Buena Vista Roastery
Coffee and the MountainsFair Trade and a Hill of Beans
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.
SCAA Sustainability Committee
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.
Rain
Buena Vista has been seeing some much welcome rain. The rain is increasing our humidity to 40% or so in the mornings, which then drops again to 24% by noon. Much different than the Midwest. The first cutting of alfalfa has happened, the river rose again last night via runoff, the blue gramma grass is putting up seed heads, and fire danger, while high, is tempered.
An article on the Bloomberg report talks about the recent rain in India and the effect on coffee yield. Our current Indian coffee is the Indian Monsooned Malabar. The Indian Monsooned Malabar, named for the process it undergoes that simulates its historic journey around Cape Hope and on to England, is a dark, buttery and earthy coffee that is very underappreciated. We expect samples for some new crop next week, which, once we select the best, we will optimize flavor and richness and soon feature.
Greening
We at the Roastery think of ourselves as fairly ‘green’ when it comes to our practices and philosophies. Green will mean different things to different people. On someone’s scale we will be neon, on someone else’s, a dull sage. In any case, there is always room for improvement in my eyes, and through the balancing juggernaut of day-to-day business, we can tackle evermore environmentally, socially and economically sound initiatives. We have declared some carbon reduction initiatives for the present year and are monitoring to check how well we are achieving these. One thing we are in the midst of is working with BBI International and their Green Business certification. An energy audit will commence sometime soon, we hope, and we will have a starting basis from which to work. We will post progress with our initiatives as it happens overtime.
Coffee Beats Soft Drinks
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.
A New Cafe in Buena Vista
ChannelBV just posted a news release about the new Global Cafe opening this weekend in Buena Vista. It’s always exciting to have a spat of entrepreneurship in town. The owners are also working on building a brownstone complex of some sort just off Main Street. Even with economic downturn in the country, this town is becoming more and more lively with quite a few people sticking their necks out to encourage smart growth and attentive development. Chef Eddie Sandoval has turned the Evergreen Cafe into the Asian Palate in the evenings, complete with Sushi on Wednesday. The Orpheum Lofts are incipient – a multimillion dollar mixed use project on E Main Street. Next weekend is the grand opening of True Value’s new 20,000 square foot building. Of course, last year we saw the arrival of Mother’s Bistro and more recently Real Subs and Salads. The list goes on and on. If you are in town, stop in the Buena Vista Roastery on E Main and ask about what’s happening. And check out the Global Cafe, just across from K’s Dairy Delight.A
Starbuck’s closing
A blurb in Fortune talks about Starbuck’s closing hundreds of stores, Starbuck’s has a Bitter Plan. It’s interesting to watch a transition away from the huge conglomerate into something less huge, both in terms of the drinks offered and the taste of an espresso.
Organic Ethiopian Yirgacheffe
We’ve found a great Ethiopian. It’s smooth with a medium acidity, medium body and an apricot finish. It’s very complex, from the mesmerizing aroma through the final drop. It’s also certified organic.
Of interest in particular is the country’s new approach to coffee: Ethiopia has developed it’s own national label, as noted in the November 9, 2007 CS Monitor article,
Ethiopia recently shook up the industry with a new tactic: trademarking its specialty coffees. Overcoming resistance to the idea from distributors – notably Starbucks – the country is hoping to empower its coffee industry to earn an estimated $88 million more per year, according to Oxfam America. The move could inspire producers of other commodities throughout Africa to harness branding and capture more value from the goods they sell to consumers in rich countries.
The K Cup Phenomenon
Does anyone use K Cups for their morning coffee? My father in law now uses them, and they are available on-line. You can buy coffee from a few larger roasters, as well as teas and cocoas. The way it works – take what looks like a large creamer container from the diner down the street, only it’s filled with your drink, and costs about $0.55 each. Stick the ‘creamer’ in the front of the brewer. A spear pierces the top and bottom to create two holes. Water passes through, steeping the coffee and fills your mug. Viola, a hot cup of coffee. The only clean up is tossing that little plastic creamer container into the waste bucket. With friends over, just use a few more K-Cups. You never have to make another pot of coffee.
It’s a heck of a marketing campaign – you have to use the Keurig specially-designed K-Cup brewer. They’ve got the lock on the $200 piece of equipment that anyone who wants this luxury item has to buy. Plus, any roaster who wants in on the game needs to invest the capital in a K-Cup packager. I don’t know how much those cost, but imagine it’s several thousand. It also takes any roaster out of being a specialty coffee roaster, in my opinion, which is not for us at the Buena Vista Roastery.
Brewing a K-Cup is extremely easy with little clean up. Still, there seem to be too many health and environmental concerns for us. Besides I enjoy watching our spent grounds turn to compost. But it appeals to a great number of people and I understand the allure, especially as we all are running around from place to place. As Adam Smith said, when demand is there, the supply will follow. There is also demand for the small batch, hand roasted coffee by people in touch with the nuances of the bean as it roasts. I’ll try a K-cup when I can, and in the meantime I’ll ask my father in law about how the butteriness in his K-Cup Sumatra compares with the body and sweet finish in ours.
Scratching Biofuels with Coffee
The Washington Post has an interesting op-ed this morning, by Vinod Khosla. You might need to be signed up with the Post to read the whole article. In his piece entitled, “All Biofuels Are Not the Same”, he answers a Wall Street Journal critique of his advocacy of subsidies for food-based ethanol. He says,
Cellulosic biofuels offer a chance to have an environmentally meaningful impact on petroleum use while benefiting farmers, entrepreneurs and consumers…biodiesel from food oils such as soybean or palm oil has traditionally created environmental negatives. But corn ethanol has been a stepping stone to cellulosic ethanol, a preferred alternative that is likely to achieve unsubsidized market competitiveness with oil within a few years.
His arguments seem sound from a certain perspective, yet some may question whether they get to the root of the issue and may be rearranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic.
