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> I've always felf the entire brew pod setup is an answer to a single question: "how do you get customers to accept cafeteria margins on their homebrew coffee?
by rodgerd 12y ago
> I've always felf the entire brew pod setup is an answer to a single question: "how do you get customers to accept cafeteria margins on their homebrew coffee?"
There's also "how do we stop losing business to companies that don't abuse the shit out of their suppliers?" There has been an increasing amount of noise over the last 5-10 years about the phenominal margins that exist in the coffee business, with growers typically seeing the barest fraction of what companies like Nestle sell coffee for. As companies selling fair trade coffee become more profitable, what are companies like Nestle to do?
- furyg3 12y agoI work in this space, and I will say that consumers can do a lot here to change the behavior of these mega companies when it comes to treatment of farmers. Consumer choices and/or bad press makes big companies move, sometimes very quickly, especially on their premium brands. Due to some earlier PR debacles, nearly all (all?) Nespresso coffee is now Rainforest Alliance certified. A very large amount of coffee at many supermarket chains in many european markets is certified by FairTrade, RFA, or UTZ. Certification isn't the answer to all the problems in the coffee world. I'd rather drink coffee where the small independent roaster is buddies with the premium quality grower, but I don't see this becoming the norm. It'd really make my day to see all coffee from these big actors (not just their premium brands) certified under a 3rd party scheme.