Up north in the Green Mountain State, Vermonters are well known for their love of snow, which goes hand-in-hand with ‘the cold’. During the first big snowstorm of 2010, here at Green Mountain Coffee, we were celebrating the snow, by enjoying a nice round of creemee’s. [A creemee is a soft-serve ice cream delight for all of you 'out-of-staters'] No, for the record, we are not crazy… and as much as we love our coffee here… in sticking with the cold weather theme, we traded in the caffeine that afternoon for some sweet and frigid yumminess!
No, that isn’t soup they are enjoying... they are CREEMEE's!
Everyone, who made it through the blustery weather into the office that day, had a creemee!
Just another snowy day here in the mountains of Vermont.
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.
Winston Rost and Marvin Rojas Alvarado and the "plaque"
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.
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.”
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.
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)!”
Once a year, Green Mountain Coffee employees get the chance to try out for the Tasting Team, a group that provides a second level of scrutiny for quality assurance and new product testing in our Coffee Lab.
As someone who tried to prep for it, let me tell you: it’s a test you can’t prepare for – no flashcards, mnemonic devices, or cramming will help your nose pick up on the subtle earthiness of green peas or your tongue define the intensity of a salty slurry. You can help yourself by avoiding the urge to put on musk cologne that day or eating an onion pie the night before, but when it comes right down to it, this is a test for your senses and nothing else.
While you can’t study for it, you do get to know exactly what’s on the exam. The screening itself tests the sensory sensations of olfaction and gustation (smell and taste for those not accustomed to organoleptic jargon). You taste sour, salty, and sweet slurries to rank intensities, identify solutions, and determine the ratios of blends. You also take the French based tool kit called “Le Nez Du Café” (the nose of coffee), where you identify a fragrance (from vanilla to rubber) in a blind exercise.
In order to pass the screening, you must get a passing grade for each of the three graded sections (100% being one passing grade for the first taste test).
Eek.
Oh, and did I mention? There’s no coffee involved in this test.
Double eek.
Despite my initial concerns, this was one of the most entertaining and edifying tests I have ever taken. In under an hour, my taste buds were completed saturated and my nose a twinge runny, but my mind was a buzz with a new mantra: “Tasting Team. Tasting Team. Ra, ra, ra!”
So it should not be unexpected that I jumped for joy when I received my results: I made it.
As a new member of the Tasting Team, I’ll be learning more about coffee, teaming up with other members of the company, sharing ideas and insights on our coffees, and actually impacting product decisions.
If that’s not a perk of working here, I don’t know what is.
Take a look at the Tasting on our Flickr account for full descriptions here or in the slide show above.
Even though the holidays have passed, the winter wonderland continues with web sales everywhere! Well, Green Mountain Coffee is joining the chorus! Some of our stylish mugs, sleek equipment, and tasty treats are on sale now, just for you, at up to 50% off.*
*Cafe Express Members: Discount will be combined with your 10% Cafe Express Membership discount. Non-coffee items cannot be added to your recurring Cafe Express shipment.
