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Fair Cup (A)

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captain oddsocks
First Reviewer
5 out of 5
Avg. Member Rating
1
Review
4
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A Fair Cup

A Fair Cup

One of my first questions in any place is always "where’s the best coffee in town?" and when I asked my sister-in-law, who lives in Bristol, she started to tell me about a place called "A Fair Cup ", which is a caravan that parks down on the pedestrian strip in central Bristol.

When my brother and sister-in-law lived in Corn Street, Simone would call in every morning as she walked to work, and became such a good customer that they renamed one of their coffees "Flat White, in honour of our antipodean friends". I was a bit skeptical about the best coffee in town coming from a caravan, but it had been a long time since I’d been able to ask for "a flat white, thanks mate" and couldn’t resist the opportunity.

When I got to "the centre" as Bristol’s’ recently redeveloped pedestrian area is called, the van was easy to spot. Above the fountains, behind the sails monument and watched over by the statue of Edmund Burke, was a silver van with six or seven round tables spread around in front of it. I marched straight up to the sign that said "Coffee with a conscience", ordered and settled down at the nearest table with my first flat white in ages.

Now, there’s nothing terribly special about a flat white; it’s kind of like a frothless cappuccino, an overly-milky macchiato or a not-milky-enough latte. It’s just one of those everyday things that you take for granted while you’re at home and don’t realize that you miss until you unexpectedly find it in an unlikely place.

Anyway the coffee was good, and at 1.65 the price was right. I also had a croissant for 85p and on a later visit tried one of the excellent muffins for 2 pounds. In addition to coffee, a fair cup also serves a variety of tea, hot chocolate and Whole-Earth soft drinks.

As you may have picked up from the name the ideals of fair trade are central to the way A Fair Cup does business. All coffee, tea, chocolate and sugar is fair-trade; sourced from sustainable plantations where the agricultural workers are treated fairly and paid a living wage. In addition, all coffee, tea and milk used by the business is organic, free of pesticides, chemical fertilizers, growth hormones and antibiotics.

As is often the case with businesses that’ve paused to consider their impact of their activities, A Fair Cup’s social conscience overlaps with concern for the environment and they promise that whatever Co2 emissions they can’t reduce, they will offset. The cups for take away coffee are biodegradable and the absence of patio heaters is explained by notices suggesting "do as the northern Europeans do and grab yourself a blanket". On one visit to A Fair Cup, the staff even brought me a blanket without me having to ask for it.

I don’t think I looked cold, but maybe they assumed that Australians were always cold when in England?

From journal Orright me Babber?

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