Fast-food chain offers diners taste of fair-trade fruit tea

Diners at a fast-food chain can now get a taste of a fair-trade fruit tea from Sri Lanka without having to pay extra.

And this will go towards helping 6,000 underprivileged farmers in the South Asian country to improve their lives, the Fair Trade Hong Kong Foundation says.

Ten Café de Coral branches in Admiralty, Causeway Bay and other areas started offering the Sri Lankan fair-trade fruit tea last week. Diners can choose to have the tea with their meals for the price of normal tea at HK$5 a cup with any purchase of food, or HK$10 a cup without a meal.

It was not always easy to persuade corporations to support the fair trade campaign, but things were improving with its first partnership with Café de Coral, said the foundation, which acts as a bridge between fair-trade organisations and commercial businesses.

"We are not undertaking charity in fair trade. It is [merely] a fair platform to discuss a price," said founder Leung Pui-fung.

And it was a misconception that fair-trade products were expensive and available only for the minority, she added.

As in the case of the Sri Lankan tea farmers, many small-scale producers are being squeezed out of the market by mass producers. They had little bargaining power when negotiating prices for their product.

The farmers used to earn as little as 17 rupees (HK$1) for each kilogram of tea leaves.

But under the fair trade campaign - which sets a minimum price for buyers who are part of the programme - they now make up to 31 rupees for the same amount of tea leaves.

Under the programme, traders also have to contribute to a fund that helps the community, such as by building schools.

"We visited the farmers last year and saw the joy that came from their hearts as their lives have improved," said foundation chairman Alex Chan Wo-shun. "They can now see a future."

"We hope the promotion of the fair-trade tea at Café de Coral will become long term, and that we will not see a deficit from it," said the chain's corporate director Christine Hung Chi-yin.

The chain would evaluate diners' response before deciding how long the offer would run and whether to extend it to more branches, she said.

Leung said many people used to view fair trade with scepticism, believing it would not work. But more were now coming around to the idea as they had a better view of the widening gap between the rich and the poor as a result of globalisation.

The foundation is a marketing organisation under Fairtrade International and monitors fair trade certification in China.