Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending the day at the headquarters of Lavazza Coffee. For those of you who may have never heard of Lavazza, it is a huge single-product operation which has become iconic, currently serving as the “official” espresso of Italy.
Lavazza actually started as a small family grocery whose owners had a passion for coffee. Lavazza made headway in the Italian coffee industry first by selling already-roasted beans and later by bringing the concept of coffee blends to Italian tables. With the economic boon of the 1950s and the subsequent rise of Italy’s consumer culture, Italian espresso secured its world-wide notoriety and Lavazza became iconic.
Today, Lavazza has a yearly turn-over of 1.1 billion EUR and is the world’s #1 single-product company to import coffee beans. Lavazza’s success and passion for the finest quality of Italian espresso made it possible to develop 50 training centers globally. Together, the centers train 26,400 people annually about quality coffee production and espresso preparation techniques absolutely free of charge. In the name of preserving quality by thoroughly educating the baristas of the world, Lavazza sees maintenance and staff costs of the facilities a small price to pay.
My experience involved lessons in coffee history, tasting methods, and coffee innovation based on collaboration with El Bulli’s renowned chef Ferran Adriá Adrià. Coffee caviar, solid cappuccino, and coffee air were only a few of the artistic innovations of taste and science that I experienced.
Although the quality, production, design, and innovation of Lavazza thoroughly impressed me, I could not help but wonder about the company’s affiliation with Slow Food (my school), whose mantra is “Good Clean Fair.” While no one could ever deny Lavazza’s goodness, the company did not appear to be anywhere near Clean or Fair. In fact, when one of my classmates asked about Lavazza’s interest in the Fair Trade movement, he received a frank, “Well we have one product…but really it’s just marketing.” Even more, the fact that I alone threw away over 10 single-use cups in my 5 hour visit, paired with my exposure to the blatantly highly wasteful production facilities left me with the conviction that Lavazza has a long way to go before they could deem themselves Clean.
Discussing my concern with university staff with me, a little hole was poked through my idealist bubble. The simple fact of the affiliation is that Slow Food, as a grassroots non-profit, has a limited platform on which to voice its causes without the backing of big iconic companies like Lavazza. So, in the name of gaining a certain mainstream credibility, Slow Food has sacrificed a bit of its integrity. Here’s where I struggle. What, ultimately is better—maintaining 100% integrity to cause but remaining limited in bandwidth, or allowing for a little bit of political wriggle-room in order to reach more people? The answer, I find, is more layered than I imagined.
Whether through the lens of a “double walled” cappuccino glass or in the hallways of my university, harsh realities of the activist world will inevitably continue challenging my visions, practices, and conceptions of “goodness.” Despite the inherent heartbreak I will face along the way, I remain hopeful that these challenges will lead not to the defeat of my dreams of creating change through food, but to a more realistic, pragmatic vision of how to work towards them in a broken world.
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