Ben & Jerry’s Now Sells Fair Trade Coffee

Posted on August 27, 2010 by

It comes as no surprise that Ben & Jerry’s would like to capitalize on the lucrative coffee market, joining other global corporations such as McDonalds and Subway. It also comes as no surprise that they would choose to feature Fair Trade Coffee as one of their key selling points since, in theory at least, both Ben & Jerry’s and Fair Trade are wholesome, healthy, organic and benevolent industries. I mean just look at the picture of Ben & Jerry in the corner. See how wholesome and benevolent they look? Unfortunately Ben & Jerry’s is owned by Unilever, a company manufacturing over 400 brands with factories on every continent. In other words, one of the largest food and beverage corporations in the world. It would be easy for Unilever to go beyond the marketing advantages of Fair Trade and affect real change. To offer much more positive, benevolent socioeconomic impact on the lives of their farmers instead of tapping into the misconceptions of the public. But they don’t. And I don’t really blame them. Why should they? They’re competing with McDonalds and Subway.

[via Ben & Jerry's]

  • swagv

    Ice Cream … and coffee? This smells like one of those decisions that companies later regret, downsizing or selling off their side-businesses to return to their “core values” the minute their stock prices suffer.nnThe only dimension that makes it somewhat relevant to their product line is, as you mention, the feel-good social angle. Unilever has done a good job of figuring how to sell social guilt relief to customers. Still, I don’t see this as sustainable under the Ben & Jerry’s brand.

  • Anonymous

    Interesting. Ben & Jerry’s only arrived in Australia at the beginning of 2010 but served Fair Trade espresso coffee (no drip) from the first day (I did their initial staff training session.) I wonder if they were testing the concept here first.

  • http://shotzombies.com Mike White

    Just out of curiosity, how did you get involved in their training?

  • Anonymous

    The company that supplies and sells the coffee to Ben & Jerry’s here used to be a client of mine and subsequently we contract roast some of their coffee at AIR. They asked me to conduct a few training sessions on top of the coffee supply to set a standard for their espresso production and presentation.

  • Joecoffeestore

    We are not, repeat NOT involved in this. :)