Green Mountain Cafe – The Green Mountain Coffee Blog

Today as we speak, we’re roasting up the Special Reserve Costa Rican coffee called “Los Nacientes”. This is one of the farms that a bunch of employees and I visited just two weeks ago on an Employee Source Trip.

When I started working at GMCR in the Factory Outlet Store in 1991 (they weren’t called cafés back then), making $5.00 per hour part time, there were slow spots in the afternoon. I’d read the paper, or pick up a coffee book and brush up on coffee terminology, or read what was basically the employee newsletter.

One afternoon I read about what turned out to be the first of many, many employee source trips, at the time to Costa Rica. I thought that was coolest thing. And that was when my $5.00 per hour part time job stopped being an in-between-ski-season job and started being something that 18 years later is still morphing into interesting and satisfying work that pays me to drink coffee and travel to far off places and meet great coffee farmers.

I finally got to go to Costa Rica in 1996 and it was a trip I will never forget. Fast forward to 2010 and I get to bring employees to Costa Rica and meet interesting farmers like Marvin Rojas Alvarado, one of the many family members helping run the sprawling 200 acre coffee farm called Los Nacientes (The Springs) in Palmares, in the West Valley of Costa Rica.

In 1996 I couldn’t speak any Spanish, so it was hard to communicate with anyone, but since then I’ve gotten pretty good at Spanish and on this trip I was able to talk to Marvin directly. About the farm, his coffee, the two mills on the farm (one that is 100 years old and still uses an ancient stone pulping wheel), and what it’s like to be a coffee farmer.

We brought a plaque to the farm that had a few words (in Spanish) of thanks and appreciation and hope for a long future together. When we gave it to him, he read it to himself, looked up and said “wow – that’s really nice – no one has ever given me a trophy like this.” We could tell he was very touched. For me it was thrilling just to be having such a nice long conversation with him. The distant memories of killing time in the Factory Outlet store, dreaming of trips to coffee lands, were getting even more distant.

30 minutes ago the roasters brought in their first test roast for the Coffee Department to taste and approve. Approve we do! Like Lindsey Bolger says, it’s like a splash of orange juice and breakfast.

I told Marvin we’d try really hard to sell his delicious coffee, so please buy some here. If you have any comments you’d like me to pass along to him and his family (he’d be thrilled), post them here and I’ll pass them along.

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Plenty, it turns out.

We sponsor a training program with our friends at Sustainable Harvest in Lima, Peru that teaches coop members and farmers in Peru to cup. Cupping is the sensory evaluation of coffee using a rigorous, objective set of protocols that helps everyone in the supply chain fairly and accurately judge and grade coffee.

As I’m writing, there’s a class going on right now in Lima, and they sent me a great picture of fruits and teas and chocolates. Olga from their office said,

“Here producers are smelling, tasting and feeling all the fruits, spices, and tea infusions so they can create a sensory memory for cupping and identify what is a note of clove, chocolate, citris, etc.”

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The President’s Day holiday weekend is typically one of the busiest skiing and riding weekends at resorts across Vermont.  This year proved to be no different, as thousands of visitors chose to learn what those of us who live here have known for generations — for winter sports in the East, you just can’t beat what Vermont has to offer.  We’ve been a little light on the white stuff so far this season, but all the ski areas were geared up, groomed, and ready to go nonetheless.

To join in the fun, we had a sampling team take to the slopes at Killington, where they dispensed hundreds of samples of, among other offerings, our delicious Fair Trade Winter seasonals — Wicked Winter Blend and Golden French Toast.  Many of the samples came from K-Cups, brewed on the spot using Keurig B60 Special Edition Brewers.

Many more samples were distributed by mobile brand ambassadors, armed with special beverage-dispensing backpacks.  This intrepid coffee infantry was able to bring fresh, hot Green Mountain Coffee right to folks in lift lines and around the base lodges…right where people needed it most.

You know what they say about Vermont — it’s ten months of winter and two months of really poor sledding.  So don’t worry if you haven’t made it up here to frolic in nature’s playground yet this winter, there’s still plenty of time to do so.

See you on the slopes….

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It’s Changemaker Tuesday, and you know what that means – updates!  It’s been about a week since we launched the Revelation to Action Competition. We partnered with Ashoka’s Changemakers to launch this online competition to find and help fund creative solutions to strengthen communities across New England and New York (see last week’s blog post for more details).

Each week we’ll be working with Sarah and Noelle from Changemakers to post a weekly video – Coffee Break – on the progress of the competition. You can check out the first Coffee Break here. Below you can find the next episode of Coffee Break, featuring Kristen and myself at our Visitors Center in Waterbury, Vermont. From the Green Mountain Coffee side of things, we’ll be filming at a different location for each episode. Is there someplace on our Waterbury campus you’re curious to see? Leave us suggestions below and you may see us there on our next episode.

Now, for this week’s Coffee Break: We discuss the upcoming ReTweet competition which starts on Friday, 2/19.

For rules and regulations, go to Changemakers.com/Revelation and click on Eligibility. Follow Changemakers and Green Mountain Coffee on Twitter for more details.

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Here at Green Mountain Coffee, we believe that real change starts at home.  It’s because of this belief that working together with Ashoka’s Changemakers to launch an online competition to find and help fund creative solutions to strengthen communities across New England and New York.

The Revelation to Action ^sm competition aims to discover promising initiatives, explore fresh ideas, and encourage collaboration on the best ways to inspire community action.  Ideas could include rallying a regional group to support a local foodbank, helping a community address its carbon footprint, establishing a program to incentivize recycling, or mobilizing a neighborhood to do an annual river clean-up.

Take a peek at what Michael Dupee, Vice President of Corporate and Social Responsibility for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. and Charlie Brown, Changemaker’s Executive Director, have to say about the competition:

Now, for the details:

The competition takes place at www.Changemakers.com/Revelation, where community members are invited to:

• Enter solutions to strengthen the community,
• Nominate individuals and organizations with community solutions,
• Discuss and share ideas and success stories,
• Comment on proposals, and
• Vote for finalists after June 9, 2010.

Winners will be judged on innovation, social impact and long-term sustainability.  The best innovations – top 3 voted by the community, and then one from each New England state and New York – will be awarded prizes totaling $50,000.  For complete rules and regulations of this competition, visit www.Changemakers.com/Revelation and click on “Eligibility, Criteria and Prizes.”

Let the change begin!

Stay tuned for updates our blog, Facebook page, Twitter account, or YouTube channel. [And don’t forget about Changemakers – they’re on their blog,  Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, too!]  We’ll keep you in the loop on the latest news, ideas, and innovation that this competition brings.

So, the question must be asked:  Are you a Changemaker?

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For now through April 1st, all Cafe EXPRESS members will save $2.50 per box of K-Cups instead of our usual $2 discount.  That means the typical the 4 box order will save $10 plus receive FREE Shipping.  This is our best offer yet, so act now.

If you are not a member of Cafe EXPRESS, now is the perfect time to join.  If you are a member, sit back and enjoy the extra savings.  If you are a member and your next order is scheduled to ship in April, change your next order to February or March.  And if you are a Platinum member, you’ll save $3 a box.  What’s Cafe EXPRESS Platinum?  Click here to learn.

We hope these extra savings make Cafe EXPRESS that much more of an enjoyable experience.  We think it’s the most convenient way for Keurig brewer owners to buy K-Cups.    Cafe EXPRESS is free to join, offers better prices, greater variety and the freshest direct-from-the-roaster taste.  Click here to read how current members love Cafe EXPRESS.

And over the next few months, we’ll have even more innovative K-Cups to choose from.  Stay tuned!

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One of the amazing benefits we have at Green Mountain Coffee is our CAFE time. We have 52 hours of paid time-off per year to volunteer. One of the challenges with this though, is finding a volunteer activity that fits with your work schedule and taps into your passions. Two women decided to create their own opportunity, building on their love of knitting.  Below is their story.

Written by Jeannine Simpkins and Trish D’Arcy:

“Comfy Creations was born from a desire to meet with other people who love to knit and crochet, and to produce items for people in need.  A little research proved that as long as we were creating items for a 501C3, non-profit organizations, we could utilize the Café Time program that is offered by Green Mountain Coffee.  This program allows employees to donate time to a non-profit during their working hours, up to 52 hours a year, and be paid while volunteering. This hobby was the perfect opportunity for us to utilize Café Time and bring in more people who had the same desire to knit & crochet items for those in needs.

Our initial projects were making warm winter items for The Salvation Army and for Friends of Pine Ridge Reservation.  Our current effort is to make 7 by 7inch squares which will be sewn together into afghans for WorldCare.org, for the benefit of Haitian earthquake survivors.

We currently have volunteers from our facilities throughout the country (Vermont, Washington and Massachusetts)!”

Hear it in their own words:

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