Peace Coffee is a terrific Minneapolis company committed to organic, fair trade beans. Here's what it says on their site:
Peace Coffee [grows from] experiences in the coffee regions, time spent working in local cooperatives and a desire to push fair trade to the highest level. Since the first batch of Guatemalan coffee, we have made connections with coffee cooperatives in Mexico, Sumatra, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Peru, Nicaragua and Colombia. We have also changed the supply chain by co-founding Cooperative Coffees (www.cooperativecoffees.com), a coop of roasters formed to import 100 percent fair trade coffee direct from the farmer coops that grow it. Peace Coffee today includes a staff of twelve and coffee varieties of fifteen and growing. We roast, pack and distribute our coffee beans all under one eco-friendly roof in Minneapolis. In the Twin Cities metro, Peace Coffee still delivers by bike year-round and our suburban accounts get their coffee from a big, bright biodiesel van. What remains unchanged is our complete devotion to the idea of a fairly traded, farmer-friendly product and the wonders of a great cup of coffee.
Peace Coffee is as close as a coffee drinker in the Twin Cities can get to doing the local thing - it's roasted in South Minneapolis, transported by bicycle and biodiesel van, sold in local grocery stores (not just in the Twin Cities) and coffee shops (along with school PTAs like my son's). What's more, Peace Coffee is incredibly involved in the community as well. Best of all, the coffee is very tasty, with a crazy number of roasts to choose from. My favorite is Colombian Heavy Pedal Roast, accurately described on the Peace Coffee site as "Bold flavor and fuel for the uphill. Sweetness on the way down."
Apparently it's especially good if you're about to get on your bike, which I'm hoping to do soon...
