Specialty Coffee Retailer is a publication for owners, managers and employees of retail outlets that sell specialty coffee. Its scope includes best sales practices, supplies, business trends and anything else to assist the small coffee retailer.
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/35520
When consumers want their coffee ... Sustainable efforts define coffeehouses that support fair trade and environmentally friendly practices Momento Coffee in Vancouver took several measures to reduce its carbon footprint, including BY ANN MEYER low and cycle the 1.8 kilometers to where the locally roasted coff ee is stored. Th ey ride to reduce the company’s environmental impact A more than for the exercise, says owner Rick Martin. By switching to Origins Organic Coff ee on nearby Granville Island from a Chicago-based roaster, Martin has reduced his coff eehouse’s carbon footprint while developing a personal connection. “We’re always tasting the coff ee and making sure that what we bring in is really high quality,” Martin says. With an eye toward sustainability, increasingly coff ee retailers are adopting a triple-bottom-line approach to their operations that involves environmental, social and economic considerations, says Charlotte Peyraud, marketing and outreach manager at Green Seal, a nonprofi t that certifi es environmentally friendly products and services. Th e organization has developed t Momento Coff ee House in Vancouver, British Columbia, baristas jump on a bike when coff ee beans are running sourcing its coffee locally. Photo by Vasho Pekar a standard for foodservice operations that includes organic food purchases, energy conservation, water conservation, waste reduction, air quality, cleaning, and an environmental and socially conscious purchasing policy, Peyraud wrote in an e-mail. Since coff eehouses oſt en serve consumers on the go, just getting them to recycle their cups aſt er they've fi nished their coff ee would make a signifi cant environmental impact, says Clarice Turner, a senior vice president at Starbucks Coff ee Co. and a board member of the National Restaurant Association, who spoke in May at the National Restaurant Show in Chicago. “We want 80 percent of the cups that leave our store to be recycled,” with an ultimate goal of 100 percent, Turner said at that talk, noting that the coff ee retail industry uses 500 billion cups a year. Th e restaurant association’s recycling survey, conducted in March and April, indicates consumers are willing to recycle at the store level. Six out of 10 said they prefer restaurants that have recycling programs, while 51 percent said they are willing to pay more to support restaurants that recycle. In addition, 85 percent of survey respondents said they would sort quick- service recyclables into bins. “Consumers do stand there to fi gure out which (bin) do I put my cup in, which one do I put my straw in,” Turner said at the NRA talk. “Th ey really do care.” But with four out of fi ve cups leaving the store before the coff ee is consumed, Starbucks doesn’t have control over where the cups end up, she said. Th e company is working with municipalities to improve Jake Elster of Crop to Cup samples a shipment of beans. 12 | July 2011 • www.specialty-coffee.com recycling eff orts in general, Turner said. To that end, the company has participated in collaborative cup summits