When Coffee Meets Ice Cream – A Fair Trade?
Pritchard’s Ice Cream meets where its coffee flavors come from in Costa Rica
SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica – Three hours from San José, Coffea Arabica plants grow in the rocky, hilly farmland of the Monteverde region. The humid and shady climate around the green and hilly region helps coffee grow. Such is the Mora family coffee plantation, where Pritchard’s Ice Cream gets its coffee for some of their flavors.
Earlier this October, Pritchard’s Ice Cream CEO Sam Pritchard took a business trip to the Mora’s on behalf of examining fair trade partners and conditions in person. Pritchard traveled with his wife Maya, his ten-year-old daughter Cara, and seven-year-old son Sam Jr. Pritchard’s cousin Tricia Pritchard-Smith and her husband Tom also came with the family, along with head ice cream chef Jana Larson. Local translator Isabel accompanied the group upon their arrival in Costa Rica.
“For as much coffee as I drink, you’d think I’d know more about how it’s grown,” said Pritchard. “I thought coffee trees grew in neat little rows, like a little coffee orchard.”
Citrus fruit and papaya trees, banana plants, and even pineapple patches grow alongside the coffee. This allows the coffee to have better taste and more nutrients while ensuring the excess rainwater goes to the other crops and flowers. Orchids planted in the trees help attract bees and hummingbirds, crucial to the pollination of coffee blossoms.
Visiting the plantation, the group met Benicio (Benny) Mora, who has farmed and processed coffee for nearly 30 years. Benny’s sons, high school graduates Angelo and Estevan, along with his daughter, high school senior Paloma, also work on the farm while studying. The three children can focus on their education and not drop out to worry about the money thanks to fair trade.
The coffee plantation uses fair trade much like other Pritchard’s imported ingredients. According to a European Fair Trade Agreement on OneVillage.com, an international fair trade organization, fair trade enables marginalized producers and workers to stabilize their security and economic sustainability. By paying fair prices in the area and ensuring no one-sided advantages against them, production organizations can avoid unnecessary debts. Thus the Mora family can sustain themselves with enough coffee and other crops and not go into debt or starvation.
As a 17-year-old, Tricia became interested in the fair trade movement. She encouraged her uncle, Sam’s father and previous CEO of Pritchard’s, Bruce, to source fair trade goods whenever possible. Other than coffee, these fair trade items include sugars, cardamom, vanilla, and cocoa from the U.S. Since 1994, Pritchard’s has used fair trade alongside organic and local farm ingredients.
Like Tricia, Paloma wants to work with fair trade and international economic equity. She plans to attend college and major in economics.
“I want to learn more about the world economies and how we can create systems where everyone wins,” she said, “not systems of winners and losers.”
Thanks to the Mora family and fair traded coffee, Pritchard’s stores feature coffee ice cream, as well as seasonally rotating flavors such as coffee toffee and brown sugar coffee buzz. These flavors and others were overnighted to Costa Rica from Minneapolis so the Mora’s could taste the fruits of their labor.
“I like ice cream with fruit, mango is my favorite,” said Benny. “When they told me they used my coffee to make ice cream I couldn’t believe it. I tasted it. It is good, but I think I will stay with mango.”
Angelo also took well with the flavor.
“Perfection!” he said, taking another spoonful of the pint of coffee toffee flavor. “[Pritchard’s] must open a store here.”
With the success of their Featured Flavors campaign last summer, it seems that Pritchard’s will expand their production to international markets. Pritchard will visit each of the other seven international producers of fair trade imports, including Jamaica and Taiwan.
For now, coffee and ice cream make for a wonderful flavor, at least for the Mora family and in the U.S. One of the Top 24 flavors made specifically for the survey, appropriately named Café Mora for its bittersweet yet creamy taste, is now available as a featured regular flavor in both stores.