Hi Coffee Enthusiasts!

I recently published an article called "Coffee with a Conscience," in Natural Family Online www.naturalfamilyonline.com magazine. It's so confusing to try to wade through all of the classifications of coffee: fair trade, organic, bird-friendly, shade-grown, etc. In "Coffee with a Conscience," I demystify all of these classifications and explain exactly why it's so important to choose fair trade, organic coffee. Here is the article. Enjoy!

Warmly,

Jacque

We are in the process of working on our initial tea offerings for the café. We are working with Todd & Holland in Forest Park and also Rishi Tea.

Todd & Holland are old favorites of ours and are located only four blocks from where we currently live. We love their teas and they are great people. Jacque and her mother spent a few hours this evening with Janet Todd tasting different teas for the café. Suffice it to say that it is difficult to pick favorites because there are so many great choices.

Rishi Tea comes to us highly recommended. They have won numerous national awards and they offer lots of organic fair trade teas. They have also been excellent to work with and the sample they sent us were wonderful.

So we will be carrying both.

As we work out which flavors and varieties we will carry, we would love to hear which types are your favorites or "must-haves" for the café. Also, please let us know if organic fair trade is important to you. You can leave comments here for all to see or e-mail us at info [at] prairiecroissant [dot] com.

We look forward to hearing from you.

- Scott

The folks who roast our coffee over at Metropolis Coffee Company are wonderful people who also happen to roast some great coffee. Apparently we are not the only people who think so. Roast Magazine has awarded them 2007 Roaster of the Year in microroasting.

Being Roaster of the Year means crafting the country’s best coffee, to be sure, but it also takes into account the business practices of the coffee roaster, using the following criteria:

• Company Mission
• Company’s Commitment to Sustainable Practices
• Commitment to Employees and Educational Practices
• Quality of Coffee
• Commitment to and involvement in the industry
• Innovations in roasting, marketing and business practices

Congratulations to the very deserving people at Metropolis.

You can taste the award winning coffee for yourself by ordering online here.

- Scott

We are pleased to announce a great new service exclusively for residents of Prairie Crossing! While we are busy working on the construction phase of the café you can start enjoying our amazing artisan-roasted, certified fair trade organic Prairie Croissant Café. Order it online right here and we will hand deliver it right to your doorstep.

Here's how it works:

1. Place your order by Wednesday afternoon.
2. Bean are roasted Thursday.
3. Beans arrive on your doorstep Saturday - hand delivered by us. (No extra charge for the smiles!)

Prairie Croissant Café coffees are delivered in one pound bags of whole beans, not ground, to preserve the integrity and freshness of the coffee.

I think this is a great way to share with Prairie Crossing some of the coffee that we are so excited about and also get a chance to talk with and meet some of the great people in Prairie Crossing. We look forward to seeing you!
Click here to order.

Please help us spread the word about the program by telling neighbors and other residents of Prairie Crossing.

Post any questions here or e-mail me at info [at] prairiecroissant [dot] com.

- Scott

Our new website design is starting to take shape. It still needs some tweaks here and there but I am working on it. Of course, if this is your first visit to our site you won't notice the difference. Take my word for it. It looks much nicer!

Also, we have a great new service we will be introducing exclusively for Prairie Crossing residents very soon. Watch for it...

- Scott

Very soon, we are going to start talking to people who are interested in working in the cafe. Because of the Metra schedule, we're planning on opening early (maybe 5am!) during the week and staying open later on Friday & Saturday evening. That means there are a lot of options for work schedules. We're hoping to find some people who want to work early mornings (5-8:30?) before their 9am work/classes. And some who want to work days or evenings or weekends or any mix of the above as full or part-time. We're also planning on hiring a full-time manager, who has experience managing a cafe or coffee shop.

So, if you're interested in joining our team, please email me at info [at] prairiecroissant [dot] com. Hopefully, that notation reduces my spam...

More info soon...

-John