Beyond the amazing celebrity-watching opportunities — Minnie Driver and Nicole Richie were there once when I was there — Urth Caffe gives angelenos yummy organic coffee and healthy vegetarian food.
But why isn’t the company fair trade certified? I wondered, and asked Shallom of Urth Caffe this, via email. His first reply:
We work directly with the 8 small farms that we buy our coffees from. Each farm is certified organic, and each is fair traded at an extremely high premium, and all are shade grown with sustainable agriculture…. 4 of the farms have received fair trade certificates, and 4 have received shade grown certificates as well as being certified organic.
And he added in a later email:
We work directly with our farmers, and allow them to claim the price that they want for their crop – this price ranges from $2.00 to $10.00 per pound – more than 3 times the market rate for coffee in their country.
Sounds fucking great to me. But why don’t Urth’s coffees have the fair trade certified sticker?
First Shallom said that certification the company to contribute money from ALL sales of coffee, even the un-certified stuff.
Huh? Feeling skeptical, I double checked this with TransFair, then wrote back saying that simply wasn’t true.
Shallom didn’t address this discrepancy, but wrote: “For me the certification does not mean much because I deal directly with my farmers – and they choose the price that they decide is fair…. I would rather spend more money on farmers than marketing or consumer awareness.”
Wait, but what about consumer involvement? I asked. At which point Shallom got peeved, and wrote “Any one who does not believe what we describe as our practices does not have to buy from Urth.”
Of course, Urth also promotes its fair labor practices on its website and in its brochures. I’m inclined to believe them. But my point was that — with biggies like Starbucks claiming, falsely, that ALL their coffee’s fairly traded — it’s tough for the consumers to tell the difference.
Still, I’m very touched that he wrote back personal, invested emails to a lone customer like me. And despite his inaccuracies about fair trade certification, at least he was honest about his reasons. Starbucks trains its baristas to say that their coffee — although fair trade (a lie) — isn’t certified because the farms can’t afford the fees — which is just silly, considering how much money Starbucks has to fix that situation, were it true. In contrast, Shallom clearly shows the choice not to certify IS a company choice — and honestly outlines the reasons why.
I’ve been going to Urth since high school, and don’t plan to stop anytime soon. The food’s yummy, the coffee’s superb, and — except during rush hours — the service is friendly. But I was wondering — what do you readers think of companies that seem to practice fair trade, yet choose not to get certified — where the customer has to take the company at its word for its fair labor practices?
Urth Caffe. 3 locations: West Hollywood. 8565 Melrose Ave. 310.659.0628. Beverly Hills. 267 S. Beverly Drive. 310.205.9311. Santa Monica. 2327 Main Street. 310.314.7040.
Certified is good; certainly it is one way to avoid big corporate misrepresentations, spin and green washing IF the cert is a good and believable one. (Thus the recent griping that the Bush Admin. may relax the standards for food “certified” organic to include some decidedly non-organic products. And in the end, you can choose to believe international certifiers or the local business.)
Certified is bad if it limits the way in which socially responsible consumers can choose not to be completely exploitative in their consumption, even accidentally. (Excluding certain farms that most would see as good setups for all, because they do not fit a narrow certification criteria.) Or, if like big operations of all sorts, the cert looses focus or lower standards without a lot of publicity.
Because the FT label is limited in its scope, I see it as desirable but not the only way to get at a more ethical consumer experience. Companies that are not living up to their claims know that consumers that care about such issues will leave them in double-droves if they cheat lie or fudge; witness SBX extraordinary efforts to gain creditability with a handful o’ bloggers.
Wouldn’t it be nice if part of the ethics of a local business was that one could work with and believe its proprietors? This is one of the values of acting locally — in theory, local proprietors have more to loose than trans-regional companies if they get caught out.
Comment by Roger, Gone Green — December 27, 2005 @ 3:27 am
This reminds me of the problem I have where I live with grocery shopping. There are two union stores, but I don’t like shopping at either. The layout and product availability at one are poor and the prices at the other are out of my league. So I shop at Giant, where employees have assured me that they are treated well. And I’ve really grilled some of them. And there is another store in town, owned locally, that treats their employees super-well. The owner is famous for being fair to them. Those prices are also out of my league.
So do I happily buy at the non-union places because right now they are choosing not to exploit their employees or do I shop at the union stores which have the protection of the union if the owners ever decide that being fair isn’t something they’re interested in?
Like your question, this is rhetorical. I’m staying at Giant – unless I hear that they’ve committed some unpardonable sin. I’m not sure how I’d find that out though …
Comment by eRobin — December 27, 2005 @ 7:08 am
Roger — It was more than a handful! Okay, so perhaps only a handful were seriously committed like you and I, but it does take a special kind of person to use human armpower to pulverize fair trade organic coffee beans, then consider burning recycled grocery bags to boil water for the French press…
Anyway — The challenge page alone was getting close to 3000 individual visitors a day when the challenge was in full swing — and that’s just for my site — I’m not sure how many City Hippy got. And many many people have taken the challenge without reporting the results… The challenge had the benefit of attracting not just the people interested in fair trade coffee, but also the legions of people who have an axe to grind against Starbucks for various other reasons too. Down with uniculture! Down with corporatization! Down with globalization! :)
And even for the people who didn’t take the challenge themselves, but read or heard about it — Hopefully these fair trade issues — and corporate accountability issues — will be of concern in their future decisionmaking :)
Ok — Done tooting my own horn now :) (It was really all City Hippy’s idea…)
Comment by Siel — December 27, 2005 @ 5:04 pm
I think I’ve said before, certification isn’t all where it is at for me and I am very inclined to take a small, independent vendor’s word for their fair trade practices. There are all manner of reasons why an otherwise ethical vendor would avoid certification and some of them are just stupid, bureaucratic nonsense on the part of TransFair, etc.
I think one can get so hung up on the details, that it’s possible to miss all the shades of grey in between. There is no reason for Starbucks not to become more FT friendly, both in offering the existent blend more reliably and in buying more (verifiable) FT beans in general. A small cafe like Urth or Groundworks might have reasons for not carrying coffee with the sticker, but might still be doing their part for FT in general. It might not really be an option for them to get the sticker, but they might still be paying farmers fairly. Plus, the restaurant (Urth) screams about the issue all over the menu, so you can’t help but see that it’s something worth thinking about when you go in. You feel good about getting something ethical there because the menu talks about ethics, maybe it spurs the consumer to go looking for more ethical beans, to look into the issue at all. That? That’s good. That’s the point, right? I guess what I’m saying and have always said, is that the sticker is not the only benchmark for fairly traded coffee, tea and chocolate. The consumer must have others and vendors must be allowed to trade within those shades of grey. The FT folks at Transfair have to stop being so damn black and white, and relax their rules a little about individual farmers, so those “grey” beans can get certified. Then, et voila, sticker. Or something.
Plus, Urth’s coffee is SO good, best I’ve ever had at a restaurant, and they put leaves on the top of my lattes.
Comment by Rainy — December 28, 2005 @ 11:02 am
I really don’t know what to say…except that it’s true it’s tough to know best practices are really being applied in any companies or anything. I do support you and many green people like you because you do take the time to do a lot homeworks and research, but still there are many little ‘alleys’ you can’t get to or hard to get to in order to get the whole truth nothing but the truth.
I feel confused sometimes when I ask a few businesses I like (esp. after they start telling how much they care about people environment etc) why they don’t certified or publize about their best practices or FT concept. A few for example answered that they’re also against ‘institution’ or Fair Trade bureaucracy etc. and that they don’t want to go that route to promote what’s already best practices for themselves and only they know better. They feel good about what they’re doing and they don’t seem to want to go ‘out of their way’ to get noticed. I can’t disagree with them…sometimes I don’t know what else to suggest or to say.
I know what I support consciously…everything good for humanity, environment, for our world basically…but there are many shades of grey like Rainy said. How are we going to deal with this? How are we going to decide?
Labels is all good that’s for sure…I’m all for that. But my concerns are all in the shades of grey…There are responsible businesses out there..I read about them and I heard about them, and they understand that they’re the ones who can control their own behaviours so-to-speak. When they do best practices or at least really do care about many things and that makes them feel very good about themselves (people who work for them or costumers are happy), I can’t say that they have not done their parts. Do they really have to go farther than that? to get noticed? to get approval? of who? I can’t blame them for feeling good and confident about what the ‘right’ things they alredy do.
Urgh..it’s true, who to judge? there are many ways to do the ‘right’ things…I dont know I’m just writing here…in the morning hours in France :-) But lying or falsifying info is not right for sure.
Cheers everyone and Happy New Year again…
Comment by Maya — December 28, 2005 @ 11:24 pm
Do they really put leaves on their lattes? I’ll have to try that next time!
Comment by Siel — December 29, 2005 @ 6:20 pm