Equal Exchange is a for-profit, Fairtrade, worker-owned cooperative headquartered in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Equal Exchange distributes organic, gourmet

coffee Coffee is a beverage brewed from roasted, ground coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content, but decaffeinated coffee is also commercially a ...

, tea,

sugar Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose Glucose is a sugar with the Chemical formula#Molecular formula, molecul ...

bananas A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – berry (botany), botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large treelike herbaceous flowering plants in the genus ''Musa (genus), Musa''. In some countries, cooking bananas are called pla ...

, avocados, cocoa, and

chocolate Chocolate is a food made from roasted and ground cocoa beans that can be a liquid, solid, or paste, either by itself or to flavoring, flavor other foods. Cocoa beans are the processed seeds of the cacao tree (''Theobroma cacao''); unprocesse ...

bars produced by farmer cooperatives in

Latin America Latin America is the cultural region of the Americas where Romance languages are predominantly spoken, primarily Spanish language, Spanish and Portuguese language, Portuguese. Latin America is defined according to cultural identity, not geogr ...

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

, and

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

. Founded in 1986, it is the oldest and largest Fair Trade coffee company in the United States. The highest paid employee of Equal Exchange may not make more than four times what the lowest paid employee receives.

History

Equal Exchange was founded in 1986 by Rink Dickinson, Jonathan Rosenthal, and Michael Rozyne. Before founding Equal Exchange, Dickinson, Rosenthal, and Rozyne were managers at a food cooperative in New England, and were actively involved in American food industry reform. For three years prior to Equal Exchange's birth, the three founders met once weekly to discuss how global food trade could be changed to increase incomes and stabilize economic situations of farmers. The meetings resulted in the development of an alternative trade model that utilized direct trade, established long-term contracts, and offered higher-than-market prices to small coffee farmers. This differs from the traditional trade model, in which buyers go through a series of middlemen to purchase coffee beans from plantation farmers.

Café

Equal Exchange operates three cafés in the United States. The cafés, located in Washington, Illinois, and Ohio, serve Equal Exchange tea, coffee, and espresso drinks as well as locally sourced pastries, sandwiches, and other lunch items.

EEUK

Equal Exchange co-operative based in the UK has close ties to Equal Exchange US where they both share various product lines and farmer co-op producers. Both share the same name and produce coffee, chocolate, and cocoa products among many other items. This relationship was made permanent in 2017 when EE Wholesale UK became a subsidiary of Equal Exchange US.

References

External links

Official website
{{fair trade Alternative trading organizations Fair trade brands Coffee companies of the United States Worker cooperatives of the United States Companies based in Massachusetts Organic chocolate Confectionery companies of the United States 1986 establishments in Massachusetts

History

Café

EEUK

See also

References

External links