Someday Café will CLOSE by August 15

[ron_newman]

I just came back from Someday, and confirmed the bad news. The café has not renewed its lease with the landlord (Chatham Light Realty), and the café's owner (Gus Rancatore, of Toscanini's ice cream) is disinclined to reopen it elsewhere in Davis Square. Unless someone changes his mind, the café must vacate by August 15, and most likely will close around August 1.

If you don't want this to happen, call Richard at Chatham Light, 617-354-4466 , and e-mail gus@tosci.com .

(for earlier discussion, see the post immediately below this one.)

[EDIT (6/27, 12:10 am): after exchanging e-mail and a phone call with Ian Judge, the manager of the Somerville Theatre, I have edited this post so that it no longer says that "the landlord is making them leave". Ian's statement is here. I'm going to leave the phone number and e-mail address in place; they came from a sign at the Someday's counter last night.]

Comments

[mattdm [typekey.com] (from livejournal.com)]

(all Starbucks coffee is fair trade though it is not all "certified" under the fair trade organization)

Certification is important. Without it, there's no independent verification that the money really is going into the hands of farmers. Additionally, the claim "oh, we pay fair trade prices but didn't want to bother paying for the certification" often means that other issues critical to fair trade are ignored -- democratic decision making and right of free association, sustainable farming, child labor. If the coffee (or sugar, or bananas, or handicrafts -- fair trade isn't just for coffee!) is really fair trade, why NOT have it certified as such?

For what it's worth, somewhere under 5% of the coffee Starbucks buys is certified fair trade. That's still a lot of coffee in real terms, and you're right to commend them for the other good things they do.

Blue Shirt Cafe serves all fair-trade Equal Exchange coffee, but unfortuanately, it's not usually very good since they just brew it (poorly) and let it sit in a big cannister.

[violacat.livejournal.com]

Coming to this thread late, but some coffees can't be certified as fair-trade even though they are due to issues in the country of origin of said coffee.

At least, that's what I was taught when I worked at a small, independently owned coffeehouse. The owner wanted to have a large variety of coffees from various places available, and she did her best to have them all be fair-trade, but some just couldn't legally be labeled that way.