why Intelligentsia doesn't carry fair trade coffee
You used to carry Fair Trade coffee, why don't you anymore?
We believe that the Fair Trade model is not really designed for a company like ours. It was created to try to balance trade inequities in the commodity business and to discourage traders of commercial or entry-level Specialty Coffee from under-paying and exploiting cooperatives. This was specifically designed to monitor the international financial transactions between the exporting cooperative and the importer. In recent years it has also been used to enforce labeling practices of roasters. Generally speaking, these coffees have historically been purchased under conditions of extreme anonymity—no traceability, no accountability. We support the existence of Fair Trade and believe that it has had a net-positive effect on coffee trade.
We do not, however, buy commodity coffee; we buy boutique coffees of the very highest quality, and we travel and work very closely with the growers themselves. We spend days at a time with them, we sleep in their houses, and we are engaged in a continuous dialogue with them about how to grow together and benefit. Experience has shown us that we can achieve better results through our own efforts and attain a higher level of transparency than we could by simply purchasing Fair Trade coffees. Lastly, it is important to us that the producer gets maximum return for their work. Many of our coffees come from cooperatives that are Fair Trade certified, and we could easily make them Fair Trade coffees. If we did so, Intelligentsia would pay a commission to Fair Trade for the use of the Fair Trade logo. Our belief is that the money makes a bigger and more positive difference when it goes directly into the hand of the producer. Instead of buying the right to use a label we just give the money to the grower.
We will continue to buy coffee from Fair Trade certified cooperatives, but in these instances Intelligentsia is choosing not to pay for the marketing rights of Trans Fair and FLO.
