April 3, 2008

WalMart Goes Fair Trade and Organic

Yup, it's true, WalMart has a new line of coffee coming out under the Sam's Choice label that will include Fair Trade, Organics and even a "Carbon Neutral" coffee. Now some cynics will say that they've just ruined the world (again) by getting consumers to consider this potentially bad coffee instead of a "Real" do-gooder quality coffee. I say good for them and good for us.

I am am pretty confident that I am not going to buy WalMart coffee anyway, but I would suspect that the growers who are getting paid extra from the world's largest retailer are pretty happy to put a little extra jingle in their pockets. Isn't that the goal of Fair Trade? The cynic in me that keeps me from heading off to WalMart on a daily basis says that WalMart will cut a deal and then force Fair Trade prices down in some kind of Every Day Low Prices scheme, but until I hear that, I am on board.

The other aspect is that this will hopefully get the average WalMart shopper paying attention to better coffee. Once they see the difference between the cheapest tin on the shelf and a bag of high quality arabica coffee, they might not want to go back. That puts them on the road to nirvana, or at least the road where life may be a little bit better because they can appreciate some of the wonderful flavor discoveries in a cup of coffee instead of their usual "Hot-Brown" cup every morning.

Via