Starbucks Challenge

While going to the immigration department today to get my visa issues settled, i decided to pop by Starbucks. no, i am not trying to throw away money despite being poor, i just want to see what people who have been saying that they are doing things to help the international community are really keeping to their words.

Starbucks has often said that they help out communities via the Free Trade Coffee sale, and such, and i read from greenlagirl that it’s not necessarily the case. Infact, sometimes the staff maybe trained to turn customers’ attention away from the Free Trade coffees to other stuff. so i decided to pop by. besides, if they have it and i get to drink it, kudos to me, then my money goes to those way poorer than me, and i can pass the week without lunches.

if they don’t sell it to me, then, yay, i save my money. win-win yer?

so i popped into the civic starbucks, which is just beside the merry go round, hoping they won’t disappoint me, and then asked for free trade coffee.

Guy: huh?

me: Can i have free trade coffee? you do have that don’t you?

Guy: free…trade???

me: FREE… TRADE… (admittedly, some people have problems with my pronounciation, accent and it was fairly crowded today).

Guy: ?!?!! *stares at girl beside him*

Girl: free… trade coffee?

me: yes… (a little annoyed by now… queue still growing).

Girl: oh yer, yes we have *points guy to the shelf outside*

so he walks me to the shelf just right outside of the counter, that comes with the rest of the roasted coffee beans, and showed me a PACK of the FT coffee beans.

me: uhm, i meant the coffee in a cup itself, don’t you guys make them?

Guy: no we don’t, we may only make them on special days. such as christmas or something.

Me: oh.. so u don’t make them normally?

Guy : no… we only sell them in packs.

that got me confused. i came home, run a check through their website, and saw nothing about brewing them within australia. a closer look at the pdf document on greenlagirl’s site seems to suggest that it’s only good for American Starbucks., but being put in the paragraph before stating that it is also sold worldwide might have made it look like it is also supposed to be brewed as “coffee of the week” or just be brewed when people ask for it.

i didn’t have a close look at the pack’s name though, but the coffee of the week is Guatemala. Can anyone verify if it’s meant to be this week’s Free Trade Coffee?

in the mean time, i am confused more than thinking that i have accomplished this challenge at all. however, i am disappointed though, that instead of also introducing it as a weekly coffee, they have just decided to lazily put it up as a pack of roasted coffee beans.

not everyone would buy a pack of them, and people i know prefers to have someone else make their coffee for them, while they sit by the pavement side, enjoying a sip while reading or chatting to friends, or just surfing the wireless at starbucks.

EDIT: since i suck at striking out things, and since this is meant to be one post, not a thousand posts so people could read, i KNOW it’s meant to be FAIR TRADE. i don’t know why i kept messing it up with FREE TRADE agreement in my head and ended up typing that out instead. i should go sleep really -.-

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