Fair trade coffee may be poured into La Salle cups soon

By Erin Brodbeck
Collegian Editor
November 15, 2006

Each morning before class, tired and stressed-out students in the Market elbow each other to fill their cardboard cups with hot, energizing Bucks County Coffee.

In all the rush to reach for a few packets of sugar or the last white plastic lid, students seldom realize that while they complain about the price of coffee, farmers in other countries are living in poverty due to the lack of compensation for their product.

“It’s hard for some people to survive,” senior leadership and global understanding major Kaitlyn Muller said.

La Salle. Fair trade is a concept in which coffee is bought for a fee that is higher than the market price. By purchasing the coffee at a fair price, the farmer earns around one dollar per pound, according to Bucks County’s Web site.

Selling fair trade coffee on campus is a way to, “recognize the plight of the workers all over the world,” Stephen Greb, Director of Food Services, said.

Although La Salle does not currently offer fair trade coffee, Muller recalls that when she was a freshman, fair trade coffee was available for a few hours a day at Backstage. Eventually, Food Services discontinued the selling of fair trade coffee due to poor sales, a reason that Muller says was without merit.

“Backstage didn’t even open until 11 p.m.,” she said. “Which means students wouldn’t have been buying fair trade during the prime morning hours when coffee sells really well.”

Over the past few weeks, Food Services has been in the final stages of bringing fair trade coffee back to campus.

“We’ve been doing some taste tests,” Greb said. “Something they did differently to the beans made it taste much better, so we think students will want to try it.”

All La Salle students will be given the opportunity to sample fair trade coffee in the coming weeks when Food Services offers free cups of the new coffee in the Union.

If the reaction to the coffee is mostly positive, Greb will place an order for Bucks County fair trade coffee to sell throughout campus. The price of the coffee will have to increase a bit, but those involved think the few extra cents will be well worth it.

Muller is confident that students will approve of the changes.

“I participated in one of the first taste tests,” she said. “We were blindfolded, and everyone chose the fair trade over the kind we sell now.”

Muller has participated in many service trips in which she has traveled to the farms where coffee beans are grown. While visiting these farms, she has seen the hard work that farmers do first hand, making this cause especially important to her.

She purchases fair trade coffee herself, although it becomes a little more costly. Muller buys a bag of fair trade beans for around $7.50, a fairly large jump from the three or four dollar bags many people are accustomed to. For individual cups, however, Muller says that the price difference is barely noticable.

“Per cup, the difference is only a few cents,” she said. “But when you think about where the money is going to, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal.”

brodbecke1@lasalle.edu