I had the opportunity to sit down with Joey Crawford, owner of The Barking Dog, a new coffee shop in downtown Beaumont. Here are a few excerpts from our Q&A session.
K: What separates The Barking Dog from other coffee shops?
J: Well, the fair trade thing for starters. We are conveniently located in downtown Beaumont. Also, we try to create a more independent atmosphere as opposed to a corporate feel. We wanted [the coffee shop] to be downtown and we wanted it to look eclectic.
K: What separates The Barking Dog from other coffee shops?
J: Well, the fair trade thing for starters. We are conveniently located in downtown Beaumont. Also, we try to create a more independent atmosphere as opposed to a corporate feel. We wanted [the coffee shop] to be downtown and we wanted it to look eclectic.
K: What is your target market?
J: Depends on the time of day. We have business workers in the morning and college students in the evenings and on weekends.
K: What did you do before the shop?
J: I sold everything, including medical equipment, internet service, and cell phones. Now I’m selling coffee. I also deal with rental property.
K: How would describe fair trade and the process?
J: I first got interest in it when I found out coffee is the second largest money grossing industry per year, only second to oil. And so many people working in the coffee industry in South America and other parts of the world work for such small amounts of money. They are slaves to that industry. If that's all they know, they don't make enough money to educate themselves or their children to adapt to an industry other than coffee.
The idea behind fair trade is to guarantee them [the local farmers] a higher amount per pound of coffee-- and it doesn't sound like much when you're talking $0.25 more per pound, but for families living on $3,000 or $4,000 per year, that adds up quite a bit. Fair trade not only gives them more money, but educates them on how to invest it into their education and better farming techniques, especially for organic farming.
[Fair Trade] is also a social conscience and economic empowerment thing. The world is more open now than it used to be. Borders are more accessible. America has the potential to, just by our buying habits, change things all across the world. If enough people support fair trade and make that part of their buying habits, then it helps raise the life standards of people all around the world.
The fair trade process for coffee shops in America is kind of a co-op thing through the roasters. Katz Coffee in Houston supplies the coffee for The Barking Dog. All the literature I put forth is paid for by the roasters' contributions to the fair trade program.
K: What can we do to help out?
J: You can buy cotton shirts and shoes, fair trade. I mean there's someone making our shoes for ten cents an hour. Sometimes we get mad that we had to spend $90 instead of $80 on shoes when we can actually afford that, and they are just shoes. That's the only way to put it. It's not like old time slavery, but still in a way, it's economic slavery.
There was a guy who comes in here and he was doing a speech at Lamar [University] about fair trade and he asked me if he could borrow some things. I gave him a few pamphlets and a DVD to show during his speech. During his speech a girl in his class started crying. It bothered him since he didn't know why she was crying. He discovered that the girl was from Venezuela and her dad was actually a coffee farmer. That's the way she was able to go to college here in the U.S.-- because of the fair trade money that was provided to her family.
K: Do you have anything you want to add?
J: Depends on the time of day. We have business workers in the morning and college students in the evenings and on weekends.
K: What did you do before the shop?
J: I sold everything, including medical equipment, internet service, and cell phones. Now I’m selling coffee. I also deal with rental property.
K: How would describe fair trade and the process?
J: I first got interest in it when I found out coffee is the second largest money grossing industry per year, only second to oil. And so many people working in the coffee industry in South America and other parts of the world work for such small amounts of money. They are slaves to that industry. If that's all they know, they don't make enough money to educate themselves or their children to adapt to an industry other than coffee.
The idea behind fair trade is to guarantee them [the local farmers] a higher amount per pound of coffee-- and it doesn't sound like much when you're talking $0.25 more per pound, but for families living on $3,000 or $4,000 per year, that adds up quite a bit. Fair trade not only gives them more money, but educates them on how to invest it into their education and better farming techniques, especially for organic farming.
[Fair Trade] is also a social conscience and economic empowerment thing. The world is more open now than it used to be. Borders are more accessible. America has the potential to, just by our buying habits, change things all across the world. If enough people support fair trade and make that part of their buying habits, then it helps raise the life standards of people all around the world.
The fair trade process for coffee shops in America is kind of a co-op thing through the roasters. Katz Coffee in Houston supplies the coffee for The Barking Dog. All the literature I put forth is paid for by the roasters' contributions to the fair trade program.
K: What can we do to help out?
J: You can buy cotton shirts and shoes, fair trade. I mean there's someone making our shoes for ten cents an hour. Sometimes we get mad that we had to spend $90 instead of $80 on shoes when we can actually afford that, and they are just shoes. That's the only way to put it. It's not like old time slavery, but still in a way, it's economic slavery.
There was a guy who comes in here and he was doing a speech at Lamar [University] about fair trade and he asked me if he could borrow some things. I gave him a few pamphlets and a DVD to show during his speech. During his speech a girl in his class started crying. It bothered him since he didn't know why she was crying. He discovered that the girl was from Venezuela and her dad was actually a coffee farmer. That's the way she was able to go to college here in the U.S.-- because of the fair trade money that was provided to her family.
K: Do you have anything you want to add?
J: Fair trade is empowering people to use the resources they currently have to create a better life economically and educationally, because they are going to farm coffee beans whether they are getting $1.20 per pound or $0.50 per pound for it.
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