Second Cup's Rwanda Cup of Hope

[AdamH]

I have a longstanding beef with Second Cup for their unwillingness to step forward as a non-fair trade but still canadian coffee chain. For a long time I've felt that by opting to support Foster Parent's Plan and ignoring the fair trade debate altogether they were doing themselves a disservice, and undersestimating the knowledge their customers had on the subject. Not that Foster Parent's Plan is a bad thing, just that it's an apples and oranges thing. It involves money leaving the countriy and being brought back in through an enormous worldwide charity...so count on at least 10% of it being diverted to admin costs.

That said I walked past the local second cup the other day and noticed a poster for something called the Rwanda Cup of Hope. This is a new coffee that they've begun to source from Rwanda and sell in whole bean and ground form. My first instincts told me this was a marketing ploy and that was backed up on three visitsd to three stores seeking information on the bean and promotion itself.

[i wish I was making this up]

Visit 1:

Me: "Hi. I saw your poster and was wondering if you have any information on the Rwanda Cup of Hope?"

Barista: "Sarah, do you know anything about that? No? Well all I know is that it's a medium Roast"

Visit 2:

Me: "Hi. I saw your poster and was wondering if you have any information on the Rwanda Cup of Hope?"

Barista: "Well, no. All we have are the big posters that are on the wall. Do you want one of those?"

Visit 3:

Me: "Hi. I saw your poster and was wondering if you have any information on the Rwanda Cup of Hope?"

Barista: "No, but all of the money goes to Rwanda"

Me: "You mean all of the profits? What for?"

Barista [puzzled look on her face, looking at other staff for confirmation]: "To...help the genocide?"

Visit 4:

Me:"Hi. I saw your poster and was wondering if you have any information on the Rwanda Cup of Hope?"

Barista: "Ok, here's the deelio. Second Cup's finally found a coffee in Rwanda that matches our flavour profile. By sourcing it directly from the country we're helping to support the local economy"

Yes, she really said deelio. Now I'm wondering what to make of this whole thing? There's a big part of me that is thinking of rallying Oxfam and other fair trade activist groups to send a resounding letter of shame to Second Cup's Management, asking for either a re-investment of these funds in their communities (which I doubt is the case as that's the sort of thing they'd explicitly state" or better clarification about their simple and essentially meaningless act of buying Rwandan coffee. Several fair trade purveyors have been offering Rwandan Coffee for years, under FT restrictions and with assurance that their sourcing of it is sustainable and long-term. Have these assurances been made by Second Cup? What if this time next year the "flavour profile" changes and SC starts selling the Nicaraguan cup of hope?

This seems like the appropriate forum for this so let's open it up and talk about whether I'm unnecessarily flying off the handle about this, or whether there are some concrete actions that could be taken to get this into the public spotilight a bit more.

[bradm]

Have you tried contacting the parent company?

http://www.secondcup.com

Their website is currently undergoing some renovations, but they have contacts that might be able to give more info than the counter staff.

Aloha,

Brad

[TomFoolery]

Start kickin' ass!

You're right to be pissed. Its assholes like them that drive me to blanket statements like, "marketers are the evil of the world" ;-) (I hope you recall the reference).

Education education education - the best thing that can be done here is to educate the 2nd cup clientelle... make the impact of their disrespect of real world problems hit them where it hurts.

[AdamH]

Brad - I will contact them directly but as you noted the website isn't functioning.

The market for Rwandan coffee has opened since the end of the war, and there are plenty of purveyors who are now selling their beans so I don't want that to seem bad because it isn't

What IS bad is the lack of education their staff has on it, and that they are playing up a sourcing decision as a charitable cause. Does Wal-Mart even pretend to be making lives better for pakistani sports ball manufacturers? Of course not. So why should I pat Second Cup on the back for doing something that's very common sense and 100% business oriented? Particularly when companies like Bridgehead have actually been re-investing in the communities they source from.

Really what this comes down to is a board meeting where someone likely said "How can we appear good without going fair trade and making prior actions seem bad?"

D'Allaire's people might be interested in this.

[Velvet]

Helping genocide is just plain wrong. Write the letter.

[deranger]

Expecting cashiers and every staff member you ask at Second Cup to be well informed and an expert on a charity based marketing campaign is like going into Sears and asking the cashier if they know where the cotton was grown for their sweaters. Maybe ask a manager....if you don't like Second cup for whatever reason, don't go there anymore. If thats not enough, be more pragmatic about it.

It's not that I don't think the cashiers and staff shouldn't be informed about it, but maybe their time is being occupied by doing other things like their jobs...to serve coffee. They weren't trained to be PR people about new marketing campaigns. They were trained to serve coffee.

Is it possible the campaign was introduced but the manager didn't have time to properly inform the staff of its specifics? Is it maybe unrealistic to expect the average second cup employee to know what communities in Rwanda will be receiving money?

[SevenSeasJim]

To add to this....if the person you were talking to is making minimum wage then they probably (prolly for some of you) don't give a fuck. If it was a manager then I would start kicking ass.

[Diggzz]

My first reaction was that you are over-reacting (notwithstanding that you are obviously more socially conscious than me, and that's great) But yeah i say cut the high-school kiddies some slack, they are just trying to make make a buck for whatever. By all means stick it to management, but I really don't think it's the past-timers fault. I used to work at a sports store and I would get people coming up to me and getting mad at me about Nike's labour practices. I'm sorry but my 15 hour a week part-time job had nothing to do with Nike labour practices and everything to with making some coin for the weekend.

[AdamH]

Expecting cashiers and every staff member you ask at Second Cup to be well informed and an expert on a charity based marketing campaign is like going into Sears and asking the cashier if they know where the cotton was grown for their sweaters. Maybe ask a manager....if you don't like Second cup for whatever reason, don't go there anymore. If thats not enough, be more pragmatic about it.

It's not that I don't think the cashiers and staff shouldn't be informed about it, but maybe their time is being occupied by doing other things like their jobs...to serve coffee. They weren't trained to be PR people about new marketing campaigns. They were trained to serve coffee.

Is it possible the campaign was introduced but the manager didn't have time to properly inform the staff of its specifics? Is it maybe unrealistic to expect the average second cup employee to know what communities in Rwanda will be receiving money?

Let's take a step back and slow it down so you catch it this time.

This isn't a charitable campaign. They've sourced coffee from Rwanda.

Since they've printed no information about it, for staff or for the public, then it's not surprising the staff know nothing.

The "manager" was the one who used deelio as a word.

Their website is under construction. There's no information there.

There's been no press releases about it that I could find via Google News.

Fact is, this is being promoted as a pseudo-charitable cause, and that's wrong. The fact that they quietly introduced this into their line of coffee with some giant posters about this coffee somehow helping people? That's wrong.

My main beef is with the organization, not minimum wage baristas.

[SevenSeasJim]

Have you e-mailed the Customer Care link on the website?

[AdamH]

No. I phoned them and left a message.

[deranger]

ok, cool, fair enough.

[timouse]

way to go polkaroo. after all, they started it

if they are going to advertise it as "a cup of hope" then the least they could do is inform the people in the store so they don't sound like total twunts when asked by the public.

twunt © 2005 by douglas. all rights reserved.

[dancingbear]

keep it up polkaroo, i mean if they are using 'cup of hope' and not donating at LEAST part of the profits to help Rwanda families who were affected by the genocide; then they should be boycotted and sued. thinking about it makes me sick.

two side notes:

the second cup in london ontario i never went to after they kicked out my friend sarah AFTER buying a cup of coffee 'because we dont want your type haning around here'...we figure they meant dreads and piercings etc...

2. reading a really good book right now called 'the bone woman' by Clea Koff a forensic anthropologist who has helped document identities of bodies and document atrocities in Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo.

o.k, one more....

www.savedarfur.org

i'm trying to educate myself...and figure this is the crucial first step..

[Calamity Jane]

Polk, I commend your anger (righteous) and your seeking to do something about it.

This kind of marketing is simply whitewashing an issue -- some (many?) coffee consumers will get a little tingle of "oooh, I'm doing something good, and wow! I didn't have to change anything about my lifestyle and/or beliefs to do it! Thanks, Second Cup!"

that's what gets me, that people are being (willingly) sucked in to thinking their consumer choices are making a difference. SC's ill-informed staff just guarantees that most people will walk away with whatever impression they want. And certainly MOST people would be content with the flashy posters and not ask more questions.

One quote I remember from a marketing/ad-analysis course I once took is..."it is easier to change the impression of reality, than it is to change reality itself" meaning, it's easier to make glossy posters purporting to be helping Rwanda recover/grow than it is to ACTUALLY help!!!

really bad taste in my mouth, but thanks for putting it there!

I'm curious as to the response you get from SC head office..and let us know if we can follow up with our own questions/concerns/complaints

[Esau]

I'm not up on the issue here but a quick google search led me to numerous articles about Rwanda & its coffee.Most having a headline like this:

Village of Hope update:A cup of coffee that could save lives: Rwanda's war survivors reap the rewards of fairtrade

Perhaps that has somthing to do with the "cup of hope".I dunno.

Heres another link (although I only skimmed over the article as I have to take off)

http://www.developments.org.uk/data/issue21/coffee.htm

[timouse]

I'm not up on the issue here but a quick google search led me to numerous articles about Rwanda & its coffee.Most having a headline like this:

Village of Hope update:A cup of coffee that could save lives: Rwanda's war survivors reap the rewards of fairtrade

Perhaps that has somthing to do with the "cup of hope".I dunno.

Heres another link (although I only skimmed over the article as I have to take off)

http://www.developments.org.uk/data/issue21/coffee.htm

oxfam & comic relief have puit seed money into helping fair trade coffee growers in rwanda. no amount of searching turned up anything about the second cup franchise though.

keep at it polkaroo!!

[Esau]

oxfam & comic relief have puit seed money into helping fair trade coffee growers in rwanda. no amount of searching turned up anything about the second cup franchise though.

Ok,I knew that...Although,I didn't mention anything about second cup,nor did I search for it but since its called the "cup of hope" and most headlines I found have the title "village of hope" attached to anything to do with Rwanda coffee,I put out a possible explanation for the "cup of hope".

[timouse]

oxfam & comic relief have puit seed money into helping fair trade coffee growers in rwanda. no amount of searching turned up anything about the second cup franchise though.

Ok' date='I knew that...Although,I didn't mention anything about second cup,nor did I search for it but since its called the "cup of hope" and most headlines I found have the title "village of hope" attached to anything to do with Rwanda coffee,I put out a possible explanation for the "cup of hope".

[/quote']

it was actually sort of an encouraging read, at least as it related to the fair trade growers. for the average coffee grower in rwanda, they get something like 5 cents a kilo from the "big guys," where the fair trade farmers get nearly 80 cents a kilo.

pretty astounding...

[AdamH]

and bringing this back to the discussion:

this is NOT being labelled or marketed as fair trade. Second Cup has never endorsed the fair trade movement and does not sell it in its stores.

There is NO charitable contribution being made, or if there is it's not being presented in the campaign.

and that's why this whole thing is infuriating.

Alot of corporations are jumping on the do-good bandwagon because people eat it up. When that involves contributing to an established organization working towards their goal (ex. Aldo's dogtag/HIV thing, which supports a youth HIV project) then that's one thing equally creepy but with a grain of goodness to it.

When it merely mentions a sexy country but actually does nothing beyond the norm they should be called on it...because if it's not just a marketing ploy I'd like to know what's in the plans.

I emailed a letter to Romeo D'allaire and his official secretary wrote back stating "Surely this should be illegal, shouldn't it?". More on that as it happens. For now I'm hoping SC gives me an official blurb about the program. If they don't respond by the end of the week I'll step it up a bit and put some pressure on them.

If anyone wants to contact them about this:

marketing@secondcup.com

or

secondcupcustomercare@cara.com

[d_rawk]

You're awesome, Polkaroo. The response you got from D'allaire's secretary is telling and chilling.

I wouldn't be surprised if SC had never even thought about fair trade, but yet genuinely think they are doing some good through this in some smug neo-liberal fantasy they are living in.

[guigsy]

the second cup in london ontario i never went to after they kicked out my friend sarah AFTER buying a cup of coffee 'because we dont want your type haning around here'...we figure they meant dreads and piercings etc...

shitty. dundas/richmond? it's a starbuck's now.

[TheGoodRev]

Good work, Polkaroo, keep at it.

This whole thing smacks of those e-mail forwards: "For every person you send this message to, the American Cancer Society will receive 7 cents towards cancer research."

You mean I can make a difference with just a few clicks of the mouse?!

Makes people feel reeeaal warm and fuzzy inside, the idiots they are. Then when it's really time to buck up and chip in, instead of "I gave at the office" it's "oh I forwarded a cancer e-mail" or "I bought a Rwandan Cup of Hope".

[d_rawk]

A possible bright spot in all this:

seems Rwandan coffee is being grown and sold through local co-ops

The upshot of the article is that Rwandan coffee has been successfully targeted towards 'up-scale' markets (which explains SC's interest, since they've never given a damn about human factors in the past), and the extra money that can be charged for the 'up-scale' product is enough to sustain the higher than subsistance income of the co-operative's members.

I'm hesistant, though: it has a touch of fadism to it, and when the Rwandan coffee fad dies out, so too, presumably, will the dollars. And SC and such won't have made any move towards ethical purchasing/fair trade in the process.

But I buy more coffee from Timmy Ho's than than I do from any other establishment, so I'm not exactly doing well on this front myself. :blush:

[Steve from Cleveland]

I was just about to say (not to totally make light of a serious situation) that I can't believe there is room up there for a second cup of anything, what with a Timmy's on 2 corners of every block 8^)

S/C