Coffee Scandal Rocking the Inland Northwest
So it’s been awhile since I ranted at you all, but never fear, my feisty mouth is back to weigh in on the coffee scandal currently rocking the Inland Northwest.
So, what’s got a couple of local roaster’s — ok, perhaps one local roaster; the other remains mum on supposedly scandalous behavior — panties in a wad (omg I said panties, uh, gross)? Well, if ya read the Doma Coffee post mentioned above, you’d be up to speed in about, say, 3.28 minutes or way less. Basically, Doma threw down a gauntlet regarding some of Roast House’s branding and new website. Me, I think someone stayed up too late the night before drinking and woke up with such a hangover that no amount of yummy-licious coffee could ever put them in a good mood. Anyway, moving on…
Sticky note: I am a consumer of both Roast House coffees and Doma coffees so in no way am I siding with one party or the other. In fact, I rather need both to face my mornings. Let me tell you how excited Design Spike, Inc. was to order the Good Coffee coffee from Doma. Not only were we supporting Spokane Riverkeeper but the coffee was nom nom good. And not to be outdone, getting our hands on the Ben Valdez over at Atticus is a must do. So, you see, I am the most perfect unbiased Queen to weigh in on this most serious of all issues.
It’s damn clear that the battle lines have been drawn and as far as I can tell, what a flipping waste of time and energy. Publicly calling someone out without tons of real live evidence is kinda ridiculous in my not so humble opinion. Here you have two local roasters with environmental/sustainable leanings who, with a little cooperative competition, (Mark Simonds once told me all about “coopition” but hell if I can spell it), could be propping each other up and moving towards a goal of world coffee domination. But no, alas and alack, someone just had to get cranky. Locals who work together survive and thrive. It’s a pretty simple calculation. Really.
It’s like Interplayers calling Spokane Civic Theatre out on something or trying to publicly embarrass them. What if Main Market publicly chastised Spokane Public Market for some perceived wrong? What would any of these organizations have achieved by doing so? Pretty much nothing at all. By propping each other up, these organizations grow and become better for it. But rather than working together to raise the bar, rather than challenge Roast House to produce better coffees, Doma chose to attempt to publicly demean them. How absolutely disappointing.
This simply has to be the biggest mistake one of my flavorite coffee roasters has pulled. Color me depressed.
