beans beans the magical fruit

As a Canadian grown hometown kid, who doesnt have a Tim Hortons memory? A hot chocolate in the cold winter, the first time you tried a 'ice cap', or at the very least the hundreds of 'please play again' Tim Hortons coffee cups littered all over the ground (dont get me started). For every Tim Hortons lover, there is an equally passionate starbucks lover who thinks calling a large a 'venti' makes them more sophisticated. The age old debate between Tim Hortons and Starbucks is a fierce one, but now goes deeper then who has the best iced coffee, but who has the happiest/well treated coffee bean farmers. When on Cliftonhill, Niagara Falls, I had a friend drag me an extra block to a Starbucks instead of a Timmies because Starbucks was 'fairtrade'. Please let me have the honours of setting the record straight!
Starbucks has a freetrade aggreement, meaning that they make sure that the coffee farmers are being paid fairly for their work. This is done by giving the farmers' managment a bunch of money and trusting it goes into the employees wages, access to health care, farming aids.. and so on. Which is all wonderful, but starbucks still buys most of its beans on the open market and not from its fairtrade farmers.

Timmies takes a different approach. Besides the fact that it is very costly to become 'fairtrade' certified for the farmers, Timmies take the money and put it directly into establishing technical training, improving the quality of coffee produced, providing assistance in education and medical care, educating farmers on enhanced farming techniques and reforestation projects, and on top of it donated school books and video teaching aids directly to local schools.

So techniqually Tim Hortons doesnt have 'fairtrade' workers, but keep your eye on 'venti' picture.