Just Coffee

The real BIO-FUEL, originally uploaded by justcoffee4u.

The second annual " BIKE THE BARNS" CSA tour was a raging success. 500-plus cyclists did the rural ride this year. Coffee for at least 400 was served at Drumlin farm at 7:30 am! I was up at 4:30 and brewing by 5am -- Made it to Cafe Soleil by 7am to pick up a 1000 pastries and hard boiled eggs --- All delivered to Drumlin by 7:33 --- they went thru 6 - 5 gallon cambro's of BIKE FUEL by 8:30 -- the rest of my day was spent in JC 1 picking up broken bikes or bikers (only one biker).

All in all a great day -- Check out the Pics --

Longtime JC friend Dan Jaffee was recently awarded the 2007 C. Wright Mills Book Award for the book based on his Ph.D. dissertation from UW, Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival. It's kind of a big deal, and well deserved.

As explained by the Society for the Study of Social Problems which administers the award:

C. Wright Mills wrote in The Power Elite that: “Only when mind has an autonomous basis, independent of power, but powerfully related to it, can mind exert its force in the shaping of human affairs. This is democratically possible only when there exists a free and knowledgeable public, to which [people] of knowledge may address themselves, and to which [people] of power are truly responsible.”

They award the prize to the book that most effectively:

1) critically addresses an issue of contemporary public importance,

2) brings to the topic a fresh, imaginative perspective,

3) advances social scientific understanding of the topic,

4) displays a theoretically informed view and empirical orientation,

5) evinces quality in style of writing,

6) explicitly or implicitly contains implications for courses of action.

Congrats Dan!

Here is another nice article about Oscura; the new Furthermore beer brewed with La FEM grown, JC-roasted coffee.

Read it, if you please. And then drink some of them Oscuras. If you are not driving, you can maybe have more than one. You can find Furthermore at these places.

Thanks Furthermore and FEM!

The 2008 version of "Where Your Money Goes" is now loaded on the right sidebar of our homepage.

Please notice that almost every cost has gone up in the past year.

The cool part of that is that we are paying growers more money. The downside is that other costs have gone up as well.

Another note-- We have largely switched to 12oz bags, but the breakdown is in pounds. This is because we deal in pounds when we buy coffee from farmers and because we sell in two pound and five pound bags as well. To get the right equation for 12-ouncers, please take .75 of the costs presented. Except for bags and labels which are good to go.

This is another piece of the JC Transparency Project. We will have more coming. Please see our supply chain and profit and loss statements for even more info on what in the heck we are doing here.

And if you like the idea of being up front with traditionally guarded business info, ask other companies you buy from to show you the same.

Oh, and remember the "retail mark up" is controlled by the store you buy from, not JC. That percentage will vary from place to place.

Barista Training, originally uploaded by justcoffee4u.

Mark T Spark has officially moved on -- Last weekend we moved all of him... and his stuff to Lincoln NE .. --Click Here for some of the photos
-- He didn't have much time to relax once we got there ...Deb started his barista training as soon as we arrived -- "man who can catch fly with chopsticks will make good barista" wax on wax off --- He has a beautiful new family and it was as happy as it was sad to say goodbye -- I will miss him so much in the day to day around Madison. My family and I have eaten a good number of meals at his house we will miss that the most - supper at his house is always as good for the palate as it is for the soul. I guess its just a bit more of a drive now --- Mark Deb and Jonah -- we will see you soon!!!!

Chadron F. T. D.

Furthermore brewery of Spring Green, WI has just released their delicious new coffee beer Oscura, and we couldn't be more excited. This incredible lager is cold brewed with La FEM's medium roast coffee producing a sweet aromatic goodness and a wide awake drunk.

The Gardeners of Eden East Timor Seed Project is calling for support for its 2009 program. You can help by sending seeds or making donations. With global food stockpiling and rising prices, Timorese families need to renovate their traditional farming systems organically and address the annual hunger and nutrition gaps, as well as invest carefully in other crops (forestry and small-commercial farming systems) sufficient to support trading. To do this, they need seeds, tools, supplies, and training.

One of the most commonly overlooked ethics of fair trade is transparency. We at JC are committed to it and in order to show this we have posted our Profit and Loss statements since 2002-- our first year of business.

To summarize the P&Ls, we have grown quickly and shown a slight loss or slight profit every year. Our accountant would call us a textbook "break even" company. We have shown small losses for the past two years, this year we are committed to turning that around. Thus far we are running at a slight profit for the year, so we'll see. The important thing for us-- as a worker cooperative-- is to provide a decent income stream to all people who work at our co-op as well as to the growers that we work with. In this we have been fairly successful.

The purpose of this exercise is to show you exactly what we are doing with our company. This is why we post our contracts with the growers we buy from as well as all of the transaction documentation for getting the coffee from the farmers to us. We will also soon have balance sheets on line as well as salary information for people working at JC.