Geoff Watts of Intelligentsia enters Convent.

[bobdc]

Check New York Times. Good Article Geoff Watts of Intelligentsia is in a 500 year old Convent!

Here's the link:

A Coffee Connoisseur on a Mission: Buy High and Sell High

[bill]

Yes, great article!

[T.J.]

Nice article concerning Intelligentsia, but small potatoes in the overall scheme of the world coffee market.

Last month in NY Guiseppe Lavazza received the lifetime achievement award from US based Rainforest Alliance for its commitment to "fair trade" sustainable coffee through its !Tierra! line of coffee.

By far the largest commitment to this type of purchasing behavior of any roaster worldwide.

For anyone who is interested.....investigate Lavazza Tierra.

[Nick]

T.J.,

Small potatoes? I'm gonna guess "G.M. Ammirati Imports" is small potatoes relative to Intelligentsia. And Lavazza is small potatoes compared to certain other companies touting sustainable coffee buying. My multi-billion-dollar company can beat up your multi-billion-dollar company. So you're wrong about "By far the largest commitment to this type of purchasing behavior of any roaster worldwide."

And before you go besmirching a fellow coffee-industry company like that, you'd better check your facts before touting "lifetime achievement awards" and the like. I'm sure Tierra! is a fine product, worthy of the quality that the other Lavazza lines produce. That being said, Rainforest Alliance Certification has little to nothing to do with "Fair Trade" (Rainforest Alliance Certification has nothing to do with pricing), and more glaringly, The Rainforest Alliance doesn't give out "lifetime achievement awards."

[bobdc]

So much bad is being perped all over. When an individual or group, like Intelligentsia, does good it is important. The numbers aren't that critical, if their efforts benefit 200,000 or just 20 families, that is at least a 100% improvement over the status quo. My opinion only, but responsible people in the special coffee field are and will continue to be assets as the field grows. No one loses, many gain and, to boot, I get a far better cup of coffee and a machine to brew it in. Intelligentsia's recognition recognizes all of you who keep the business growing on a good track.

[Ken Fox]

T.J.,

Small potatoes? I'm gonna guess "G.M. Ammirati Imports" is small potatoes relative to Intelligentsia. And Lavazza is small potatoes compared to certain other companies touting sustainable coffee buying. My multi-billion-dollar company can beat up your multi-billion-dollar company. So you're wrong about "By far the largest commitment to this type of purchasing behavior of any roaster worldwide."

And before you go besmirching a fellow coffee-industry company like that, you'd better check your facts before touting "lifetime achievement awards" and the like. I'm sure Tierra! is a fine product, worthy of the quality that the other Lavazza lines produce. That being said, Rainforest Alliance Certification has little to nothing to do with "Fair Trade" (Rainforest Alliance Certification has nothing to do with pricing), and more glaringly, The Rainforest Alliance doesn't give out "lifetime achievement awards."

I have edited my earlier response. I want to suggest to Nick, owner of cafes in the Washington DC area, that if he takes issue with certain statements made by TJ, that it would be more productive to question those statements specifically and see how TJ responds.

ken

[SL28ave]

Nice article concerning Intelligentsia, but small potatoes in the overall scheme of the world coffee market.

Last month in NY Guiseppe Lavazza received the lifetime achievement award from US based Rainforest Alliance for its commitment to "fair trade" sustainable coffee through its !Tierra! line of coffee.

By far the largest commitment to this type of purchasing behavior of any roaster worldwide.

For anyone who is interested.....investigate Lavazza Tierra.

I'm struggling to understand the goal of the above post.

Certainly you don't disagree with Geoff's (along with the equal cohorts') vision, right? A distinct vision imbedded in real world POTENTIAL can sometimes be very big potatoes, right? 1 distinct potato can and sometimes should be more powerful than 100 other potatoes.

A smile on a single consumer or farmer's face can be newsworthy, unless the news should only be about big business, which would be malhumanistic and lacking what I consider to be "news". But that's all beside the point, because the potential in the article's vision has the momentum to affect millions of coffee farmers on top of the thousands of farmers that it has already, more positively than ever achieved now or before.

(Your post in the Cimbali, SCAA etc thread was incisive, btw.)

-Peter