In my rather biased opinion, I’d say the fair trade coffee tasting at USC was a success. When I got there around 10:30, the Starbucks staff said they’d been getting about a student a minute. Yey!
And I met Major, a Starbucks “Coffee Master,” who’d flown down from Seattle specifically for this tasting. “Oh, YOU’RE green LA girl,” Major said when I “revealed” myself a few minutes into our conversation. “Cindy says hello.” Major too’s read the blog, and thanked me for the Starbucks Challenge, for “bringing this problem to our attention.” Sweet –
My quandary: Both Cindy and Major seem like nice people, who really want Starbucks to deliver on their promises. It’s uncomfortable, sometimes, confronting such nice people with all of Starbucks’ uncool shortcomings — but then I s’pose that’s part of the job, theirs and mine…
In any case, Major quickly concurred that the emails Cindy sent out haven’t done much. That didn’t stop him, of course, from sending out one more email to the district managers in the LA area inviting them to the tasting. None had come by before I left, a lil after noon.
So what now? Major (left) said he’d work on setting up a meeting between me and some of the managers and/or district managers in the LA area to get something happening on this “break down in customer service.” Maybe a lil face to face time — with beleagured Starbucks’ CSR reps and very angry bloggers — will whip the LA stores into fair trade shape. And Major promised to have the meeting set up before the end of the month.
Wow. This sounds like action.
So I’m eagerly awaiting to hear the when and where. Though I’m concerned cuz — while this meeting may resolve issues in green LA girl’s ‘hood — breakdowns have been happening in many other places. Will all of those cities and towns need to hold their own meetings?
Lots more to come about this convo, cuz Major and I covered everything from fair trade to globalization to Starbucks’ C.A.F.E. practices. But for starters, I left the tasting a little more caffeinated, and a little more hopeful.
Then I dropped into this Starbucks (right) on San Vincente and 26th to take the challenge.
The very nice barista: We don’t have any fair trade in store now. We actually haven’t brewed that in like two years.
Me: Two years!
Barista: Yeah, I don’t know why they’re not doing it anymore. I mean, fair trade’s great, you know, cuz the money gets back to the farmers.
We nodded together in solemn agreement.
I could’ve told the barista that although Starbucks’ old “Fair Trade Blend” has been phased out, the new Cafe Estima is fair trade certified.
But that’s not my job.
Filed in: starbuckschallenge coffee csr fair-trade fairtrade starbucks losangeles california usc
It’s funny; for something to change in a big company it has to be both the desire of management and in the awareness of line people. Gripe at the line people and they shrug and blame management; get management’s ear and they shrug and blame mid-management. So, I like to come at them from both sides. It’s not my job to train them, but I certainly do enjoy explaining what I want, and how they can give it to me — especially using the Words of Power from Cindy’s email. (Rofl! Snort!) ‘Course, to each his own — and without your careful work on the guys and gals at the top, I couldn’t have my fun!
Roger
P.S. I have posted all — and will post — my challanges at SBX Fairtrade & Me, rather than my main blogs Easy Green or Observaitons
Comment by Roger, Gone Green — November 11, 2005 @ 8:50 pm
I spoke to a roaster and plantation owner recently that said fair trade had become corrupted by bureaucracy and is now worthless as a way of ensuring fair treatment of everyone involved in the industry. He monitors his plantation closely as a way of guaranteeing that everything is kosher. Unfortunately not all of us are able to take such drastic action primarily because of our financial situation, so we rely on fair trade being legitimate. To find out otherwise was a shock and made me question the authenticity of the organizations that promote this. It appears to be nothing more than a well thought out marketing campaign.
Comment by Lee — November 11, 2005 @ 11:07 pm
Lee — As you may already know from having talked to this plantation owner, coffee plantations are not eligible for fair trade certification right now — Certification’s only avaliable for co-ops.
So even though I do think that FLO, the org that does the certification, should move toward allowing plantations and indiv. farmers to get fair trade certification, I have to say I really question this plantation owner’s contention that fair trade is “worthless.” It seems, to me, that he may have a personal beef with the organization. Perhaps understandable, as his plantation, by default, isn’t allowed to get certified whether or not it is socially responsible — but I still feel that it’s a rather broad generalization, to say the least, to claim that fair trade is worthless.
Besides this one plantation owner’s word, have you had any other evidence pointing to fair trade’s worthlessness? Because at this point, I’ve talked to a great many coffee roasters and fair trade-related organizations. And none of these — even the companies that’ve opted against certification due to differences with either FLO or Transfair (the org that licences coffee roasters in the US as fair trade) — have ever said that fair trade is worthless. In fact, many are quick to point out that they have similar goals as the fair trade movement — just different ideas as to how these goals may be best achieved, which you can read more about in my Coffee Crisis series.
Honestly, if there are widespread claims that fair trade is worthless, I’d like to know. But I do need more than she-said-he-said evidence.
Comment by Siel — November 11, 2005 @ 11:26 pm
A recent article on Fair Trade in the last E Magazine, Grounds for Change
All sounds pretty worthwhile to me….
And my ongoing admiration to Green LA Girl for her bulldog tenacity w/ all this, awesome!
Comment by Anna — November 12, 2005 @ 6:08 am
oops, trying again, still new to this imbedded link thing. the article i mentioned on fair trade:
Grounds for Change
Comment by Anna — November 12, 2005 @ 6:10 am
Great job! This is really turing out well. I have to say that I like the way Starbucks has approached this thing so far. I mean if they hadn’t even responded and just ignored this it wouldn’t probably have made much difference to them. There are already many people calling them names and stuff. But they chose to positively engage on this issue. Even if action taken on their part is small, it speaks a lot about the company, don’t you think?
Comment by Transmogrifier — November 12, 2005 @ 11:29 am
Congrats on your event.
Comment by Ensie — November 12, 2005 @ 12:51 pm
Anna — Thanks for the article :) And Ensie, thanks for dropping by again :)
Transmogrifier — It’s really wonderful that both Cindy and Major took major chunks out of their days to communicate with me :) I am, however, still trying to decide whether this wonderfulness is relegated to the CSR department, or actual changes will be made in the company as a whole — Hopefully the latter!
Comment by Siel — November 12, 2005 @ 5:43 pm