Coffee Organic Fair Trade & The Small Business
Best & Fairest - Coffee Roast:
“How a micro business has a mega impact”
Bernadette Stack & Trevor de Groot own the tinny retro inspired Organic coffee house: Espresso Royale on Magill rd, Adelaide South Australia. Expanding their singular focus to supply Fair Trade locally roast beans to SA and further field online. Offering sustainable growth to the miniscule shop with the cult following of those who take their caffeine seriously, piling into the store for their individual prescriptions of blends & espresso tech advice.
A new brand “The de Groot Roasting Co” will be launched with the opening of a new roasting shed offering an education & a sense of place. Specialising in the roasting of Fair Trade Coffee beans and caffeine education of the populace at large. Coffee tastings for up to approximately 10 students utilising Japanese siphons will guide buz students though the anatomy of the coffee bean. Tasting will entail the dissemination of each beans regional character and an understanding of all the factors that can affect it, building a pallet for coffee a kin to that which is usually only referenced to wine varietals.
Small Business relies on credibility & quality resting on its community, personalty, and points of difference, sustainability & life style. It is a very tricky formula to get right & many failed small businesses testify to that. Espresso Royale is one that shows this formula works, and it only works if you add passion to every step.
I stood at the end of Trevor’s micro counter, nearly atop of the shinny espresso machine, which he hastily polishes, even though it does not need it. Trevor tells me what this new extension of the mini business is going to do, specifically why he has focused on Organic Fair Trade & how he sees the markets perception of it.
Trevor used the word “passion” about ten times when I was talking to him & when you see the cremer on those espresso shots you do get a sense of it, pouring ribbons of caramel foam, pure poetry to a caffeine addict. You have to drink & love coffee to understand what this means. That is the problem; “if you don’t drink & love coffee you should not make it.
Trevor cannot remember which of his two loves came first, Bernadette the woman behind his passion for coffee or the coffee itself. Bernadette introduced him to the complexity of coffee, the stuff behind the espresso machine. They believe you have to be passionate about it to produce a perfect coffee very time. It is that consistency that has their customers appearing in their pyjamas. True story!
As a tiny business it survives as it buys in its raw product & processes it them selves. Offering complete control of the quality. Customers are getting a very good deal with The de Groot Roasting Co coffee. It is a life style business, asking Trevor what he wanted to be doing in five years time he replied, without a blink “ Roasting coffee every day!” surprisingly he only has 2 to 4 cups a day.
I made a point mentioning that Fair Trade Coffee is now being tag lined in many big, super fast food chains, McDonalds to name but one very big one. Is it seen as a marketing gimmick? Is ethical food just another tag that a lager potentially unscrupulous company can tag on its name to borrow some global community cred. That it seams is for us to judge! It is better; one would have to say, that a large company that gets Fair Trade into the largest percent of the population is making an ethical choice with its multi dollar purchase that makes a very big difference. It must be a good thing but is it devaluing the products credibility??
Trevor’s response was to point out that De Groot Fair Trade Organic Coffee is out to high-light the aspect that Organic Fair Trade Coffee can be & is as good as any other, if not better than some, when treated right. People can make a choice that makes a differenced to a population in another country with out it being a charity. They can make a choice, simply by deciding which brand of great coffee they are going to have, for a cleaner & a more connected human environment. The couple’s business will be relying on their Barista cred not the Fair Trade tag line to sell the idea. A specialist boutique coffee roaster in Adelaide who happens to specialise in only Organic Fair Trade. Now that is putting your tag line where it counts, if ethics have anything to do with it.
Article by:
Amanda Daniel
2bethicalfood.com
0417 844 702
Completed 27th / April / 2010
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