How many times have you set up a meeting with a colleague, client or friend at your local coffee shop? Coffee shops offer a relatively cheap and quiet meeting place away from the monotony of the regular office. In the past years, coffee shops around the country, and the world, have stepped up and are beginning to turn their shops into work-friendly environments for today’s technically-savvy worker.
In addition to free refills to encourage lingering and secluded areas, many coffee shops are now offering free wireless internet and even rooms that you can reserve for your next meeting. Other food industries are seeing the success of the coffee shop “workplace” and have begun to offer wireless options and a more meeting-friendly environment to attract the workers. (more…)
Filed under: Hope Projects, The Coffee, fair trade | Tags: coffee, Fair Trade Coffee, Local Harvest, Smart Shopping
Beans For Hope Expands Coffee Sales to Local Harvest Grocery.
If you’re looking to find BFH coffee shopping at Walmart, Sams Club or Starbucks you should probably stop reading right now. But if you care about what’s happening outside the major corporate grocery world and looking for retailer and coffee working for better environment, healthier choices and sustainable communities visit Local Harvest and keep reading.
Filed under: Coffee Report
Will McDonalds become your next java joint?
With America facing a possible obesity epidemic, McDonalds has looked to unique ideas to keep up with other “fast” restaurants and to increase their revenues by focusing on revamping their coffee.
McCafe, the coffee shop popping up inside McDonalds’ across the country, began their first test store in Chicago in April 2001to give moms a new reason to visit McDonalds. The success of this shop spawned the opening of seven more in North Carolina and San Francisco in 2003.
Filed under: Coffee Report, fair trade | Tags: coffee, fair trade, Fair Trade Coffee
Fairtrade Price Increase Not Something To Shout About
Finally after years and years of stagnant coffee prices, the Fairtrade Labeling Organizations (FLO) have decided to evaluate the current “fair” trade price for coffee beans to a whopping $1.25 per pound of washed Arabica coffee beans starting June 2008. This is only a 5 cent increase per pound on average from the previous “fair” prices.
Although FLO is touting this increase as a major move forward in the coffee trading industry, it’s really too little, too late – less of a move forward than a realization of the need to keep up with the current economy.
First of all, the current fair trade prices aren’t exactly fair to begin with, still leaving the small coffee farmers in Guatemala and other coffee farming nations with a tiny cut of the coffee’s profits. The $1.25 per pound price paid to coffee farmers is really nothing when you consider the harsh labor associated with coffee farming and the fact that distributors are making so much more.
In addition, the fair trade concept is supposed to go beyond fair coffee prices but also toward positive changes in the farmer’s living and working conditions. However, the fair trade standards aren’t really supply the farmers and their families the additional support they need.
In order to be fair trade certified, coffee farmers must follow a strict set of standards that must be met in order to be considered fair trade. Often these credentials are hard for these small farmers to actually comply with due to their way of life and the lack of funds.
All that aside, FLO’s price increase of only 5 cents is not really significant enough to off-set inflation or the natural increase in cost of coffee production since the fair trade price was standardized in the late 1990s.
This price increase is now the set standard and will not be reviewed again until 2010! That is a long time to keep a set price!
We want to hear your thoughts, so post a comment below!
Filed under: Coffee Report, The Coffee | Tags: Beans for Hope, cafe, coffee, coffee growers, fair trade, guatemala, Guatemalan Textiles
Here’s a little more info about the coffee we are currently offering for Beans For Hope. If you have no idea where your coffee is coming from this should be pretty informative.
BFH believes in establishing a relationship between our friends and our farmers, we inform everyone we speak to just how much labor and expertise goes into growing and processing coffee. (more…)
Filed under: Coffee Report
Wilman Hits the Spoon!We have it! The coffee! It’s great to see things rolling here at BFH and we’re excited at the incredible work our friends in Guatemala have done! This coffee is incredible. Words are not enough. So here’s some photos of Wilman doing a first round of cupping.
www.beansforhope.com
Filed under: Hope Projects
La Industria School House, originally uploaded by ortegacoffeesean.
Educated Hope
BFH’s first project was to create a library for the new schoolhouse in La Industria. Construction on the modest school was finished early in 2006, however the town has no means of paying for full time teachers, let alone a library. This is a regular reality for the rural farmers and their families, not to mention the children who must walk 10 miles to another schoolhouse for classes. (more…)
Fotos de la Finca de my familia 060, originally uploaded by ortegacoffeesean.
Dr. William Ortega, founder of Beans for Hope and the Ortega Coffee Company, has returned from a two week visit to his home in La Industria Guatemala. Returning to the farm he grew up on, Wilman absorbed a great deal of information and continued to strengthen relationships within the community. This trip was the first of many to our first source of origin to continue the labor of organizing the farm, setting up service projects and collaborating with ANACAFE and Guatemalan Coffee to continue to improve the farming process.
Exciting things are in the works for Ortega Coffee Co as we try to establish the first roasting company here in the United States offering, exclusively, Guatemalan single origin roasts.
www.beansforhope.com
