Grounds for Change

One of the standing gift ideas for me is coffee stuff. A grinder, bags of Dunkin Donuts coffee, mugs, gift cards to coffee places. All of these and more have worked very well in the past, and I can't see them ever getting old.

A new idea my sister had was, "Well, what about those coffee clubs?" You know the type, where each month you get a new type of coffee to try. I thought it was a neat idea, especially since I like to try new coffee (Folgers and Maxwell house are good for the weekday grind, but...not exciting, you see) but I don't usually have the time or the money to really search good coffee out.

You don't know my sister, so I'll fill you in: she recently exploded into global awareness. She sponsors a woman in a 3rd world country, buys free trade widgets, and is disgusted when people say things like "It's too expensive to buy responsibly produced stuff." All this ties into her choice of a coffee club for my birthday gift.

Grounds for Change is the name of the company, and as you may imagine it's a fair trade, organic, shade grown, carbon-free company. More importantly, it's so far been damn good. Right now I'm drinking the Solstice Blend (the December coffee I received). It's truly fabulous. I love a dark roast, and this stuff is nice and dark. The bag describes the blend: "Notes of chocolate and toasted nuts." How many ways can one say, "WINNER!"?

I also like the cut of the company's jib. I like to judge a company by it's mission statement (the simpler the better) and it doesn't get much better than this:

"To support social equity and environmental sustainability through fair trade, organic, shade grown coffee."

And how much does all this eco-friendly, progressive silliness cost you? About as much as a pound of Starbucks coffee (for much better flavor). Go check them out...it's a very well put-together website.