Responsibly-sourced coffee and food cafe idea
Hey everyone. Who's in for a food cafe on coffee in early October, as one of our first events following Freshers' week. (Or, would it be better in November, as we have a GIAG in October- perhaps it doesn't matter to have two events in one month).
The context is, there's this really interesting social enterprise in Sheffield called Twin Cafe, who got in touch with us to learn about our coop, how we work, and how we engage with volunteers. This is what they say about themselves "We set up direct trade links between twinned cities. We pay our farmers a fair price and then use our profits to fund amazing projects in our twinned cities"- you can read more here... http://www.twincafe.org/index.php
They are keen to come and talk to us and do a tasting session. We could then decide whether or not to stock their coffee, and whether or not to replace any of our other coffees (or choose to keep any or all of them all so we maintain a choice between 'grown by women' (Equal Exchange), grown and sold by a social movement (zapatista), roasted in Leeds (North Star), and coming from an integrated social project (Twin)).
Personally I think we have a particular responsibility to make ethical choices about cash crops with colonial origins such as tea, coffee and chocolate. We've made big steps with chocolate and tea and we could do a conscious one for coffee as well.
We could actually choose to make this a food cafe session all about cash crops which we're addicted to, and bring in tea and Kallari chocolate to the session as well and discuss how we can fuel our habits as responsibly as possible! I'm getting more and more excited about this the more I write so I better throw it out for discussion before I go on toooo much!
Andrea Vidal Durà Mon 22 Jun 2015 7:43AM
I have been looking at their website. Looks amazing and very well design! They seem to meet all our ethics. I will be very happy to discuss this in a HIGH-Caffeine Food Cafe!
Jenny Scattergood · Sun 21 Jun 2015 1:04PM
Brilliant as you say there'd be plenty to discuss!