ONLINE STORE - INTELLIGENTSIA ONLINE STORE FAQ

1. Do you really "Roast to order"?
2. How long will my coffee take to get to me?
3. Are your coffees 100% Arabica?
4. How much do you charge for shipping?
5. How is your coffee sold?
6. How should my coffee be stored?
7. How dark do you roast your coffees?
8. Can I add to an order I just placed?
9. Why do your coffees keep going out of stock?
10. The coffee I received is (or is not) oily- why?
11. Is your coffee vacuum packed?
12. Can I buy your Black Cat blend in its green form?
13. Where is your Yemen and/or Arabian Mocha Java?
14. I am a member of the US Armed Forces, how do I order?
15. I'm in Canada, do I get charged more/are there additional charges for shipping?
16. Do you offer (ESE) Pods?
17. Can I pick up coffee at your Warehouse?
18. You used to carry Fair Trade coffee, why don't you anymore?
19. How is Intelligentsia Direct Trade™ different than Certified Fair Trade?
20. How do you define "healthy environmental practices"?
21. How do we define "sustainable social practices"?
22. What is the relationship of "organic" to Fair Trade or your Direct Trade certifications?
23. How do you guarantee that your Intelligentsia Direct Trade™ coffees meet the criteria you have set out for them?
24. How do I know that you do what you say?
25. Which Intelligentsia Coffees are currently designated as Intelligentsia Direct Trade™?

Yes we do. Our roasting process starts with you. When you place your order online before midnight, CST, your order is added to the tally of coffees to roast for the following morning. Your coffee is then roasted in the early morning, packed in the afternoon and shipped on the following day.

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Your coffee will be roasted and shipped the day AFTER you place your order. Average ship times vary from state to state. Within Illinois, you can expect your shipment to arrive the day after production. In surrounding states, shipping can take one, two or three days. On the East Coast, three days is standard and on the West Coast, four days is standard.

Please click here for a production schedule and map of UPS standard ship times by state. These are merely guidelines, not guarantees. If you need a shipment guaranteed by a certain time, please select 2 Day Air, or Overnight delivery.

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Yes! We do not carry or use any Robusta beans. It is not uncommon to see Robusta coffee used as a blend ingredient for espresso blends to help with the crema and body of the shot but the flavor suffers dramatically which, we feel, misses the whole point.

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We charge you what UPS charges us. This typically breaks down to between $6 to $8 to ship a pound or two by UPS Ground to almost anywhere in the USA. As you are checking out, the last page of the shopping cart will calculate your shipping for you.

As of 1/30/2008 we will be using the US Postal Service - Priority as our only method of shipping to Canada. We will charge you what USPS charges us approx $15 - $25 USD.

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Most coffee in our Online Store is sold by the full pound. We do have some Reserve Coffees that are sold in the 1/2 pound and a specific section for coffees sold in 1/2 pounds. For all of our coffees, the total weight of the coffee is denoted next to the price.

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Your coffee is quite content in its unopened Intelligentsia bag. The one way valve on the bag lets CO2 that the freshly roasted coffee produces out without letting the harmful oxygen in. After opening your bag, however, we recommend moving your coffee to a dark, airtight container and storing your coffee at room temperature.

Try NOT to store your coffee in a cold environment. If coffee is stored in the freezer or the refrigerator, moisture will condense on the beans every time they are brought out of that cold environment and into room temperature which will quickly degrade their flavor complexity.

Stored properly in whole bean form, your coffee should retain much of its flavor for seven days after it was roasted. The flavor will slowly taper off soon after that and will be noticed in the high notes or acidity being dulled. The coffee will certainly be consumable but will not have the shimmering brilliance it once had.

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We generally roast our coffee a bit lighter than what is, in the industry, loosely referred to as Full City. The Full City level is typically a dark level but lighter than a French or Italian roast. We feel that the Full City level does not do justice to the delicate flavor notes that the coffee we purchase contains. In order for us to keep those flavors intact, we must roast our coffees a bit lighter so as not to burn off the subtle intricacies that make our coffees unique and world class.

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Unfortunately, at this time we are not able to add to orders that have already been placed on our website. If your order is not yet in production, we can cancel your existing order and and you may place a revised one. Please send us an email at ordersupport@intelligentsiacoffee.com to let us know.

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We know that once you find a coffee you love you want to continue to purchase it throughout the year.

Our commitment to quality is the only reason our coffees will go out of stock from time to time. We refuse to carry any coffee that does not live up to our high expectations and if we can not find a GREAT tasting coffee from somewhere (like New Guinea, for example), we will not offer a lesser quality coffee from that region in its place.

Another reason is the crop cycle volume. We strictly adhere to our Direct Trade model of coffee purchasing and due to coffee being a crop that is only harvested once a year, it is sometimes impossible for us to continue to carry a coffee that was harvested by a small farm a year ago.

Another reason is that there is a time in a green coffee's (ie: unroasted coffee's) life where it begins to show it's age and the subtle flavors that were once brimming with life and energy start to fade. Our Quality Assurance Department keeps very close tabs on the life cycle of our green coffees and will pull them from our line up if they are not meeting our high standards.

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Coffee beans develop oil on their surface in one of two ways:

1. They are roasted to a dark enough level which will pull the oils present within the bean to the surface. This is typical of a dark roast.
   
   
2. Given time, the oil present within a bean that once appeared to have a dry surface, will rise to the surface creating the oily film that is usually characteristic of a darker roasted coffee. Depending on the type of bean and what level it was initially roasted to, this can take from as little as a few hours to as long as a few weeks!

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Fresh roasted coffee cannot be vacuum packed Our coffee is packed in a foil bag with a one-way-valve. The bags are filled and heat sealed to lock in the freshness. Because our coffee is less than 24 hours out of the roaster when it is shipped to you, the degassing process is still occurring. The one-way-valve allows CO2 to escape, yet does not allow oxygen to get in. This ensures that your coffee is as fresh as possible when it arrives at your door.

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We do not offer Black Cat as a green blend because each coffee that goes into Black Cat is roasted to a different level and then blended. To  blend them together first and then roast them all at once would not produce Black Cat.

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We have chosen not to carry coffees from Yemen due to the very inconsistent quality and poor human rights record that Yemen as a country has.

We realize that it is a very unique tasting coffee when it is good but, in the end, we felt the bad outweighed the good. In its place we now offer Mocha Java- a new blend utilizing coffees from that area minus the Arabian Yemen.

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At this time, we do not have the capability to fulfill an order online for military bases. Please call us toll free at 888.945.9786 extension 104 and place your order over the phone. Be sure to leave contact information including name, address, email, phone number and what you would like to order with grind settings.
We are working hard to be able to fulfill orders online for Military personnel.

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As of 1/30/2008 we will be using the US Postal Service - Priority as our only method of shipping to Canada.

We are required by law to reveal the contents of packages shipped to Canada and to state the full value of the shipment, even if the package contains a gift. Customs charges may be levied when the package reaches Canada.

You are responsible for any duties, tariffs, taxes, or customs brokerage fees. These amounts must be paid at the time of delivery, so please choose a shipping address at which someone will be able to accept delivery. We are not responsible for these charges and cannot provide estimates as to what these charges may be. You may wish to contact your local customs office for further information. If for any reason the package is seized by customs officials, we will not issue you a refund unless all products are returned to us in their original condition. If the package is returned to us by customs officials or delivery is otherwise unsuccessful, shipping charges are not refundable. Additional shipping charges will apply if we need to reship a package that is returned to us due to delivery problems.

For more information on these charges, please visit the following websites:

UPS Customs Clearance Rates
About.com article on Customs and Duties fees

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There are a couple of places online that have mentioned that Intelligentsia has Black Cat in Pods.

We do not currently offer them but our hope is that we can offer a pod that has fresh roasted coffee inside, just like getting a pound of our coffee.

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Our Roasting Works is currently not set up for retail sales- please visit one of our retail stores to purchase your coffee on the go!

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We believe that the Fair Trade model is not really designed for a company like ours.  It was created to try to balance trade inequities in the commodity business and to discourage traders of commercial or entry-level Specialty Coffee from under-paying and exploiting cooperatives. This was specifically designed to monitor the international financial transactions between the exporting cooperative and the importer. In recent years it has also been used to enforce labeling practices of roasters.  Generally these are coffees that have historically been purchased under conditions of extreme anonymity—no traceability, no accountability. We support its existence and believe that it has had a net-positive effect on coffee trade.

We do not, however, buy commodity coffee; we buy boutique coffees of the very highest quality, and we travel and work very closely with the growers themselves.  We spend days at a time with them, we sleep in their houses, and we are engaged in a continuous dialogue with them about how to grow together and benefit.  Experience has shown us that we can achieve better results through our own efforts and attain a higher level of transparency than we could by simply purchasing Fair Trade coffees.  Lastly, it is important to us that the producer gets maximum return for their work. Many of our coffees come from cooperatives that are Fair Trade certified, and we could easily make them Fair Trade coffees.  If we did so, Intelligentsia would pay a commission to Fair Trade for the use of the Fair Trade logo.  Our belief is that the money makes a bigger and more positive difference when it goes directly into the hand of the producer. Instead of buying the right to use a label we just give the money to the grower.

We will continue to buy coffee from Fair Trade certified cooperatives, but in these instances Intelligentsia is choosing not to pay for the marketing rights of Trans Fair and FLO.

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Certified Fair Trade is a certification that is owned by FLO International and licensed in the US by Transfair USA. It has been around for decades in Europe and is applied not only to coffee but also cocoa, sugar, bananas, and other commonly traded agricultural products.  It is a ‘blanket’ certification designed to ensure that every product bearing its label is purchased at a base price that is above the cost of production for the farmer.  Different products have different base prices. For example, the Fair Trade export price for coffee delivered to the exporting cooperative is $1.26 per pound unroasted and $1.41 for unroasted organic certified coffee. It is also a certification specific to democratically run cooperatives, and does not apply to private farms or private exporters.

Intelligentsia Direct Trade™ is the name for the Intelligentsia model we apply to our coffees.  Every coffee bearing its label was purchased in full accordance with these principals:

   * Quality must be exceptional.
   * The price to the grower must be at least 25% above Fair Trade prices.
   * The grower must be committed to healthy environmental practices.
   * The grower must be committed to sustainable social practices.
   * An Intelligentsia representative must visit the farm in person at least once per harvest season.
   * All the trade participants must be open to transparent disclosure of financial deliveries back to the individual farmers.

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To us this means that the farmer is taking proactive measures to ensure the health of the ecosystem both on and around the farm.  If the farm uses irrigation, are they recycling the water? What happens to the water used for de-pulping and fermentation?  Is part of the farm being maintained as forest? If pesticide or herbicide is used at all, is it minimized and applied responsibly? These are the questions we ask.  It is not dogmatic, as we recognize that there are different realities on different farms, but it is essential that every Intelligentsia Direct Trade™ farm is consciously following protocols that preserve the environment.

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This can be distilled to a single essence—is everyone involved in the production of coffee on an Intelligentsia Direct Trade™ farm benefiting?  Again, every farm is different.  We work with small growers who may farm 2 hectares of coffee and do all the work themselves.  We also work with farms that might employ 300 people during the year.  What matters most is that there are good living conditions and the opportunity for measurable economic growth.  We avoid trying to determine for the farmer what this really means and prefer to let them tell us if things are working. But there are some tangibles to look at.  On an medium-sized or single farm we must know what the pickers are being paid, how that wage compares to both the legislated minimums and the average in the region, and whether the workers feel it is a good deal. Are there health services provided? Are there other community services such as education that are financed by earnings from the sale of coffee?  On a small farm, the key question is whether or not the farmer is making a living from coffee and earning enough to invest in the health and education of the family.  Is there economic progress?  There is a big difference between subsistence and development.

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There is no relation at all.  Fair Trade certification is completely different than Organic certification. We believe strongly in organic farming practices, and we are working each year to make more of our Intelligentsia Direct Trade™ coffees organic.  Organic coffees carry an additional certification from either OCIA, BIOLATINA, QAI, or other NOP-approved organic certifying agency.  We look forward to certifying an ever larger percentage of our coffees as both Intelligentsia Direct Trade™ and Organic.

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We use our eyes, our ears, and our mouths.  To see something for oneself is the most powerful validation. Geoff Watts, our coffee buyer, personally visits each grower, cooperative, or estate farm every year and spends time on the farm.  He documents his trips with photos, talks to the pickers in the fields to make sure that they are receiving what they are promised and examines all the facilities on the farm. Once he is standing on a farm, it is easy to see whether there is shade, whether the pickers are being treated well, and whether the farm is respecting its environment. Again, it’s a matter of forming a true relationship with our producing partners. If something is not right, we fix it, the same way friends do.  If we feel that any of the producers of our Intelligentsia Direct Trade™ coffees are not actively improving both quality and sustainability on their farms, we stop working with them.  We maintain an ethical responsibility to ensure that things are working well for everyone involved at the farms, and this means not turning a blind eye to something that doesn’t seem right.  If there is a question to be asked, we will ask it.

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The proof is in the cup.  Quality is not an accidental thing, and does not happen without very careful attention to detail at every step of the way: from fertilization and pruning (farm husbandry) to picking (of ripe cherries only) to fermentation, drying, and sorting.  All of this takes a lot of work, and does not happen when there is no tangible incentive or reward.  Farmers that don’t get paid well for their work don’t do these things, and those who don’t respect their land and the people who work on the farm face a constant uphill battle to produce quality. Rarely do they produce "Grand Cru" caliber coffees.  There may be the occasional exception, but in 10 years of working intensively with coffee this premise has been proven true over and over and over again.

But if you still don’t believe, ask the farmers themselves.  They are here in Chicago many times throughout the year, visiting our stores and roasting facilities.  Write to us and we’ll advise you of the next time they will be around.

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Currently all of the I-Marks La Tortuga, El Cuervo, Flor Azul, La Perla de Oaxaca, Los Inmortales, Flecha Roja, Tres Santos and Cruz del Sur) are Intelligentsia Direct Trade™ coffees.  In 2006 we will introduce Intelligentsia Direct Trade™ coffee from Rwanda, Tanzania, and Bolivia. Eventually we hope for all of our coffees to bear the label, but it is not simply a matter of purchasing the sticker.  It takes time and lots of work, and so we are going country-by country to make it happen. In the near future we plan to continue to develop several new Intelligentsia Direct Trade™ relationships, including some in East Africa and the Pacific.

To purchase any of our Direct Trade™ or other coffees, visit our Online Store.
For further information on Intelligentsia Direct Trade™ Coffees, please contact:
Geoff Watts
Vice President/Green Coffee Buyer
Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea, Inc.
p: 312-521-7953
e: watts@intelligentsiacoffee.com

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