Just Coffee Cooperative

TransFair USA recently announced that it is changing its name to “Fair Trade USA”. According to an article on bizjournal.com, the rationale for the move is that “the simplified name change will better support the group’s brand.”. Strategic rebranding might make sense for any business that is trying to increase presence in the market or that is seeing its market share eroded. There are, of course, risks in doing this. When a company has spent years-- as in TFUSA's case-- building its brand, the move seems to be a particularly risky choice.

September 16th through September 19th Just Coffee Co-op hosted the Cooperative Coffees Annual General Membership meeting in Madison. 45 member roasters, coffee growers, and other allies came together to talk about a variety of subjects and to share their experiences of the past year. Along with visiting and conducting our normal cooperative business, we also discussed some circumstances that make this year an especially interesting one in our importing co-op and in the fair trade movement. While I could write a book on the strange and wonderful happenings of our AGM, I'll instead talk about a couple of the most important focuses of the meeting.
                                          
One of the most critical pieces that we had to address was the looming departure of the founder and president of Co-op Coffees-- Bill Harris. Bill started Cooperative Coffees over ten years ago when he loaded up his VW bus and began driving around the US visiting small roasters with the hope of starting a fair trade importing co-op that would bring together coffee roasters with an interest in trade justice. Now, over a decade later, Cooperative Coffees has become one of the largest importers of fair trade coffee in the world and consists of 23 roasters in the US and Canada. Through unwavering belief in its mission and a commitment to grower cooperatives all over the world, CC is considered one of the “gold standard” bearers of fair trade today. After a day of discussion of how to fill Bill's large shoes, we feel that we have a good handle on the qualities of the person we will need to steer CC into the future. That said, it is clear that we will never truly be able to replace Bill and we will miss his leadership, south Georgia charm, and disarming honesty. We will also miss his superhuman harmonica-playing abilities and his slick dance moves.

 Just Coffee's Producer Relations team (Matt Earley and Julia Baumgartner) embarked on an ambitious, rainy Central American adventure August 9th to the 18th, traveling tirelessly throughout three central american countries, set on catching up with old friends, hearing about new projects, new challenges, new goals, meeting new producer groups, and strengthening already existing relationships. Each country faces similar, yet distinct issues and through hours and hours of conversations, it became ever so clear the need to challenge ourselves and those around us to be creative in finding alternatives to serious issues that many of our friends down south are facing. We were taken aback by some of the things we learned, but were also left feeling inspired and motivated by the folks we met along the way.

Our travels led us to many offices and coffee farms, meeting with several NGOs and development organizations, working hard to support the work of coffee producers in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, through access to land, better markets, prefinancing, a secure food supply, trainings and workshops, etc.