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Local Merchants & Non-Profits Unite to Introduce Cleveland’s Own “North Coast Roast” |
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Retailers, cafés, and faith-based organizations join together to promote Fair Trade
 Cleveland, OH, February 27th, 2006. 25 local stores and cafés — representing a diverse mix of six local businesses and three non-profit organizations — have come together to jointly launch a new, organic Fair Trade Certified™ North Coast Roast coffee created exclusively for the greater Cleveland/Akron community. The organizations are uniting in pursuit of three goals: 1) help small-scale coffee farmers, 2) honor the uniquely strong support Cleveland has already given to the Fair Trade model, and 3) introduce Fair Trade to a wider audience who may not have heard about this quickly growing, socially responsible approach to international commerce.
The eight enterprises offering the new coffee include the Cleveland Food Co-op, Dave’s Supermarket, Heartbeats, Heinen’s, Mustard Seed Market, Take A Bite, Ten Thousand Villages and Zagara’s. They, together with the Fair Trade coffee roaster/pioneer Equal Exchange, will introduce the one-pound packages of fairly traded, pre-ground coffee in February at 25 area locations. The price will vary by location, but will be comparable to other specialty and organic coffees sold at each business. In keeping with the effort’s cooperative spirit the coffee will also be available to any interested area retailer, restaurant, café or workplace.
To promote the new coffee some of the participating merchants will be serving samples or selling the coffee by the cup. Others will run sales or special promotions. For example, Heinen’s will highlight the North Coast Roast in their widely distributed newsletter. Mustard Seed Market is offering both a special sale price and will serve the North Coast Roast in their Solon Market Juice Bar. The InterReligious Task Force on Central America, a strong local Fair Trade advocate since 1994, will coordinate education, advocacy and promotional events among retailers, organizations, schools and congregations.
The idea for the unusual collaboration arose when the nine organizations, along with other local business and non-profit representatives, met last June at a “Fair Trade Leaders Summit” in Cleveland. The summit explored joint opportunities to build on the existing strong support for Fair Trade in Cleveland—which is almost unmatched in other cities—and thereby extend Fair Trade’s benefits to more farmers. It was the local retailers who suggested, and championed, the idea of a special Fair Trade coffee in Cleveland’s honor.
The first action that came out of the summit was a series of jointly sponsored full-color ads that ran this past Fall in The Plain Dealer that promoted Fair Trade, the local merchants, and the Fair Trade products they offered from Equal Exchange.
The growing interest in the Fair Trade concept stems from the chronic economic hardships of the millions of small-scale farmers who produce most of the world’s coffee. Coffee farming families have been struggling through a protracted economic crisis ever since world coffee prices collapsed in 2000, which deepened already widespread poverty in their rural communities.
The Fair Trade approach tackles the problem with a multi-faceted approach. Under Fair Trade farmers organized into democratically structured cooperatives are offered important guarantees: 1) direct, long term trade relationships with importers; 2) a guaranteed price [at minimum $1.41 per pound of organic coffee, or the world market price plus 20¢ - whichever is higher]; and 3) access to affordable credit.
In the context of the coffee market crash Fair Trade coffee sales have provided one of the few bright spots. In the last four years alone Equal Exchange’s Fair Trade coffee imports have boosted farmer incomes by $6,000,000 above what they would have been normally. Regardless, too few farmers have benefited so far due to the limited size of the Fair Trade coffee retail market. The joint North Coast Roast effort by local businesses, and other Fair Trade supporters, seeks to grow Fair Trade sales in Cleveland and Akron, and to educate residents about these issues and the community’s opportunity to make a difference through something as a simple as the coffee they select.
Equal Exchange is the worker cooperative that helped introduce fairly traded coffee to the U.S. market in the late 1980’s, and is one of the few businesses with a 100% Fair Trade Certified™ product line. In addition to coffee Equal Exchange also offers organic, fairly traded tea, cocoa, chocolate and sugar, overall benefiting the members of 32 farmer cooperatives in 16 countries.
Contact:
Rodney North
Equal Exchange
774 776 7398
rnorth@equalexchange.coop
Molly Garfield
Cleveland Food Co-op
University Circle
216-791-3890
| Rob Miller
Dave’s Supermarkets
OH City and Shaker Square
440-232-8282/ 216-401-7879
| Sister Josie Chrosniak Heartbeats
Rocky River
440-356-8601
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James Field
Heinen’s Fine Foods
16 locations across Cleveland
216-475-2300 x 2238
| Brian Stefan Szittai
InterReligious Task Force
Cleveland
216-961-0001
| Barb Schenk
Mustard Seed Market
Solon and Montrose
440-519-3663
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Tom and Joy Harlor
Take A Bite
1112 Kenilworth
216-523-7000
| Pamela Grodzik
Ten Thousand Villages
Rocky River
440-333-7709
| Mark Samsa
Zagara’s Market
Cleveland Heights
216-321-7917
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