The Fair Tracing project worked with the Coffee Board of India (CBI) on a number of occasions. The CBI wanted to promote Indian speciality coffee in Western markets (as well as in India), and thought the tracking and tracing research of Fair Tracing might help achieve that aim.
An article in The Guardian today shows that Indian coffee houses are undergoing significant changes.
Late afternoon in Kolkata and the light slants across the crowded tables of the College Street Coffee House. Waiters in grubby white suits and ornate hats deliver limp omelettes and piles of biryani rice. The manager, Deepak Gupta, is proud of the range of coffee he offers – black, white, cold or hot, all for eight rupees (12p)…
A hundred yards away, Rukeen, Sima and Geetika, 18-year-old political science students, are sitting in a branch of Cafe Coffee Day, which boasts of being India’s largest chain and “where the young at heart unwind”. It has air-conditioning, mirrors, comfy chairs and posters. Sima says she comes to “relax from studying”. The trio like choco-frappés at 95 rupees and say they have never heard of the Indian Coffee House.
The battle for customers is at the heart of India’s coffee culture wars. But the conflict is more complicated than a simple face-off between the globalised “new India” of consumerist middle classes, so heavily projected overseas, and a crumbling – if colourful – old India.
See the full article “Indian coffee houses battle for custom on frontline of culture war” by Jason Burke.