The latest coffee in the West is not slow roasted or spe cially flavored it is ethically harvested but Dubai residents do not seem to have jumped on the bandwagon just yet.
Emirates Today contacted a number of international coffee and caf franchises to see if they were offering customers the chance to buy fair trade coffee but positive responses were sporadic.
Starbucks, Costa, Second Cup and Barista were all asked about their policy on stocking and serving fair trade coffees, yet only one seemed to offer it consistently.
"Costa uses its own blend of fair trade coffee.
"We believe in serving only the very best coffee. We also believe that everyone, from the growers to the drinker, should enjoy the benefits," said a spokesman of the company.
"That's why we were the UK's first high street coffee shop chain to offer a fair-trade option. Now, we've launched our very own blend of fairtrade coffee... coffee which helps to showcase its quality and close the gap between coffee-growers and coffee-lovers on the high street." When asked if its UAE branches were also stocking the product, its Retail Operations Manager Shyam Rathore said: "Yes, of course." Barista, whose cafs can be found across the UAE, however, did not participate in Emirates Today's survey, saying they would not be able to without giving a reason, despite being given more than a week for the response.
Starbucks responded in the affirmative when the self-proclaimed biggest buyer of fair trade certified coffee in the world was asked if it offered the product in the UAE.
But according to a recent report from Starbucks: "Fair Trade Certified coffee can be brewed by coffee press during store hours upon customer request." However, this puts the onus on the customer to ask for it.
Previous statements from the international coffee giant though have said that of the 23 countries worldwide where Starbucks is licensed to sell its Fair Trade Certified coffees, the UAE is not included.
TransFair USA is one of a handful of independent bodies that is certifying fair trade products like ethical coffee.
It said there was no known Fair Trade National Initiative in the UAE.
"But there are countries that have fair trade certified products that don't have their own National Initiative, and in these cases, I believe the products have been audited by and sent via a country that does have the initiative as in the case of the UAE," said a spokesman.
A good deal
Fair trade coffee is coffee that has been purchased from farmers at a decent price in order to prevent the exploitation of coffee farmers worldwide, who typically only get the barest fraction of the final cost of their coffee. The consumer price of one kilogram of coffee beans is around Dh96.9 on average in the Western world, but the farmers receive only about 51 fils, less than 60 per cent of the production cost.
By Zarina Khan
© Emirates Today 2006
