Fair Grounds - Peace Coffee

Promoting Fair Trade Far and Wide
Jokes Across America
Sow the Seeds Blend at Whole Foods
Local Fair Trade Label Debuts
Divine Chocolate: The Best of the Best by Kyle Feldman, Peace Coffee Customer Accounts Representative
Reverse Trick or Treating
Roaster's Corner: An Award-Winning Bolivian Coffee by Ryan Seibold aka p_beri, Production Roaster
Show Your Peace Coffee Pride and WIN!
Quote of the Month
Past Issues of Fair Grounds

In this month's issue of Fair Grounds, we go around the corner and the globe to promote Fair Trade and Peace Coffee. First, we introduce you to Dan Ettinger, a self-professed "joke peddler" who is biking across America collecting jokes for an upcoming book. Next, we relate how Peace Coffee crew member Megan Tardiff sampled our Sow the Seeds blend to shoppers in a Whole Foods Market in Illinois. We serve up information on a new local Fair Trade label debuting in Minnesota. New staffer Kyle Feldman talks about our recent visitors from the Ghanian Fair Trade chocolate company Kuapa Kooko. We also help Global Exchange spread the word about Reverse Trick or Treating this Halloween. And Roaster Ryan (p_berri) talks up our extremely limited seasonal Bolivian roast. It's a pretty sweet issue all around, so sit back, relax and read on...

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A few months back, Tom Hudson, one of Peace Coffee's delivery guys, was biking on the Greenway and ran into an animated biker with a mission! This was none other than "joke peddler" Dan Ettinger. Dan had recently decided to bike across the country with a childhood friend-collecting jokes for a book they will write next year, tentatively titled "Why did the bike cross America?" Biking alongside Tom, hauling our oversized bright red trailer loaded with coffee beans, Dan thought to himself, "Wow, Peace Coffee might just be a crazy enough company to want to sponsor my journey."

Dan was no stranger to Peace Coffee. He is a recent graduate of Macalester College, which exclusively serves Peace Coffee in their dining hall and campus café. He also spent most of his summers during college working as a bike mechanic at Grand Performance Cycles, a local independent bike shop that sponsors Peace Coffee's bike team. Unfortunately we didn't have a lot to offer Dan in the way of money for his trip but we did have lots of spandex shorts and jersey's and of course coffee. He generously accepted both, although this would be his first time ever wearing spandex. Month's later Dan and his spandex padded bib shorts would become intimate friends (here are the pictures to prove it: www.jokesacrossamerica.net/photos/)

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Megan Tardiff, our Sales Manager, flew to the Whole Foods in Wheaton, Illinois, last week to sample our Sow the Seeds Blend to shoppers. Twenty-three Whole Foods locations in the Midwest decided to carry the Sow the Seeds Fundraising Blend after the flooding hit local farmers from which Whole Food purchases their produce. For each pound purchased, $2 goes directly to a fund that supports local farmers in the Midwest. The Wheaton store went above and beyond just selling the coffee. They gave 5% of total store sales to the fund on the day that Megan was in the store. We recently found out that a $4,000 contribution was made based on sales that day. For more updates on the flood relief visit Sow the Seeds Fund online.

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Last month, Peace Coffee attended a kick off party and unveiling of the first "local Fair Trade" label! Shoppers in Minnesota will be the first in the nation to have the option of buying local produce certified to have been produced in a socially just manner. The Local Fair Trade Network (LFTN) and Agricultural Justice Project (AJP) have teamed up with two local co-ops and four local farmers to launch the Local Fair Trade food label.

The Local Fair Trade label is an innovative effort to certify social justice in domestic agriculture. Over the last twenty years, a system of Fair Trade has been built for imported products like coffee and chocolate. In this system, farmers in the developing world are guaranteed prices for their products that will allow them to stay on their land, educate their children and improve their communities. LFTN was formed by farmers, co-op workers and Fair Trade importers to use this model to bring greater dignity and prosperity to farmers and farmworkers in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Seward Co-op in Minneapolis and Bluff Country Co-op in Winona are carrying Local Fair Trade labeled produce from Featherstone Fruits & Vegetables (Rushford, MN), Riverbend Farm (Delano, MN, and Avalanche Organics and Keewaydin Farms (both in Viola, WI). The co-ops and farms have been audited as complying to AJP's rigorous standards, including sustainable prices for farmers, long-term trading relationships, dignified treatment of farmworkers and respect for the farmworkers' right to organize. The project aims to create a model that can be replicated regionally and nationally, and can demonstrate that food can be produced in the United States without exploiting farm workers or driving family farms out of business. The Local Fair Trade Network (LFTN) builds on the foundation created by the organic food, farm worker and cooperative movements, bringing together the growers, sellers and eaters of food to cooperatively build a food system that is just and healthy for everyone. Based in Minneapolis, LFTN focuses its work on the Upper Midwest and aims to be a model for the creation of other regional Fair Trade bodies. LFTN is partnering in the label pilot with the Agricultural Justice Project (AJP), a non-profit initiative to create fairness and equity in our food system through the development of social justice standards for organic and sustainable agriculture.

Project partners Rural Advancement Foundation International—USA, Comité de Apoyo a los Traba-jadores Agrícolas/Farmworker Support Committee, Northeast Organic Farming Association, and Florida Organic Growers/Quality Certification Services are leaders in the fields of sustainable agriculture policy, workers' rights, community-based food systems, and organic certification.

To follow the success of the label initiative and for the growing list of locations offering Local Fair Trade products, visit: http://www.localfairtrade.org/

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by Kyle Feldman, Peace Coffee Customer Accounts Representative

Hello Fair Grounds readers! My name is Kyle Feldman, and I am one of the “newbies” on the rapidly growing Peace Coffee team. While my job itself focuses on providing outstanding service to loyal, new, and prospective customers, and also making sure our bank has enough money to keep the money rolling to the farmers who grow our coffee, the aspect of working for Peace Coffee that is most satisfying is my connection to a larger movement that is changing the world.

Fair Trade bridges lives historically separated by geography, language, and socio-economic factors. On one end, farmers, artisans, and their communities can benefit from being treated with due respect and being paid a fair price for their labor and, on the other side of the chain, consumers now have the power to make a conscious choice that unites their wallets with their values.

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This Halloween, the kids will be giving treats to the adults!

Encouraged by Global Exchange's Fair Trade Cocoa Campaign, schoolchildren, high school students, college students, and adults across the US and Canada will unite this Halloween to end poverty among cocoa farmers, end forced/abusive child labor in the cocoa industry and promote Fair Trade.

While trick-or-treating door-to-door in their communities, kids will be distributing information about these social justice issues, handing out Fair Trade chocolate and attracting the attention of their local media. Costumes are optional; having fun while making a difference is guaranteed!

Global Exchange and its supporting organizations are hopeful that this effort will reach tens of thousands of households.

Want to do your own Reverse Trick-or-Treating this Halloween? Check out the available resources on the Global Exchange website.

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Danielle and Mat Boerson sent us one of the coolest Peace Pride photos we've ever received! Titled "Tis the Season to Harvest Peace," this clever couple took vegetables from their farm in east central Wisconsin and formed them into the shape of the Peace Coffee "turtle" logo. We were so impressed we made Danielle and Mat our winners this month. Congratulations!

If you're passionate about Peace Coffee, show it! Send us:

-- a photo showing your "Peace Coffee Pride”

-- a short written testimonial about how much you love us

-- an original coffee poem or haiku (three lines, 5 syllables in the first, 7 in the second, 5 in the last)

Each month, we’ll choose one entry to appear in the following Fair Grounds newsletter. If we choose yours, you’ll win a pound of your favorite Peace Coffee coffee. Please send your entry to mel@peacecoffee.com.

Contest ends: November 12th

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"Being in a band you can wear whatever you want -- it's like an excuse for Halloween everyday."

~Gwen Stefani

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Fair Grounds is produced by:
Peace Coffee

Contact Information:

Orders and General Information
Phone - 612.870.3440 or 1.888.324.7872
Fax - 612-677-3989
E-Mail - info@peacecoffee.com
Web - http://www.peacecoffee.com

Peace Coffee Crew*:
Stacy Adrianson
Anna Canning
Derek De La Paz
Kyle Feldman
Tom Hudson
Andy Lambert
Josh Lavelle
Melanee Meegan
Joe Moskowitz
Natalie Ryno
Ryan Seibold
Megan Tardiff
Keith Tomlinson
Lee Wallace
Liz Wawrzonek

*We work together to get the coffee out to our customers. Although we have specific job titles, we all take turns switching roles and putting in time where it's needed most.

Fair Grounds is designed by:

Starstruck Design
335 West Gill Road
Gill, MA 01354

Contact Information:
Don Kruger
Lynn Nichols
Phone - 413.863.7752
Fax - 413-863-7752
Web - http://www.starstruckdesign.com

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