2 April 2008 - 15:01Things you would not expect to find at Walmart

I was walking down the aisles at Walmart the other day when I came across this product: fair trade coffee.

You have to wonder what is the relationship between Walmart and the producers of fair trade coffee: does Walmart reins in the urge to apply its enormous clout in order to drive the prices down on these producers, most of whom are pretty small and un-organized? Or it does apply its clout, but reluctantly? Or it doesn’t exert any price pressures on fair trade coffee producers and uses fair trade coffee to increase its appeal among a particular demographic?

Strange, I was a bit shocked to find this on a Walmart shelf…

BTW, the price for that coffee was pretty high by Walmart standards, I could have bought 2 1-liter coffee jugs (I can’t believe that coffee can be bought this way unless you have a coffee shop or something) for the price of 250 grams of fair trade coffee.