Cafe Feminino now at Trader Joe's!

In the current issue of World Pulse Magazine is a story called Coffee Groundswell, which discusses women's cooperatives that have been formed in the coffee growing countries to help women take leadership roles and get better prices for their coffee. One of the cooperatives mentioned is Cafe Feminino in Peru.

I had heard about this cooperative in Utne magazine a year or two ago, and was very impressed with what they are doing. I tried to get my local food co-op to stock this coffee, but they chose not to. Imagine my surprise when I walked into Trader Joe's near my house and found it among their coffee choices! I not only expressed my thanks to customer service, but wrote to the national headquarters to say how pleased I was that they were carrying it. I also suggested that they feature it in their monthly magazine. They wrote back, saying the coffe was on the shelves of all 300 of their American stores. Way to go, Trader Joes!

(For those of you reading this who don't live in America, Trader Joes is a pretty cool specialty grocery store that stocks a fair amount of organic food, and is open to persuasion by its customers to make more progressive choices about the items it stocks. It's not perfect by far, and is a national chain, but, hey -- what other national chain carries Cafe Feminino?)