I can't confirm or deny the rumors that a good majority of the 600 Starbucks store closings are due in large part to the excellent coffee produced by the DoubleShot.

I know this might seem like a strange time of year to bring in Kona, but in my mind it made sense.

I don't know how many of you have noticed, but we've always put our spent coffee grounds in bags and put them out by the door for you to take. You might have wondered what in the world someone would do with used coffee grounds. Well, I'm here to tell you.

There are several things I've heard of people doing with them, and I'll tell you and let you decide for yourselves.

The Tulsa Zoo used to come get the grounds because they do educational classes for kids and they told me it's easy to make fake animal poop out of coffee grounds. Interesting.

We did a story a while back on AA Cafe about a scientist developing a fuel from spent coffee grounds that could run an automobile.

My girlfriend recently gave me an article about various things to do with the spent grounds, and here are a few of the suggestions:
- Dye stuff brown (Incidentally, I used a Guatemalan coffee to stain the 8-foot wood table in the DoubleShot.)
- Use the abrasive, acidic nature of spent grounds to clean pans and dishes
- Supposedly if you put them around your garden, it will keep cats out of your plants (buy my cat, The General Sterling Price, loves drinking the last few sips of my americanos and he doesn't seem the least bit averse to my own coffee odor)
- Dry them and put them in pantyhose or whatever and hang them around smelly places. Coffee absorbs odors really well. That's one reason you need to keep your unused coffee beans sealed up and away from odors.
- Supposedly it's good for your hair. They recommend rubbing the grounds into your hair between shampooing and conditioning. (Hair salons?)

And of course, the thing spent coffee grounds are most used for is fertilizer for the garden. I don't have a garden, but a lot of our customers do and they tell me about the success they have using the coffee grounds. Below is a letter from Daniel Myers on the subject. I thought you'd get a kick out of it.

Brian:
I wanted to let you know that Doubleshot Coffee Company’s Ambergris Espresso grounds are superior to Starbucks© grounds in my garden. I am more than happy to write this letter because I’ve never had the results in production or soil augmentation before I started using your Espresso. And, I can prove it!
Last year, I began rehabilitating an old flower bed that was mostly clay soil and overgrown with weeds. I’ve known for years that spent Espresso grounds make the best soil additive and mulch for clay soils but really only had one choice for spent Espresso; that is until last May when I noticed you were giving away spent Ambergris Espresso grounds. I was decidedly curious, so I tried a bag. I liked it so much, that I decided to test head-to-head both SBUX and Ambergris in a test plot. The plot was divided into two 12” by 30” beds; one for each Espresso. Each bed had the same Canna Tropicana flowers, same added top soils, same supplemental fertilizer, and the same amounts sun & water. Then I rated both Espressos’ beds on the following categories:
1. Break down Clay into humus
2. Growth
3. Prevention of weeds and insects
I really was surprised to see how easy Ambergris worked into the ground, much easier than SBUX, and made a rich ‘Tea’ when watered. The result was a faster breakdown of clay into organic matter and humus. By Mid-August, I had broken almost 2” of clay with rich humus in the Ambergris bed. The SBUX had only ½”. This was a big surprise. I was more surprised at the rate of growth.
On the average, the Ambergris bed produced 6 feet, 2 inches tall Cannas’; the SBUX produced only an average of 5 feet, 10 inches of growth. Now in all fairness, there was one area the SBUX did exceed.
SBUX killed every weed and insect in its test bed. Not even stubborn weeds could survive, only dwindling to tiny, easily pulled springs. In fact, if the Canna leaves touched the SBUX Espresso they would burn a hole completely through the Canna. Nor did any insect, including the giant grasshoppers which I endure each August, dared to eat from the Canna’s leaves in this bed. It might have worked too well. For when I uncovered the SBUX bed this spring to inspect the roots on the bulbs, I found the bulbs had completely disintegrated.
I’m not sure if gardening falls into your plan for World Coffee Domination, but it might be a Third Colum action. I know I was sold on Ambergris Espresso as eminently drinkable, but now as ambrosia for my garden too.
Thank you,
Daniel Myers…

There. Now don't you want to come down here and pick up some spent grounds? We put them out about every day. And now you know what to do with them.

It's raining again. In torrents. I'm sure the plants are loving it; the rain making everything green and healthy. We want to make everything green and healthy too. That's why we've started the DoubleShot Green Initiative, to make the DoubleShot more environmentally sensitive and to make it easier for you to be "green."

We allow you to do a number of things to "reduce your carbon footprint." We're not really sure how our footprints became carbonized in the first place. But here's what we've come up with so far to help out:
Drink coffee in ceramic instead of paper to-go cups.
Re-use your paper cup (maybe plant seedlings in it because they don't last too long when you keep refilling with coffee) or buy a travel cup. We have great travel cups for sale at the DoubleShot or bring your own.
We are now recycling paper at the DoubleShot, so when you're done with the news, throw it in the "Recycle" box. (Thanks to Christie for making this happen.)
You can bring your one-pound or half-pound bags back in when you buy more coffee beans and we'll refill them.
We bag up our spent coffee grounds for you to take and use in your garden.
You probably throw away a cup sleeve every day. If you save it, you can bring it back and use it again. Or if, like Patrick Fox, you have a huge pile of cup sleeves sitting around your office, bring them in and we'll re-use them all.
I moved the bike rack inside the building. It's hard to ride your bike to work when it rains every day, but when you do you can park inside. No worries about someone stealing or messing with your bike.
You know all those jute coffee bags full of unroasted coffee beans that are piled around the roaster? Well, my mom is taking the empty ones home and making them into really nice, sturdy, lined shopping bags. Buy one and the next time you go to the grocery store you won't have to bother with the pesky "paper or plastic?" flimsy, disposable bags.

I'm a conservationist, I guess. I love nature and the wilderness. I regret that we don't have the un-domesticated lands that the great explorers of our country walked through. That our wild animals are all but extinct. That even the small patches of "wilderness" we have left (like Turkey Mountain), our government bureaucracy wants to "improve." LEAVE IT ALONE!
Anyway, when I was in college I was called a "bleeding heart liberal" for my stand on nature and conservation. That made me laugh. Call it what you will, but do your part to help.

Don't be an EARTH HATER!

That's right, I got my first record company contract recently with RCA.

No, it's not for my melodic whistling. Or my hoof-beat belly rhythms. Not even for the brilliant, off-beat guitar-backed songs I made up at the end of the last DoubleShot birthday party.

It's for DoubleShot Coffee!

There's a guy named Landon Pigg who recently recorded an album called "Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop." Someone at RCA decided it might be cool to use coffee as a promo for the album, and contacted Mark Prince at coffeegeek.com, who recommended little old me for the job. Things worked out, and so far we've roasted and packed (by hand) 800 quarter-pound bags of coffee, which RCA is slapping Landon Pigg stickers on. Pretty cool.

So you should buy the Landon Pigg album. I think you'll like it.
Hopefully RCA will keep buying coffee from us. And maybe we can talk them into coming here to record a music video or something.

See... our coffee is famous!

And the feeling is mutual.  My final words to the electric company at midnight last night were "Thanks for all your help.  You SUCK."  And then I sat down and tried to figure out how I could start a competing electric company or at least get off their stupid electric "service."  

I can't tell you what coffee I'm drinking right now. I would be breaking the law if I told you. I'm not kidding.

It's not a secret coffee that you've never heard of. It's not named with words that would be offensive to use in public. And no, it's not named after a top-secret government initiative to monitor the ripeness of coffee cherries using NASA spacecraft. We got trademark problems.

I'm sure you all heard about the efforts of the Ethiopian government to trademark the names of its' coffee territories. It came into the news when Starbucks challenged their trademark application. I think it's telling in that linked article how ridiculous the trademark procedures are and how incompetent the USPTO is. Especially when they say it's clear that when the USPTO granted the trademark to Starbucks they didn't know that Yirgacheffe was a geographic region. You tell me: how difficult would it be to google Yirgacheffe and find out it's a geographic region? Probably about as hard as it would be to figure out that "double" means "two" and "shot" is a measurement used in espresso.

Anyway, I've been reading, listening, and trying to understand what's going on with the Ethiopian trademark issues for the past year or so. I'm always leery when anyone starts meddling in intellectual property law. I've had a few theories about why this is happening and what it is leading to. Strong suspicions. And when we were in Minneapolis at the SCAA, I had the chance to ask questions. Isaiah and I were walking around the tradeshow when we found the Ethiopian booth. I walked in, picked up some literature, and stood and waited. Eventually a white man in a suit (everyone in that booth was wearing a suit) came over and asked if he could answer any questions. I told him I wanted to ask about the trademarks and he said he was the guy to talk to. His name is Steve Williams, and he works for Light Years IP, the company that helped Ethiopia obtain their trademarks around the world.

Steve was a great guy. He sort of seemed like a street thug who fell into an Oxford education. Personable, good humored, very intelligent, and long-suffering, he put up with a good half-hour of our questions, assertions, and conspiracy theories. I truly believe that Steve (and probably Light Years IP) wants to do right and thinks the path they've chosen is the right one. But I see only problems.

Here's the deal. Ethiopia has been successful in trademarking the words "Yirgacheffe," "Sidamo," "Harrar," and "Harar." ONLY Ethiopia owns the right to use those words in the United States. It is now illegal for me to sell coffee using those terms, even if that coffee comes from those regions. Ethiopia is now actively pursuing licensing agreements with people down the line, so that we can use their trademarked words to describe our coffee. For instance, if Royal Coffee, one of my brokers, signs the licensing agreement, they can sell Yirgacheffe and call it Yirgacheffe. If I sign the licensing agreement, I can do the same. If we don't sign the licensing agreement, they can't call it that and neither can I. So unless we're speaking in hushed tones behind closed doors, I may not know that the Misty Valley natural Yirgacheffe I just bought is from the Yirgacheffe region of Ethiopia. And I won't be able to tell you what region it's from. Unless I sign the licensing agreement.

The license is free for the first five years. (They'll most certainly institute fees when this term ends.) But it puts Ethiopia in control of the way I advertise, market, and sell my coffees. They have regulations and want to know my numbers - how many, how much. Supposedly they will limit the number of licenses they assign, and currently they have issued 69 or 70. Some of the big boys are already on board. Which is funny because Starbucks, who owned a couple of the trademarks before, is now a licensee. And according to the licensing agreement, they can police the trademarks for Ethiopia and prosecute anyone using the trademarks (like me) without a license. Seems like they did an end-around and got their trademark back.

I had a suspicion that part of the reason this whole thing began was the fault of Starbucks. I figured Ethiopia saw that Starbucks owned the trademark for their territory, and was using that trademarked name to make money selling coffee. And I had a feeling that maybe the coffee in that bag of "Sidamo" may not have been from Sidamo at all, or may not even have been Ethiopian coffee. There's no regulatory or certifying agency that makes sure there's truth in advertising. I'm not saying they did, but there would be nothing stopping Starbucks (or whoever) from selling a bag of coffee they call "Ethiopia Sidamo Gizmo Shmizmo™" even if the beans inside were a blend of Vietnamese coffees. I mentioned this scenario to Steve, and his physical reaction affirmed a lot more than his mouth could sidestep. He did say there were companies using the Ethiopian territory names to sell coffee and only putting a very little amount of coffee from the actual territory in the coffee blend. That may or may not have been Starbucks (but Starbucks did own the Sidamo trademark and were selling the black apron Sidamo coffee for $26 per pound). And one of the obvious stipulations in the licensing agreement is that any coffee labeled as Sidamo, Yirgacheffe or Harrar actually come from that place. I know, I know, my lawyer would strongly advise me not to post this blog. So for the record, I have no evidence that any of the above information about Starbucks is true; it is purely a hypothetical scenario.

So the reason Ethiopia and Light Years IP say they are executing these trademarks is to help the Ethiopian coffee farmers get more money for their coffee. That's interesting. I'm all for that. Sounds good. But when Isaiah and I looked around that tradeshow floor, we didn't see coffee farmers. We saw exporters and heads of coops and administrators. We saw only wealthy Ethiopians. We hear the heads of state saying they want to give more money to the farmers and we see exporters in expensive suits in Minneapolis. (I guess I'm paying my employees too much to be able to afford to buy a suit and fly to Addis Ababa.) So apparently there's already SOME money to be made in coffee in Ethiopia. How do we know that if I give more money to the government of Ethiopia (in licensing fees), it will actually trickle down to the lowly farmer? The farmer has no leverage to "own" the trademark for their territory and charge me licensing fees to use that name. It's up to the government and the people who buy the coffee from the farmers- the coops and the exporters- to pass on that money. When I asked Steve about this, he said of course there are bad people in every industry, every walk of life, but there are also good people who want to do the right thing. And those people will make sure the money gets to the farmer. But I'm not so sure.

I emailed Mark Pendergrast (author of Uncommon Grounds) about Ethiopia, and he asked me if I heard his talk about the human rights abuses in Ethiopia. I didn't, so I asked for more info. He told me to google "Ethiopian human rights abuse," and look at the Human Rights Watch website. Looks like they have the same types of problems in Ethiopia that they do in Kenya. One group is in charge and they do everything they can to keep the other groups from gaining power. It's shameful; you should read the article. Now, I'm not saying this is evidence that the Ethiopian government won't do the right thing and take care of their coffee farmers if this trademark scenario plays out in their favor. But it raises more doubt, doesn't it? It's not like I'm going to go to the SCAA tradeshow next year in Atlanta and run into a farmer from Yirgacheffe and get a chance to ask him how things have changed.

The specialty coffee industry has lately been on a course that is beneficial to coffee farmers. This relates back to what Bill McAlpin (from La Minita) was saying about coffee prices. If you encourage farmers to improve the quality of their crop, keep lots separate, identify exactly where each lot of coffee came from and who grew it, the coffee becomes worth more money. The free flow of information from farm to consumer and back to the farmer creates an economic situation that rewards farmers for producing delicious coffee (and in turn, rewards brokers for finding and identifying these coffees and rewards roasters for roasting and not ruining these coffees and rewards coffee shops for proper brewing and educating customers). The key is an open flow of information. The problem has been that I don't know exactly where some of my coffees come from. And some of them are not just from one farm; they are mixed at the regional mill or auction. These Ethiopian trademarks hide information. They make it illegal for me to tell you where some coffees come from. The new Misty Valley Yirgacheffe will simply become an Ethiopian Misty Valley. Where is that? Doesn't matter to you. Or to me really; I can just buy what tastes good from my broker. I don't have to try and locate the origin and the farmer, or try to figure out how to pay him more money for his coffee. And that's what's going to happen. They're going to make it harder for me to do those things.

Imagine this. I go to Ethiopia someday. I visit the Sidamo region and I find a farmer who (through luck or great farming methods) has produced the most outrageous, amazing coffee I've ever had. I take tons of pictures, buy the coffee for a "fair" price, and come home to share it with you. And I have a slideshow. But I can't tell you where the coffee came from. Can I even show you the pictures? And how long will it be until Ethiopia trademarks their other regional coffee term... Ethiopia™?

Steve (from Light Years IP) tells me this is just the beginning. He thinks most coffee producing countries will follow suit- trademark the regions our coffees come from. Then I won't be able to tell you where any of them were grown.

This trademarking and licensing program probably will end up just like the Fair Trade program. They're no longer selling quality coffee; they're selling the names of their regions. Selling coffee at a base price or a price that includes a licensing fee per pound sold in order to use a marketing term is no different than Fair Trade. And quality will most likely suffer.

I'll still be able to buy these coffees. We just won't be able to advertise where they came from. But I have an idea. I've been thinking about this for a while, and I think it's a good idea, but I'm not sure our legal system allows for it. If we make up new words to use instead of the words that have been taken away from us by Ethiopia, and we publicize these words enough that everyone knows when we say "Disamo" (for instance) we really mean "Sidamo," we can re-invent geographical identification. Why not? They're just words. We could even do some research and find out what Sidamo, Yirgacheffe, and Harrar regions were called before they inherited these names. And go back to the old names.

Until someone trademarks those words and takes them away from us.

I've been asking lawyers about this, and maybe someone out there who reads my blog will know a solution. It seems like our system of intellectual property law ONLY favors selfishness. I can invent a word and trademark it and then police it to make sure no one else uses it. But I want to protect a word in the other direction. I want to protect a made-up word for everyone to use for all times. I want to protect a word so that no one else can tell us we can't use it any more. Is there no way to do that? Everything is MINE MINE MINE!

Maybe there are enough smart people in the coffee industry that we can figure this out. And build community by sharing words. And information. And achieve what we all want: great coffee that rewards the great coffee producer and pays fair wages for labor.

Maybe JRR Tolkien could help.