Monday, April 16, 2007

Shocked and Appalled


I'm completely dumbfounded. I don't get it. One would assume that if you're going to open a coffee shop, you'd know a little about coffee...at the very least you would drink it every now and then right? To my utter dismay, while doing research on local San Diego coffee shops, I came across an owner who had no idea if her coffee was organic or fair trade (or what fair trade really meant). In a previous post, "The Uneducation of Coffee Baristas" I wrote about how many baristas today have very little to no knowledge about the term fair trade. But an owner? She went on to say she didn't even like coffee! She bought her coffee from three different local roasters--I asked her if anyone services her equipment and she said she had no idea! How do you run a business and know nothing about your product?

This was definitely the exception, for the most part the owners I've spoken with have been knowledgeable and friendly. So please people, for the love of coffee, support your local coffee shops that offer fair trade coffees, and at the one's that don't--keep asking for fair trade, keep getting the funny looks from baristas, and soon enough they'll catch on.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just face it RG, we're "A+" people living in a "C+" world...;)

Anonymous said...

Okay...so this does bother me. Do you know of any local coffee shops that actually have owner whose passion is coffee, use fair trade intentionally, etc? If you've already posted this would you redirect me?

Discovery Street said...

Absolutely...on my main page on the right you can see a list of sustainable coffee companies--it is not complete, but it is somewhere to start.