Business owners around the country are worried about the potential effects of the recession on their sales. Restaurants are changing their offerings to appeal to tighter budgets. However, a Seattle coffee shop owner has made the decision to keep offering higher-end specialty coffee, such as the $6 per cup Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Beloya.
“The Beloya is one of the most exciting coffees we’ve had in a while,” says owner Tatiana Becker. “It tastes like a raspberry truffle. This flavor mainly results from the way the coffee cherries were dried. It’s a new process called S-Curve beds.”
Tatiana doesn’t worry that cost-conscious consumers will skip coffees like the Beloya in favor of a cheaper brew. “People come to Trabant because they expect this level of quality. They also appreciate the fact that the people that grow our coffee always receive at least double the Fair-Trade price.”
She thinks it is important for socially-conscious consumers to think about producers in both good times and bad. When times are hard here, they are often harder in producing countries. A weak dollar has meant a tremendous loss in buying power for growers, many of whom live close to a subsistence level. On top of that, production costs have risen 30% in the past year, mostly a result of fertilizer costs tripling.
Reminds Tatiana, “The people that grow these coffees make a tremendous investment in quality and sustainability. That’s not something that we can just walk away from in a tough year, and then expect the quality to be there next year. This takes a year-over-year commitment to the coffee trees, the environment, and the people that work on the farm.”
