Relationship Coffee: A transparent approach
“Relationship Coffee” is a term coined by Sustainable Harvest, an importer of specialty coffee from the top organic and Fair Trade coffee farms from around the world. Sustainable Harvest uses this Relationship Coffee model to essentially bridge the gap between the farmer and the world’s biggest coffee markets. The organization posted a short video on the “Relationship Coffee Fair Trade” case study (sorry I could not embed the video but you can find it here: Case Study 1 of 2, Case Study 2 of 2).
Companies like Starbucks, Kraft Foods (Maxwell House Coffee), and Procter & Gamble (Folgers) should use an approach like Relationship Coffee because it will enable the best coffee farms to improve their productivity while improving the economic conditions of their own environment.
To put things in perspective, Starbucks has a market cap currently valued at $22.76 billion compared to Ethiopia’s GDP of $71.63 billion (2006 Est., using purchasing power parity). This makes it kinda hard to believe that a company would refuse to go with a licensing agreement with one of the poorest nations in the world… I guess in the end it’s all about making investors happy…
