We have upgraded our blogging capability. This means that we had to get a new blog address. All of the posts here are on it already, and future posts will be put there. Thank you: www.bvroasteryblog.com.

Alibaba reports that people are spending less at the cafes. We touched on this earlier this year talking about the closure of 600 Starbucks. Add to it the credit crunch and global economic crisis, and it all makes a lot of sense. There is an increase in the sales of coffee brewers and associated gadgets. I’ve seen espresso machines, frothers, ibricks and other equipment showing up in friends’ homes. No worries because they still know where to buy great coffee, just one that’s brewed at home.

Here’s a link to the Exhibit Darfur opening in Denver. While we did supply Fair Trade coffee for the two months it showed at the Ditto Gallery, the importance of the video and the Exhibit is to raise awareness of the tragedy going on in Darfur. We have made a point as the BV Roastery to support the amazing people working to stop the genocide and slavery. Please take a few moments to watch remarks at the Opening.

Exhibit Darfur

I send a thanks out to Green Eco Services for their listing of Bongo Billy’s Coffees in their post about Fair Trade coffee as a green coffee suppliers. We are working hard to provide the most socially and environmentally responsible coffees and to people. We were just certified as a Green Business and have a growing list of projects to undertake locally to support our community, some of which are in our 2008 list. So, thanks for the recognition.

Green Mountain Roasters appears to be growing. The roaster out of New England bought up Tully’s out of Seattle. At least, it bought the wholesale arm of things, as well as the brand. The roasting facility is to be leased, and the brand will stay as Tully’s. I have not frequented a Tully’s, but see in the Seattle Times article that they are scattered all over the US and Japan. The article simply points out that there is a sale going on for bookoo dollars and that everyone of its 70 employees will remain employed. From my seat here in the mountains of Colorado, I am baffled over the corporate model and how a company can grow to the size of being worth $40.3 million.

I start thinking about the expansion and the market share of these companies. Green Mountain is in 5000 supermarkets. Tully’s currently has 500 retail stores. Let’s say one of those retail stores sells 100 pounds of coffee in a week – that comes to over 2.5 million pounds of coffee in a year just for the retail stores. Now, I’m making the number 100 up, assuming it’s a moderately busy place. I have no idea how many pounds a grocer sells in a week. Just 50 adds 13 million more pounds. Then, there are the retail stores that are Green Mountain. That’s 15-20 million pounds of coffee  -from just as many coffee trees- traveling around the country and overseas, green beans arriving on boat on the coasts, being roasted, then shipped on FedEx and UPS to the various places. I’ll need to research some of the carbon footprint associated.

The distribution arm of this company must be enormous, as must be the marketing budgets. I start to stagger at the implications, and at the potential markets share that can be acquired by small roasters like us, the Buena Vista Roastery. Annually, we roast beans that come from 30,000 coffee trees from various nations, mostly organic, what we can find as Fair Trade, and the rest conventionally grown. The five of us take care of servicing equipment, marketing, point of sale items, customer service, roasting, bagging, product quality, etc. We are stuffed into a space much too small for our expanding market, and have been using the same Diedrich roaster for more than 14 years. It works like a charm. We also visit and revisit our holisticgoal, address concerns and potential new clients as a company and work to monitor our progress to live according to our beliefs. Knowing how much work it takes to represent who we are at our core to our community, I wonder how the 800 pound gorilla can do it.

In our market research, we see people evermore supporting local and small companies that are socially conscious and community aware. The Bongo Billy’s Salida Cafe has already been on the forefront of this thinking and will soon be serving only 100% Organic and fair trade, shade grown, rainforest alliance espresso. It’s local, independently owned and operated, and very community minded. The carbon footprint for getting the beans where they need to go is about as small as you can get for the industry.

Anyway, jus tsome pontificating this morning as I read about yet another business struggling to stay afloat in our current economic situation. And that company being consumed by the larger fish. It certainly brings up a lot of questions, and many more curiosities that give me pause. There’s a little Darwinism going on an a corporate level, with niches open for us – the Galapagos finches – and global catastrophe hitting the farther-reaching businesses those that are more affected by density independent factors, such as a flailing economy. My two cents this morning…

After a month hiatus, we are back on the blog. Thank you for the patience. We have been pulling together a few things here at the roastery, including hiring a new roaster, Stacy Cowan, to help with our increasing demand. We have also launched our Coffees for a Cause program, and helped coordinate two additional philanthropic activities. The Coffees for a Cause program donates 10% of the purchase price to one of six causes, each associated with their own blend/coffee. The two other activities we are aligned with are first, 10 Mountains – 10 Years, finding a cure to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, and second, Exhibit Darfur, bringing awareness to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. Please help us support these efforts.

The Christian Science Monitor recently published a portion of an essay on Fair Trade entitled, “Fair-trade coffee: not worth a hill of beans.” Granted, this reads like an opinion paper without numbers and statistics to buttress the arguments, but the arguments seem worthy of further investigation. It’s more perspective to balance in the popular struggle to be certified or not to be certified, both supplying goods or demanding goods. I for one appreciate having people question what we have accepted as matter of fact.

I am happy to say that I have been selected to serve on the SCAA Sustainability Committee for the next couple of years. A group of us from the coffee industry will work to progress efforts of sustainability – working with producers, suppliers, certifiers, roasters, retailers, etc. I am unsure who else is recently appointed to the committee, but know the previous and current members were a respected and thoughtful group. It will be an interesting experience and a great opportunity to help fashion or influence policy for the industry.

Here’s some promising news for our industry, noting that coffee is rejuvenating and has overtaken soft drinks for the first time. It looks like home brewing is en vogue as opposed to a double dry cappuccino from the local cafe. An additional promising blurb states,

“The specialty coffee industry is at the forefront of offering ethical, eco-friendly products. Although this is a niche market, it is rapidly touching mainstream,” notes Tatjana Meerman, Publisher of Packaged Facts. “For example, in April 2008, Wal-Mart launched a line of six premium packaged ground coffees that are either Fair Trade Certified, USDA Certified Organic, or Rainforest Alliance Certified.”

There is a demand by the consumer for these products. There are a host of producers who may not be able to afford certification, such as the Rancho San Francisco in Mexico, but still follow the organic practices and whose coffee cups very well. I send a tribute out to Bongo Billy’s Founder Bill Mehaffey, who was one of the first organic and fair trade roasters in Colorado.