White Paper Coffee Cup Culture

There was a time when virtually every coffee cup in hand was from Starbucks. The gap between Starbucks locations is shrinking, but so is their patronage. Starbucks is something for the suburbs, where people have big families and drive big cars. For them, there is no urge to try a new coffee place because there is not enough time, too many options, and really, why bother? 

Totting a white coffee cup is much more indie and appeals to the downtown crowd who is younger, poorer and happy to find a community coffee stop en route to work. We are at the ground level, experiencing the city by its neighbourhoods, exhibits, parks and free movies in the park. We don’t look into the city from a traffic jam on the Gardnier while sipping our brew, we talk to strangers and smile at dogs and experience the city as a part of it. This sense of inclusion is what keeps the coffee shops thriving and the reward for helping your community to develop in your picture is what keeps you coming back. 

Fair trade may not be our daily mantra, but we appreciate it and choose it when the option is given. Sometimes the beans are fair trade, roasted locally and sometimes in the evening the coffee shop turns into a screening room for emerging artists. The main attraction is that the white cup implies sustainability and community. 

There is likely only a handful of employees and you know all of them by name and together you scoff at triple mocha swirl type drinks that barely resemble coffee at all and are marketed to teens who are lured in by sugar. Most indie coffee places have raw cane sugar or setiva - a subtle hint that the place is about the coffee and culture and not about addiction to caffeine and sugar. 

The white cup isn’t just full of coffee, it’s full of hope. The independent coffee shop owners of this city didn’t meet and collectively decide to use non-branded white cups (sometimes with a stamp of the logo), but the unified preference goes with the territory. These are people who oppose mass marketing, who don’t want to expand and who care about the customer more than the profit. 

The white paper coffee cup has become a subtle clue that the carrier may be a hipster. With many definitions ranging from snob to stylish, the main gist of ‘hipster’, I believe, is an awareness (perhaps over awareness) of and connection to the independent music, art, film, fashion, and/or coffee culture scene.

These shops choose to remain independent and small scale and that is what makes them attractive. Owners provide their customers with an environment of enlightenment, not bogged down by 6 word coffee cocktails or seasonal marketing. An independent coffee shop has become a social hub where you can also buy coffee. The popularity of Mac products stems from their marketing strategy; the company represents an idea, and if you agree with that idea, you will buy their products. You drink coffee from independent stores because you see them as like-minded. This is why hipsters on Mac products flood indie coffee shops. Alternatively, Starbucks marketing focuses on who you become, or how you feel because of drinking their coffee. And nobody tells hipsters how to feel or what to drink. 

Ironically, by collectively choosing to remain unbranded, the white coffee cup has become a symbol of independence. The coffee shops fill the streets with their idea, but not their brand. 

So, maybe you’re a hipster for avoiding Starbucks and scoffing at ‘blended’ coffee drinks, but more likely you are just a young adult with not too many bucks looking to drink coffee out of a cup you can be proud to hold. 

Write to Trace

I have an idea and I think it’s a pretty great one. I call it Write to Trace. (That’s a play on Rights, as in: the right we have to know where our food came from.) It could be a website, or an iPhone application. 

Basically, it is a database that provides information about the origin and journey of the food you are thinking about purchasing. (Of course, if everyone went to farmers’ markets and just talked to the farmer, it would be a lot simpler, but most people would rather shop at large grocery stores for one reason or another.). At the grocery store, you would simply hold your phone up to the produce barcode and a list of information would flow into your hands. You would then be able to make a more informed choice about the produce you are buying, as well as more accurately gauge its ethicality.

The barcode would work the same way as FedEx keeps track of parcels. The Write to Trace application would tell you: 

- Where and what time the product left its original origin

- How many miles it has traveled and by what means

            - ( so, there could also be a CO2 calculator)

- When it arrived at its final destination

Of course, this would require participation, but with technology so available and accessible, I imagine ( perhaps naively) that it would be as simple as the truck driver scanning the boxes from the farm as they are loaded onto the truck. The scanner could be GPS activated, and so as the truck driver travels, the produce is tracked. At the destination, boxes could be scanned as they were unloaded, and bada-boom there you have it!

I bet Fair Trade programs could use this application, and no doubt 100km foods, Sustain Ontario and Foodland Ontario would be happy to support something that puts the importance of local into a technological, visual medium.

Results would look like this:

Ingredient identified: Tomato

Results: Tomato, SunKissed Farms, New Market

 July 3: Hand picked tomatoes are stored for pick up

July 3, 10am: Sent by truck to Loblaws ( 400 miles, ___CO2 emmisions)

July 3, 4pm: Arrive at loblaws.

July 4^: Tomatoes from SunKissed Farms on display

What do you all think?




*January 6th, 2012: Well what do you know: http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/food/foodsafety/traceability/agrcultureexamples.htm 

How I Grocery Shop: LOFT

First, I try to shop LOCAL:

Toronto has some fabulous markets and, if you are willing to travel so that your food doesn't have to, there are markets almost every day of the week. For information about what markets are near you, visit: Farmer's Markets Ontario. Making the trip to your farmer's market each week ensures your food is local and seasonal -- the most sustainable way to eat. Although local doesn't necessarily mean certified organic, that doesn't mean the products are not.  Organic certification is costly and so many farmers farm organically but cannot advertise they do so. The wonderful thing about a farmer's market is that most of the time the farmers are there. If you have questions, just ask! Remember that you are the customer and the farmers want you to enjoy their product. If you tell them you are interested in organic, I can guarantee they will go the length to make you happy. It is so satisfying to be connected to your food. You can serve a meal and say, "This red-wine braised osso bucco was from an Ontario calf raised by Gerald from Twin Creeks". It's ok to be a bit smug when you are proud of your food.

If I need groceries, and no Ontario products are available - and I absolutely need the ingredient - then I will make sure it is ORGANIC ( and GMO free, which now must be labeled by law in the UK. Hopefully Canada follows suit soon):

Pesticides are for mass production, and a cheap alternative to a bit of labor. It may mean your arugula has a few more holes in it, but it will be a healthier plant, that has grown naturally defend itself against bugs ( not "pests" ! ). We have to become more aware that food isn't perfect: Not every carrot is the same size,  apples get bruised and there is no such thing as a grapple.   Organic produce is a bit more expensive than a mass produced food, but you must realize that our notion of food costs have been severly altered. When you can buy a whole McMeal for $5, a bag of organic carrots at $3 seems expensive. But think about it from the farmer's perspective. Someone has sowed those seeds, tended to the plants, cared for them, pulled them from the ground and packaged them. The farmer won't even see the whole $3 -- much of that cost will go to the supermarket ( which can be avoided if you buy local). Also think of it from a food perspective. When oua re eating a carrot, you are eating something wonderful, natural and full of vitamins and minerals. A fast food meal will be made for 20 or more food products so deconstructed and reconstituted that they cannot even be called food anymore ( i.e. McThis and McThat)

Finally, if there isn't anything local and there isn't an organic option available, I choose FAIR TRADE:

Fair trade is absolutely necessary for products like coffee ( you must watch Black Gold!) and bananas. When you buy Fair Trade, you are supporting:

1. Environmental standards which focus on reducing the risk associated with pesticides and synthetic fertilizers as well as decreasing environmental degradation
2. Fair, consistent wages and safe working conditions for the workers in developing countries
3. Social premiums for communities in developing countries to provide infrastructure such as education and health care on their own, reducing their dependence on foreign assistance.


I hope next time you do your grocery shopping, you have LOFT in mind.

The Western World’s UnFair Coffee Trade with Africa by Jennifer Crinion

By the end of the 17th century the coffee bean had traveled from Aden across the world to South Africa, South America and to the West Indes, and Europe and French high society had claimed it as their new custom to drink coffee after a meal. By 1860 people from all social classes were drinking coffee- including the military, which made it an integral part of their rations. Today coffee is enjoyed all over the world prepared in various ways, with or without dairy and with or without spices.
Fifteen million people in Ethiopia depend on coffee production for their survival. Unfortunately, since the collapse of the International Coffee Agreement in 1989 farmers have seen a drop in price – the lowest in 30 years. The international price of coffee is determined in New York and in London in the stock exchange. A five cent drop can affect farmers as far away as Ethiopia almost immediately. The price is determined with profit in mind. Two billion cups of coffee are drunk everyday and this $80billion per year revenue (a $50billion increase in less than 20 years) has made coffee the second most actively traded commodity. At the top of these billions of dollars sits four multinational companies: Kraft, Nestle, Proctor & Gamble and Sara Lee. Private companies have realized that North Americans will pay ridiculous amounts for a cup of coffee and with greed at the centre of ever decision, many refuse to pay more than 0.75 birr ($0.08) for one sack of beans. One farmer says, “ We would soar high above the sky if we got five birr ($0.57) for one kilo of coffee”. One kilo of coffee beans will make 80 cups of coffee- and we are all painfully aware of the cost of a cup of coffee these days. The value of all coffee traded in 2008 was $140billion dollars yet Africa is the only continent in the world to become poorer in the last twenty years. Sidama, the region in Ethiopia that provides Starbucks with their Ethiopian coffee is currently experiencing a devastating famine. Seven million people in Ethiopia are dependant on emergency food aid. The farmers do not want food aid, they want fair trade and to make the money they deserve. The economy of each coffee growing community is dependent on coffee production and nothing else. When the farmers are not paid fair wages, they cannot afford to send their children to school. Ethiopia’s share of world trade has dropped in the past twenty years to only 1%. The World Trade Organization (WTO) holds a meeting once a year where 148 countries meet for five days to negotiate rules. It is usually the United States and Great Britain that hold the power and direct the topics discussed in these meetings and often not with fair trade in mind, but rather greed and profit.
Fair Trade is necessary and this needs to be recognized immediately. In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, coffee pickers are paid 4 birr and 50 cents (less that $0.50) for 8 hours of work. It takes four years for a coffee tree to grow to full size and it is not until its fifth year that it will produce harvestable coffee beans. Many can no longer afford to wait that long and out of desperation have replaced their coffee bean crops with Chat, a narcotic popular in East Africa that is illegal in the United States and most of Europe.
Despite the growing popularity of Fair Trade coffee, demand has not yet matched supply: Last year about 200 million pounds of certified Fair Trade coffee was sold at normal market prices because of insufficient demand. According to Fair Trade Labeling Organizations International, Fair Trade farmers sell only about 20% of their coffee at a Fair Trade price. The rest is sold at the world price, due to lack of demand. Share the facts stated above with friends and family, and together demand Fair Trade.