A publicist for Folgers Coffee contacted me a while ago and asked if I’d be interested in some free samples of their new Folgers Gourmet Selections coffee. All I’d have to do is blog about them. Since they were not paying me to do so, and wanted my honest opinion—good, bad, or ugly—I agreed. I soon received samples of their Lively Columbian, Morning Café and Vanilla Biscotti flavors.
First, a bit of background. I feel about coffee much the same as I feel about beer. I don’t drink a lot, so when I do drink it, I want it to be good. My partner drinks more of both, but is equally discriminating. She used to mail-order from Peet’s, a Californian coffee firm that was in fact the inspiration for the founders of Starbucks. These days, trying to save a few pennies, we buy large bags of Starbucks from our local discount warehouse. Folgers is the brand we buy when we want to keep a tub of decaf around for my parents, who drink a lot of coffee but aren’t as picky about the taste.
The Folgers Gourmet Selections suprised us, perhaps because we had low expectations. Our favorite was oddly the light-roast Morning Café, the smoothest of the lot. (I wish they’d sent us some Espresso Roast, which would have made the best comparison to what we normally drink, but it was not to be.) The Vanilla Biscotti was tasty enough, albeit artificially flavored. I’m also not sure what “biscotti” has to do with anything, except that it must have sounded good to one of their marketers. Tasted like pretty straight-up vanilla to me. Overall, we found them drinkable, but without quite the same complexity that we got with Peet’s or Starbucks. A quick glance at prices from our local supermarket shows the Folgers Gourmet line to run a couple of bucks cheaper per pound than Starbucks in most varieties. If price is your main consideration, but you don’t want bottom-of-the-barrel, you might try it.
One final consideration. Folgers is made by Procter & Gamble, which gets only a 65 out of 100 on HRC’s Corporate Equality Index. Looking beyond just the number, it seems they got dinged for not including gender-identity in their non-discrimination policy and for not providing data on whether diversity training about sexual orientation and gender identity is required. They do cover sexual orientation in their non-discrimination policy and provide medical coverage to same-sex partners. They even participate in “GLBT advertising, sponsorship or philanthropy.” To my mind, this places them in the category of “not great, but not evil; should be encouraged to do better, but not necessarily avoided.” Starbucks, for comparison, gets an 85 from HRC, again hampered by lack of a non-discrimination policy covering gender identity. (Peet’s is not rated, but likewise has a sexual-orientation non-discrimination policy and not a gender identity one.)
As I’ve written before, though, these numbers may be useful guidelines, but should be used in conjunction with other data to make purchase decisions. (I’m also all for supporting independent, local businesses, not just the mega-corporations.) On behalf of our transgender colleagues, however, I have to say to all of these companies, “Get with it, folks.” If you’ve made the leap to covering sexual orientation, including gender identity is not that big a next step, and will help you win the respect of an LGBT market that’s soon to reach $687 billion in buying power.
My wife and I are coffee snobs, we admit it. Our main consideration after taste is how it was grown (shade grown, organic, etc.) and whether the people who grew it were fairly compensated for their efforts (fair trade). So we drink Kicking Horse coffee up here in Canada (http://www.kickinghorsecoffee.com/). When we lived in the DC area we used Mayorga (http://www.mayorgacoffee.com/), the Roastmaster’s blend is amazing as is the french roast (organic) and both espresso blends are top notch. It’s disappointing that so many major companies still don’t protect gender identity in their non-discrimination policies. You’d think they would have figured out by now that being more inclusive doesn’t do them any harm and does a lot of good when they are trying to recruit new talent.