I heart Lore at USC Hospitality Services! Within a day of my voicemail — asking what’s happened with switching the Starbucks coffee served on campus to the fair trade Cafe Estima blend — she called me back.
Apparently, they’ve had some problems with getting the shipment of Cafe Estima in. So Lore’s now put Estima on special order, meaning it should be brewing in 7-10 days. Yey!
For a while, the affected coffee outlets’ll be brewing the house blend along with the fair trade blend. As long as students seem to like the fair trade coffee at least as much as the house stuff, all outlets will then switch over to only brewing the fair trade blend! Plus, Hospitality Services is gonna try to switch out the Catering Services coffee to Cafe Estima — provided that it “keeps” okay for at least an hour post-brewing.
This, of course, just goes for the regular drip coffee. Starbucks offers no espresso roast beans for the specialty drinks — nor does it offer a satisfactory fair trade decaf blend. Seriously, the stuff’s not yum. Trying to switch to it might create an anti fair trade riot.
Will check back in on Cafe 84 @ USC in a couple weeks –
February 11th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
starbucks doens’t have a decaf fair trade coffee at all as far as i know? does it?
i don’t know of any reason why the estima wouldn’t keep as well as house blend for an hour. that’s how long we keep it in the retail stores.
February 11th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
Starbucks doesn’t have decaf fair trade coffee in stores, but offers it to “foodservice accounts,” like Universities (prolly cuz they don’t wanna lose the student market).
Basically, univs. can get 3 different blends: Cafe Estima, the old Fair Trade Blend, and a decaf Fair Trade Blend. Estima’s drinkable, the other stuff, not so much.
Of course, Starbucks will claim in its press releases that it offers SIX different fair trade certified products to universities — meaning those 3 blends, in different-sized packaging :P
February 13th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
Awesome response from Lore. Starbucks’ pronouncing they offer six fair trade certified products is funny and ridiculous. If they have to rely on “Hey, it’s *technically* kinda accurate” then something isn’t really honest. It’s at best “truthy”.