Improvements at Fair Grinds

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August 21st, 2012

Dear Fair Grinds Community,

PARDON OUR DUST!
That’s what the construction signs usually say, but actually it’s not going to be that bad, and in fact I think all of you will find this special bulletin welcome news.

We’re fixing the balcony, “waterproofing” the outside patio, and preparing to open up more chairs, tables, umbrellas, computer electricity outlets, and space in our open area. How about that for an exciting addition as we prepare to celebrate our second year of “great coffee for a change?”

Here’s more than you want to know about what’s happening. We’re shoring up and replacing some of the piers and supports for the balcony. We’re replacing all rotten wood and redoing the decking on the balcony. We’re raising the wrought iron fencing on the balcony to the required 42 inches to assure safety for our customers. We’re surfacing the balcony so that rain doesn’t pour into the patio scurrying our customers when we’re facing our current deluge. We’re adding gutters to the balcony so that when the rains come then it will drain to the back, rather than spill over our sides.

Our contractor making these repairs is going to work in sections, so that only a couple of feet of the patio is unavailable at any time during the construction and so that in fact there really isn’t dust or disturbances on the first floor. Furthermore, this should be a quick process finding Labor Day back to normal with the balcony “open for business!”

Frequently asked questions include:

Will the common space be affected?
No. We will continue to operate the common space as usual.

Will dogs be allowed on the balcony?
This is a matter between you and your dog, as long as the dog is not a jumper!

What about smoking? The front sidewalk is not our property, so smokers will continue to enjoy this space. The patio though is going to move to a non-smoking area whenever practicable. Children and others run free in the patio and too often smoke clouds are trapped under the stairway making it less than ideal space. Instead we are going to make the balcony open to smoking, which actually means that our smoking customers will have MORE space to smoke and drink their coffee than they have now! “Whenever practicable” means that the community is self-policing, so when it is raining or inclement, then of course there’s going to be some smoking in the patio, but during the normal wonderful New Orleans weather, it’s balcony rules!

What about music? No music is planned for the balcony because we want to continue to be good neighbors while continuing to welcome musicians to give their time and offer enjoyment to our customers and, I’m not sure that would qualify.

We’re super excited about this huge improvement and its ability to open up more space for our more people who are joining the Fair Grinds community every day! Some pain, but lots of gain!

Thanks as always for your support!

FAIR GRINDS VOTED BEST

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I’ve got some news that is even hotter than the coming summer weather, and it has been very hard to keep it a secret until now, but (big drum roll…), thanks to your support and votes, and many others, Fair Grinds Coffeehouse for the first time has been named by the Times-Picayune as the Readers’ Choice 2012 Best Coffeehouse in New Orleans! When you pick up your Langiappe section in what used to be the daily paper, you will see us right there in the catbird seat at #1!

That’s not all either.

Friends and faithful coffee drinkers at Fair Grinds have also voted Fair Grinds Fair Trade Coffee as the #2 Readers’ Choice Best Cup of Coffee in New Orleans. We’re not getting the big head at Fair Grinds, but I can also assure you that we won’t rest until the people in the Greater New Orleans area find out that we actually have the best cup of coffee in town. We’re setting our sights, and you will enjoy the journey.

Speaking of great fairtrade coffee, we had a ball rolling out the coffee carts (ok, that wasn’t as fun as we had hoped, but thanks to our customers for helping us get across Esplanade Avenue!) over to Cabrini High School to give the young women exam takers a “jolt of justice,” serve up hot and iced “good luck” coffee, and give the girls some good information on the importance of fairtrade. We’re crossing our fingers that we can do this on a regular basis and that the girls cry for more.

We had fun the other day with a book signing in the Fair Grinds Common Space with Lawrence Powell signing his new book about New Orleans, Accidental City, for our good neighbors, Maple Street Bookstore, and we are definitely going to put Larry on our Fair Grinds Dialogue calendar later in the year as more of us make it through the book. The Fair Grinds Dialogue is up in the air for June because our friend and regular tea drinking customer, Jerome Smith, legendary civil rights organizer and long time director and founder of Tambourine & Fan, has been out of pocket so we haven’t been able to tighten him down. Keep an eye on the bulletin board because this still may happen in June or we may have to push it off if Jerome is tied up, but whenever he’s ready, I know this is going to be something the Fair Grinds community will deeply appreciate. This is on the calendar for Tuesday, June 19th at 7PM, but, as I say, stay tuned!

Rising temperatures simply mean that the music has to heat up to keep up and the patio is sometimes cooking so hopefully that will be what you hear in June:

Self Evidence – Friday June 1st 7PM

LNJ Music – Saturday June 2nd 730PM

Benjamin Booker and You’re So Cool – Saturday June 9th 8PM

Andrea Bush – Sunday June 10th 730 PM

Issac Bramblett, Singer & Songwriter – Tuesday June 12th 730 PM

Open Mic with Robert Eustis – Tuesday June 14th 7 PM

Lips & Trips – Friday, June 15th 7pm (Are you coming?!?)

Brian Nebel – Monday June 25th 730 PM

Keep up with the events calendar on our website for any other groups that may be late additions. There are also some nice surprises like the book event for parents and children by Tomas Moniz, the editor of Rad Dad, which I have to admit sounds fascinating to me.

"Sunshine" and "Can't Stop the Beet" are two new offerings at Fairgrinds
Besides the expanding red and orange and gold paint starting to brighten up Fair Grinds another little housekeeping matter in June will be a bit of a shift around the counter. Katie Murphy, who brightens the day for many in the mornings, was a key ingredient in making the new Fair Grinds work when we turned the key on the lock for the first time on October 15th, and she will still be doing so with a smile, but her art has called her so she’s stepping aside as manager to listen to her muse as well in June, and Kami Ownbey, who has been the night manager, is stepping up her game for the whole coffeehouse. Theirs have been the shoulders I’ve gotten to lean on in learning from the cup up, so this transition has been as smooth as silk. Give them some thanks as we head for the summer!

There’s a lot more, but come by Fair Grinds, and we’ll keep trying to surprise you.

Best!

Wade Rathke

Ps. Ok, yes, that means that granitas and more cold drinks are going to be debuting in June, so let us know what you think, and we’re very close to starting to bring the juicer up to the front and make it while you watch. How about that?

Fair Grinds Gets Jazzed Carts

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by Wade Rathke

I am writing this from Tegucigalpa having just returned from three days in the coffee mountains of Honduras in the world famous high altitude growing regions of San Juancito and Marcala. We have been meeting with lots of small and large cooperatives that grow organic and fair trade certified coffee to see if we can negotiate the “next step” improvement in the relationships between producers and consumers: direct trade.

In direct trade all sides benefit by cutting out the middlemen brokers who suck up a huge percentage of the “profit” benefitting neither side of the chain. We are getting a good reception and bringing back 30 pounds of coffee from various cooperatives (COMUCAP, RAOS, and COMISAJUL for example) so that our roaster can test them for our special Fair Grinds Coffeehouse blends. Then we will try to make a final deal, which won’t be easy, and in fact might not be possible this season except in a micro-lot for our own store, which unfortunately might make the whole proposition more expensive, since we would only be buying 2 tons of coffee for Fair Grinds. (Yes, you drink some coffee every year and more every day – muchas gracias!). We are hoping to find some partners to buy more and lower the price, but we will see. I’ll have more to report on this in coming weeks. It is very exciting, hugely educational, and heartwarming and heartbreaking experience, but the devil is in the details when our limited resources are part of the equation along with our desire to hold on to our prices to our community of coffee drinkers.

Katie put a postscript on a report the other day that, yes indeed, the new turkey sandwich is flying off the shelf. Many of you have probably noticed that we expanded the number of quiches and enlarged the empandas to make them a more substantial meal. Our suppliers have been our heroic partners in helping make Fair Grinds rock on the food side!

In April get ready for some surprises around Fair Grinds Coffeehouse and the greater New Orleans community as we debut our coffee “pop-ups” around the city and for Jazz Fest. We had two new coffee carts built, and we are finishing the last touches on the branding and so forth, and then rolling them out to areas where our customers have told us about “coffee deserts” that are desperate for Fair Grinds coffee at different times of the morning and afternoon. Hoping this works! We’re jazzed!!! Oh, and, yes, to accommodate the Jazz Fest crowd and our usual customer load, we’re going to have both carts set up in the patio and out front so we can operate several lines during the Festival and keep the crowds caffeinated and moving.

April again also looks like it’s going to be a musical month. Here’s the tentative schedule of coming musical attractions including local groups and talent from this area as well as folks from around the country. Check the Fair Grinds calendar at www.fairgrinds.com for more details on each performance.

Laura Stevenson and the Cans (Seattle) — Monday, April 2nd 8PM
Tom Maron and Daron Douglas – Friday, April 6th 8 PM
Open Mic with Robert Eustis – Thursday, April 12th 8PM
Jonathan Roniger – Saturday, April 14th 8PM
Joe Barbara – Thursday, April 19th 7:30 PM
Lips & Trips – Friday, April 20th 7:30 PM
Snail Party (Canada) – Saturday, April 21st 8 PM
Gallivan Burwell – Friday, April 27th 8PM
Kim and Sharon Apres-Fest (Mass) – Sunday, April 29th 8PM

Gotta run! One last cooperative meeting in minutes, so crossing my fingers that the price is right, because I love this group and its manager!

Stay well and see you soon at Fair Grinds!

Saludos!
Wade

Ps. You are missing something if you are not seeing the updates on our website and Facebook sites where we keep folks current! New features on history of coffeehouses and the real story behind chicory should be up in April along with MORE!

Fair Grinds Welcomes Community

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Wade Rathke 628-8050 wade@fairgrinds.com
Dine’ Butler 287-9841 dine@fairgrinds.com

Fair Grinds Coffeehouse announces a “Community Welcoming” on Saturday, December 10th from 10AM to 2PM at 3133 Ponce de Leon Street near Esplanade (www.fairgrinds.com) to introduce the community to the many new changes over recent months with new management and new ownership of the oldest exclusively fair trade coffeehouse voted by the readers of Gambit as the #1 coffeehouse in New Orleans for 2011. The welcoming will include an art auction, display and demonstration of biodiesel conversion by the New Orleans BioDiesel Project, coffee roasting demonstration on the new, local fair trade coffee brewed by Fair Grinds, new menu featuring local bakers and chefs as well as fresh juices and sandwiches for the first time, music by local musicians, rides on becaks (Indonesian rickshaws), and more!

Over recent months the 10-year old New Orleans coffeehouse which was the first to offer exclusively fair trade products has changed ownership and management from Robert Thompson and Elizabeth Herod to Wade Rathke. Their legacy will be memorialized at the “welcoming” with a special dedication at noon of the Social Justice Table. This celebration is in line with Fair Grinds new logo, two cups linked together joining the worlds of producers and consumers in common cause and new motto: Great Coffee for a Change. Rathke has previously announced that Fair Grinds is a special “low profit limited liability corporation” or L3C under Louisiana law and as a “social venture” business is dedicating part of its weekly gross and its net product to support community development and community organizing in the slums that are homes to its coffee exporters in Honduras, Mexico, Peru, and elsewhere.

In one of the most significant changes all of the fair trade coffee being brewed at Fair Grinds is now being sourced from the Port of New Orleans to benefit New Orleans commerce and the unionized longshore workers of New Orleans and their livelihoods. Additionally the coffee is now also locally roasted in special blends for Fair Grinds by Coast Roasters of New Orleans and Ocean Springs, Mississippi. The Fair Grinds New Orleans blend is a first, combining Honduran fair trade coffee with chicory grown in Nebraska. Fair Grinds has announced that after this current harvest much of its fair trade coffee will come directly from COMUCAP to New Orleans through a partnership with this all women’s coffee and aloe vera growing cooperative in Marcala, Honduras. Fair Grinds has weighed in on its concerns about the disputes over fair trade certification between Fair Trade USA and Fairtrade International and argued for a more direct engagement that assures benefits to both producers and consumers, rather than the current system which seems to favor corporate coffee and the certifying groups themselves (www.acorninternational.org and/or www.chieforganizer.org).

The Fair Grinds Community Welcoming is an opportunity for Fair Grinds to say thanks to the Mid-City and New Orleans community and introduce all of the small, but significant changes being made to make New Orleans best coffeehouse even better, as well as showcasing the work, workers, and changes to come.