Having starved my body enough of its vital nutrients, I cracked the other day when handed a free sample of a basic staple of life: Starbucks new instant VIA coffee, named after the man who invented their own brand: Don Valencia.  This new VIA coffee has been in development for 20 years, and was finally released this year, two years after Don Valencia’s death.

Consumer ethics is hard to follow these days with so many super mega store options.  The aisles are full of canned crap, where consumers are becoming more distant from their food sources, many of which are made under slave-like conditions or are practically stolen from the host country, never paying a fair wage for a top product.  After attending Seattle’s Green Festival last weekend, I decided to never again buy chocolate that is not Fair Trade certified after watching a film of Guyana boys being beaten and forced to work without wage to support us.  The ending line that blazed in my brain was of an African boy stating, “You eat my flesh.”

Starbucks is Fair Trade certified.  Has been for years.  They are kind of a pioneer in that field.  Currently, they are one of the largest buyers of Fair Trade coffee, doubling their purchases to 40 million pounds this year alone, making them the largest purchaser of Fair Trade certified coffee in the world.  Social responsibility earns lots of points in my book.

So does buying local and from local businesses.  Which leaves me in another quandary.  Go Local Tacoma says that for every buck spent in Tacoma, approximately .68 cents stay in the community.  Is Starbucks considered local to Washington?  Just because they are a huge corporate organization dedicated to bring in the honey money for their stock holders by selling sub-par coffee (for the most part) doesn’t just fully write them out of the “local” scene.  The fight exits within our ranks of what, exactly, “local” means.  Washington?  The Pacific Northwest?  West coast?  United States?  North America?  For myself, I stick with Northwest products as much as possible.  Since Starbucks is based in Washington, my conscience can buy their coffee and feel good about supporting “my” local area.

The next question arises, is Starbucks fighting back against McDonald’s witty coffee campaign?  I think I laughed myself silly on the way to work last fall while listening to a McDonald’s radio ad, where a emotional hippy upstart was changed into a conservative business Republican after having McDonald’s latte.  The political fight of Republicans accusing liberals of being elitist is carried out in McDonald’s campaign strategy.  Huffington Post reports that Starbucks is repositioning away from their elitist $4 coffee drinks and in its place offer things like: value meal “breakfast pairings” at a cost of $3.95 to “appeal to cost-conscious customers.”  Starbucks, after all, made it cool to pay a high price for a cuppa Joe, bringing in scarf-wearing women and the metrosexual men to “hang out” in the posh Starbucky setting.

Another cost-cutting four-buck buster is the new Starbucks VIA, released this past February.  When I opened the tiny packet and watched the finely grounded beans dissolve in a cup of hot water, I was positioned over the sink, expecting to spew it out and decry the decay of coffee in America.  When young bucks and hussies are reduced to dissolving coffee beans in their water, it is just not a good sign for America’s values–what are we coming to?  Instant breakfasts, dissolved in a glass of Oprah’s Acai juice?  Instant friendships that can be consumed with a beer?  Instead of spewing, I drank.  To the dregs.  This coffee was impresive, despite being instant (my inner elitist comes out in regards to “instant” coffee).  Starbucks VIA contains the original essential oils from the finely-ground coffee beans, which seems to be the secret ingredient–traditional instant coffee lacks those essential oils which gives good coffee its rich and full-bodied flavor and aroma.

Despite the impressive taste, Starbucks VIA instant coffee is better at what, I ask?  Beating back home invaders?  Overcoming entropy?  Providing a clean, renewable source of energy?  Perhaps solving the meaning of life?  VIA gains ground on the fact that it allows me to fuel up any time, any where, and will allow yet more minerals to be leeched from my system as I become more dependent on coffee; and for a cheaper price, too.

Cheap and instant.  The way Americans like their women and now, their coffee.

image by http://www.flickr.com/photos/cafemama/

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 4th, 2009 at 3:28 pm and is filed under Culture, Health & Living, Local News, Ripe!, Seattle, Tacoma, Washington State. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.