, she believes that “the reasoning behind the name change is because we will soon be adding more coffees to our Fair Trade Certified Coffee Line-Up. This way the “Fair Tradeâ€? will become more of a category that we will be able to add even more of a variety of Fair Trade Certified coffees for you to choose from.”
That’s pretty cool — When?
At least now I have Christine’s number, so hopefully I’ll get answers in less than 3 weeks –
**Update, 11/18/05: Christine’s been MIA since September, and her store’s still not serving fair trade coffee.
Filed in: fairtrade coffee usc losangeles starbucks california
September 24th, 2005 at 9:49 am
Hello Siel! I saw this article outlining the validity of eco-labels:
http://lifestyle.msn.com/FoodandEntertaining/KitchenEssentials/Article.aspx?cp-documentid=28299>1=6962
There is also a link at the bottom of the page to the Consumers Union guide to eco-labels.
It proved very helpful for a person who is relatively new to this cause and is thoroughly confused, frustrated and skeptical about the claims made by these companies.
September 24th, 2005 at 1:08 pm
Good for you for doing such persistent research. I’ll keep an eye out for this when I’m back in the US in a few weeks.
September 24th, 2005 at 5:46 pm
Hey Scott/Anonymous — Thanks for the link! Totally interesting — and rather daunting — I actually tried visiting the Consumer Union website, to be confronted with 137 different labels total — AHHHH! The place where we really need some more consistency, in my opinion, is the cruelty-free bit. Companies like The Body Shop make clear that their stuff doesn’t use research by other companies that test on animals — but right now, it’s really up to the consumer to do independent research on each individual company…
Sad to hear that “free-range” means pretty much nothing though. Luckily, I don’t eat chicken, and I rarely eat anything containing egg…
And BbB — Thanks for the shoutout on your blog :) You should post more — really!
September 25th, 2005 at 10:10 am
Wow, Starbucks selling Fair Trade, organic, bird-friendly, shade-grown coffee? I suppose I can stop averting my eyes every time I pass one on the way to my local family-owned Fair Trade roasted-on-the-premises coffee shop.
September 25th, 2005 at 5:54 pm
Wow! Good for you. You’ll have to give us a heads-up when it’s fair-trade week. I don’t go in to Starbuck’s all that much lately -but that week I will!
September 25th, 2005 at 7:46 pm
Christine thinks the next fair trade week will start October 25th, but I need to contact someone else to find out for sure. Will report back –
September 26th, 2005 at 11:45 pm
I just found your blog through laist.com, and have really enjoyed reading your entries.
I love the idea of fair trade coffee as much as the next Angeleno, but the problems with Starbucks fair trade coffee is that it just tastes BAD. I briefly worked for a Starbucks a couple years ago, and when we’d try to brew fair trade as our coffee of the day, we’d get regular customers complaining, and the store made a lot fewer sales because people refused to drink it.
So, until Starbucks can get some better tasting fair trade varieties, I’m sticking to Monkey & Son!
September 27th, 2005 at 8:21 pm
Well — I’m not sure Starbucks will ever make better coffee than Monkey & Son, but your comment was the starting point for my post today :) Thanks for dropping by!