Disc Golf Course Ribbon Cutting

At long last, with the Town of Buena Vista’s recently adopted Recreation Plan in hand, a team of disc golfers raised money and donated a heck of a lot of sweat to open Buena Vista’s first 9 holes of disc golf. The ribbon cutting happened ironically enough on Labor Day, 2010 – a great time to toss the disc around after such long hours for the crew. Thank you PlayGreen for your efforts, thank you town of Buena Vista, and thank you volunteers, players, and sponsors (including the BV Roastery, Eddyline, Trailhead, CKS, PSH Signs, Hi Rocky, Biggies, AVDI, and a couple other who escape me).

It’s a fantastic walk through the pinons below Mt. Princeton, Mt. Columbia, and Mt. Yale. You can scarcely see a building. Drive east toward the river and turn north just past the softball field. More signage is coming. Closed toed shoes would be preferred.

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courtesy of journeyscoffee, Creative Commons

I want to thank Joshua for the great blogpost highlighting our customer service at the Buena Vista Roastery. I am ever thankful for our great staff and team that work hard to get coffee out to everyone, and to make some incomparable drinks for our in-town visitors. From the blogpost:

“That is the kind of over-the-top service that makes customers not just happy but want to go out and become ambassadors for the company they’re doing business with.”

Here’s a full recount of Joshua’s experience.

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Brazilian Coffee Bag. Photo by P-A-S, Creative Commons

Forbes has posted a blog that helps further explain the new prices you might see for your coffee (Not Bongo’s/BVRoastery coffee though). It reminds me of the land reforms of Russia during the early 20th Century and more recently  Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe. Brazilian land for Brazilians. Foreign land ownership is changing by mandate in Brazil. The result? a lot of unknown about who owns the land, and there’s a lot of coffee plantations owned by foreigners. Add to this Colombia’s poor harvest and Brazil’s dry season and we’re walloped with high prices on the commodity market. It is starting to feel like $4.00 gasoline, with shortages and much more shopping around. The commodity market turns first to Brazil and Colombia to see what their harvests are like and what the political situation is like. Then the speculators play the market and we see 13 year highs.

Read more about this in the Forbes post, Coffee Caught Up In Perfect Political Storm, Shoots To 13-Year High

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Fortunately, the market went down to $1.83 on Monday. Not that two cents is a big deal, but maybe there is relief. And for us at the Roastery, we’ll just keep making great coffee and think about the market after a good mountain bike ride on the Midland Trail in Buena Vista.

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Photo by: jakeliefer, Creative Commons

A recent article in the Christian Science Monitor highlights the difficulty that organic farmers are having in sustaining a market, and therefore are looking to go back to conventional coffee production.

A lot of the transition comes down to a supply and demand. Roasters, like ourselves at the Buena Vista Roastery, have been increasing their organic offering over the years. We have increased through the years as best we can, with the understanding that some coffee varieties are not available as a certified Organic. Yet the cost of coffees continues to increase, with our own average price per pound for green increasing this year by 30%.  The commodity price of coffee continues to rise, so roasters seek to reduce costs. One primary way of doing so is to offer conventionals. The demand wanes, and therefore the supply of coffee in situ means that farmers must offload their product by devaluing it via the conventional market. The more the consumer (roaster and imbiber) are unwilling to pay a premium, the greater likelihood that the farmers will go back to conventional agricultural practices. Seems pretty straightforward.Rest assured, we continue to seek high quality specialty coffees, certified Organic.

From the article, here is an interesting statistic and quote from a Guatemalan farmer:

The expense of organic certifications, composts, and the losses incurred by pests and other factors mean growing organic costs about 15 percent more than growing conventional crops, Mr. Haggar says. More notably, by using chemical fertilizers a farmer can coax about 485 pounds of coffee out of one acre, versus 285 pounds per acre on an organic farm, according to CATIE…

…“I can sell [nonorganic coffee] to a coyote [middle man] for around the same price [as organic], a little less, and I can use whatever I want on the coffee plants – fertilizers I can buy, pesticides,” says Jose Perez, who stopped growing organic coffee on his three-acre farm in Guatemala last year. “I can grow a lot more this way.”

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Coffee Anyone? Courtesy of Creative Commons

There’s a lot of recent news about food fraud (and another article here). There is often this sort of thing in the paper, about one thing or another. For a long time it was about Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee – people advertising this coffee, when the coffee turned out to be a blend with only 10% or so Jamaican Blue Mountain.

We at the Buena Vista Roastery have recently entered a contract to sell Cafe Feminino coffee (our new Fair Trade Organic Peru) and we have certain demands for integrity along with it. Namely, that we will not blend the Cafe Femenino coffee with another and call it ‘Cafe Femenino’. This makes a lot of sense and unfortunately, a lot of roasters and coffee retailers may not use such integrity. Which brings me to the point of this blogpost: Food Fraud, namely organic integrity.

Our annual inspection comes up in a week or two. The diligent inspector will come and put us through the proverbial ringer to test to see that we, in fact, know and adhere to the standards set to ensure that there is no cross contamination in the processing of our coffee beans. Organic means Organic. Anyone who comes into the roastery can be sure that the organic beans we grind to brew as an organic brew were not ground in the same machine as a conventional. It’s truly organic. Furthermore, when it says it’s ‘organic’, it is. There is no out-of-date label on a bin. The bins have been washed with approved cleaning materials, the beans haven’t been blended with others and are true to what we say it is.

There are other places I have visited that sell “Fair Trade Organic” espresso that I know for a fact is not (because we sell them the beans and they don’t buy FTO beans). We can tell them, but there is no regulatory mechanism in place to maintain integrity on the retail side. I have asked about this, and there is nothing the industry can do.

I also have seen beans sold by another non-certified roaster as “organic”. We pay thousands of dollars to be certified and we are inspected as a service to the consumer so that they know their beans are organic. A processor who is not certified, can be selling any beans, cross contaminating, and is creating a horribly unfair competitive advantage for themselves, even not acting out of integrity.

So, please ask your roaster about their inspection, about their certification, about integrity. Be sure that the coffee you buy is in fact what it says it is. Let’s be rid of Food Fraud and express integrity.

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There is more buzz (no pun intended) than ever around coffee in the U.S. right now, and we at the Roastery are trying to bring some of that excitement to our little valley in the Rocky Mountains.  These barista competitions are the perfect way to both educate our customers (this is what a good latte should look/taste like , and motivate our baristas to step up their game.  The competitors last Friday were all from the Roastery, but we’ve decided that the next comp should be opened up to all the baristas in the valley.  That way, everyone has a chance to strut their stuff, and maybe we’ll all become better baristas in the process!

Anyway… here’s a little video that Glenn Walton made of the night… enjoy!

Buena Vista Roastery latte competition!

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Downtown Buena Vista

We’ve done it. Our little town has become a Fair Trade Town, the first in Colorado and the 14th in the nation, much to the contribution of the Buena Vista Roastery. Here is the post from TransFair USA.

By Guest Blogger Joel Benson

Our small community in central Colorado has been working rather hard to put its best foot forward, sustainably. In 2005 a group of forward thinking individuals started our region’s first and only New Urbanist subdivision. We have the longest whitewater park in Colorado, more fourteen thousand foot peaks than anywhere in the country, and Galdling has recently listed Buena Vista as the number one “Best Outdoor Destination with Everything”, alongside such places as Auckland New Zealand, Quito Ecuador, Vancouver BC and others.

Well, it only seems fit that our group of concerned and active citizens has worked with Fair Trade Towns USA to make Buena Vista the First Fair Trade Town in Colorado. What pride we have for our community of 2200 people!

In early 2010, a group of 10 or so citizens, including Town Trustees, the Chairwoman of Planning and Zoning, business owners and managers, realtors, Chamber of Commerce representatives, and community event planners started the campaign. Within a month, the Town Trustees passed a resolution supporting Fair Trade and a few weeks later, the Chaffee County Times picked up our first press release.  We were official.

Finish reading on their site….

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Brad, Chris, and Shawnelle at the barista comp!

The competition was no joke; each barista had to show that, not only could they make a great drink, they could do it under immense pressure.  In front of an eager crowd and 4 judges, they pulled their shots, made their drinks, and served them with style and flair.  I got

Barista serves the judges his signature drink

sweaty palms just watching as each competitor tried not to sound nervous while explaining (via head-set mics) how, say, their espresso contains ethiopian and thus the hint of blueberry, or how they would now be cooking up a caramel sauce to use in their signature drink (yes, people brought hot-plates and prepared drink ingredients right there on stage! crazy!).  Each barista even had to have their own specially chosen music to accompany them while they were on stage!  And all this with a giant timer above their heads, counting  down from 15 minutes…

The set-up..

Needless to say, this competition was a great experience for our BV Roastery crew.  We tasted some really incredible espressos, and were impressed by the creativity involved in each competitor’s ’signature drinks.’  We came away excited, a little intimidated, and totally challenged to become both better roasters and better baristas.  Maybe next year, one of our own will get to compete in the Mountain Regional Barista Competition!  Fingers crossed!

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The original, thought-provoking question:

In your opinion, what is Coffee Sustainability?

-Economic Sustainability?
- Environmental Sustainability?
- or Social Sustainability?

Next comment:

In my opinion It has to include all the three pillars (economic, environmental and social). There is no sustainability without economic viabilit. This last one is often forgotten…

I followed:

This is a difficult question, primarily because the context of the term ’sustainability’ is so subjective. We have listed three elements: Social, Economic, Environmental, and people will generally agree that the triple-bottom line is desired. But, through what perspective are we talking about? Farmer? Coop? Exporter? Importer? Roaster? Retailer? all along this chain as a whole or compartmentalized? On a community level versus individual? There are many perspectives to take. The first necessity is to agree to a context for the conversation and come to consensus around this context.

After this, the conversation must focus on policy and how to address true intent of any policy that is created – and its root cause – either on a governmental or organizational level.

One more quote:

How about sustainability all along the supply chain? From an importer’s/exporter’s viewpoint, we do not have that now. The exporters are expected to sell short to the importers or directly to roasters. Importers are expected to sell short to roasters 6 months to a year forward. According to the ICO, world production was 123 mln 60-kg bags for 09/10 crop year and world consumption was 130 mln 60-kg bags. Stocks in consuming countries are being drawn down and that is expected to continue for 10/11 crop year.

Differentials are far higher than the level at which the sales were made to importers or roasters. How long does anyone think exporters and importers can survive in this environment?

I think the discussion has been limited to producers for too long. The roasters have to buy as cheaply as possible, expecially during this recession, to stay competitive with other beverages. Coffee is considered part of the basic food basket for most consumers and they resist price increases fiercely in this economic environment. At the end of the day, the consumer is king and can turn to other beverages if coffee is perceived as “too expensive”.

Now we are seeing the rise of “energy drinks.” This is a direct competitor to coffee consumption. Any ideas on how to respond to this latest threat?

Lastly:

very good question to discuss at any time, specially at the WCC’s front door.
The theme is so rich that I suggest we let paralel’s discussions like drink’s competition for another time.
I agree with the comment about three basic elements. But wonder how Social line includes local culture? Should not sustaintability also care specific about cultural traditions? Let´s think about minorities like african tribes and haitians small coffee producers. Are these cultures beeing contempled with the Sustaintability stamp?

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