Category archives: BSC in the press
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November 9th, 2008
Posted by Drew at 2:22 am
…in a profile piece about our good friend, Craig Robinson. We wish Craig all the best, and we miss seeing him in Providence.
CORVALLIS, Ore. — With a hint of 5 o’clock shadow and small bags under his eyes, Oregon State Coach Craig Robinson took the basketball court on Wednesday to start a campaign that is nearly as daunting as the one he just helped to complete.
For the past 20 months, Robinson assisted his brother-in-law Barack Obama’s bid for the presidency. Robinson stumped in Iowa, gave speeches in Washington State and did interviews about his childhood on Chicago’s South Side with his younger sister, Michelle, who is married to Obama.
All that work culminated in one magical Tuesday for Robinson and his family as they ate dinner at the Obamas’ house on election night and later exchanged congratulatory hugs onstage at Grant Park in Chicago.
“I’ve been so busy, I haven’t been able to process it yet,” Robinson said less than 24 hours later as he sat on the bleachers at Gill Coliseum after practice. “It’s wild. I don’t know what to say.”
Now that the Obamas are preparing to enter the White House and Robinson can devote all his energy to his first season at Oregon State, Robinson and the president-elect can debate about whose task is tougher.
The article continues:
Robinson’s players at Brown said he went out of his way to separate politics and basketball. He would walk a block from his office on Hope Street and duck into the Blue State Coffee shop to talk politics. (Jesse Agel, Brown’s new coach, said he would send Robinson a pound of Blue State Coffee, with its “drink liberally” slogan, to congratulate him.)
Read the rest of the profile here, and read an interview with Craig, which also mentions BSC, here.
Also, Craig spoke at Blue State Coffee for a “Barack the Mic” event last year. See it here.
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October 14th, 2008
Posted by Alex Payson at 1:24 pm
So it is official, we have partnered with the Brown University bookstore to operate the cafe that they are building!
There will be many details to come- but for now- we will have all the same great organic, fair trade coffee, still be donating to important progressive causes, and open for business in January of 2009!
Read about the new store in this recent Brown Daily Herald Article.
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July 31st, 2008
Posted by Alex Payson at 10:34 am
Blue State Coffee at 300 Thayer Street was awarded the “Best Coffee with a Conscience” award this year by RI Monthly! We are honored to have been recognized. In particular we are happy that our efforts to provide a cup of coffee that not only does no harm to the environment, but actually can improve the world a tiny bit have not gone unnoticed.
Thank you to all of our loyal customers, and welcome to our first-time visitors!
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July 21st, 2008
Posted by Alex Payson at 1:57 pm
Thanks to the Providence Business Journal for writing this great article about us:
Blue State patrons drink liberally
By Ted Nesi _PBN Staff Writer
Like millions of other Democrats, Drew Reuben was disappointed when Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry lost the 2004 presidential election. But, unlike most of Kerry’s unhappy supporters, Reuben turned his disappointment into action – and a successful business plan.
Reuben and his father, Marshall, are the founders of Blue State Coffee, a Thayer Street café with a novel twist – 10 percent of the company’s profits are donated to liberal causes. Since opening its doors a year ago, Blue State Coffee has already donated $50,000 to a variety of local and national groups, including Providence Summerbridge and People for the American Way.
Blue State Coffee opened in September 2006 as a Web-only operation, with the Thayer Street shop following in July 2007. Although the Web site has been slow to take off, the café was an immediate hit with the students and workers around Brown University.
When you walk into Blue State, there’s no question you’re in an establishment that has a point of view, with its “Bush’s Last Day” merchandise and other liberal-minded signs. But although patrons may come for the causes, they stay for the coffee, according to Alex Payson, Blue State’s general manager.
“It’s good coffee that supports great causes,” said Payson, a 27-year-old Brown graduate. “Quality is always paramount. Without that, we’re an empty store with sad faces around.”
Reuben agreed. “If we can’t make a profit – if the business isn’t viable – we can’t do any good for the world,” he said.
Reuben, a Connecticut native, came up with the idea for Blue State Coffee shortly after the election, when he was still a 16-year-old high school sophomore. “I’ve always been thinking outside the box,” he said.
As Reuben tells it, he and his father were talking politics on a coffee run to Dunkin Donuts, when Drew looked at the menu and began to think: “Can’t we channel that [money] into the causes we’re talking about and care about?”
Despite their lack of a business background, Reuben’s attorney father, Marshall, was game. That night, the pair came up with a slogan – “Drink liberally” – and soon brought on board a like-minded family. The group dove into the project, researching coffees and marketing plans, and eventually opened the Blue State Coffee Web site.
They also began scouting locations for the first café, quickly settling on Providence.
“We stepped foot on Thayer Street, and it’s the ideal location for a coffee shop like this,” said Reuben. “We spent time trying to find the right location – we looked at Northampton, Cambridge, New Haven – and we never found a spot quite like Thayer Street.”
Reuben, who just finished his freshman year as a political science student at Yale and is currently an intern for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said it was important to create the right atmosphere in the café. He wanted it to feel eclectic and fun, but also clean and comfortable.
“We wanted to be very certain we didn’t look like a cookie-cutter Starbucks store,” he said, “but we wanted to make sure we were clean, because some places were dirty during my research, and that’s not fun.”
As befits a business that wears its social mission on its sleeve, Blue State Coffee buys and sells organic, fair-trade, and locally made products. “We’re trying to be the ‘greenest’ coffee shop in the bluest state,” Payson said, laughing.
The company’s coffee beans are supplied by New Harvest Coffee Roasters, a Pawtucket company that specializes in high-quality, small-batch roasts. Since New Harvest is only a city away, the coffee beans are still warm when they get delivered to Blue State.
The company also uses cups that are compostable and biodegradable, and buys electricity from People’s Power and Light, which supports alternative energy.
Blue State also supports local causes. Each quarter, patrons vote for which organizations they think should receive the company’s contributions.
The company recently signed a lease to open a second café in New Haven. Reuben hopes the new location will open its doors by the fall – just before the November election. Eventually, he would like to see Blue State Coffee stores throughout New England.
So, if you drink enough Blue State java, do you become more liberal?
Reuben and Payson won’t go that far. But there’s anecdotal evidence that may be the case – the week before he left the Republican Party to become an independent, former Sen. Lincoln Chafee made his first visit to Blue State Coffee, Payson said with a chuckle. •
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July 1st, 2008
Posted by Alex Payson at 9:34 am
A few days ago we sent out the following press release.
If you would like to learn more or have questions please contact us at alex@bluestatecoffee.com.
WIND-POWERED LATTES COME IN COMPOSTABLE CUPS
AT BLUE STATE COFFEE
Blue State Coffee, a socially responsible coffee company offering freshly roasted organic and Fair TradeTM coffee now offsets all its electricity use with 100% wind power. The café has also completed a successful experiment to test whether its coffee cups and other waste are commercially compostable, on its way to its goal of running a “zero-waste” business.
“We pay extra for 100% wind power through People’s Power & Light—but it turns out to be only the cost of one latte per day,” said Blue State Coffee Manager, Alex Payson. “If one more person comes into the shop because we’re green, it’s worth it.”
Being green also pleases the core market of the Thayer Street café, which markets itself (as its name suggests) as a progressive-friendly hot spot. The café promotes progressive politics through events at the coffee shop, donations to causes (determined by the votes of customers), and a commitment to Fair Trade and environmental progress.
“We’re thrilled that Blue State Coffee has chosen our 100% wind green power product for the café,” said People’s Power & Light spokesperson, Karina Lutz. “Blue State understands and promotes our mission to make energy sustainable and affordable in Rhode Island—so it makes sense they’d choose a nonprofit source that is as local as possible, like New England Wind Fund.” Like People’s Power & Light’s other green power product, New England GreenStart, New England Wind Fund only supports renewable resources connected to the New England electric grid. New England GreenStart is available to residential and small commercial electricity users who pay their own bills. But for larger electricity users and those who don’t pay their own bills, such as renters like Blue State, New England Wind Fund is the solution.
Brown University students, under the tutelage of Kurt Teichert, Lecturer and Manager of Environmental Stewardship Initiatives at Brown University, designed a zero-waste program for Blue State Coffee. Part of the plan is to phase in all compostable and biodegradable paper goods, such as the Eco Hot CupTM coffee cups from Eco-Products that the café currently uses. Composting is a way to turn food waste—such as coffee grounds and paper waste—back into humus, an essential component of healthy soil. “Composting is something everyone can do, and it’s almost as easy as signing up for green power,” said Teichert.
Working with RI’s Earth Care Farm, Blue State conducted a composting experiment—and found the paper products lived up to their promise: they can be made into a soil amendment suitable for organic farming. Once he finds a source for compostable cup lids, Payson intends to compost all the café’s waste. “Then Blue State Coffee will be the greenest café in the bluest state!” said Lutz.
“They are environmentally progressive—not just minimizing negative environmental impacts, but maximizing positive impacts,” added Teichert.
Blue State Coffee, is located at 300 Thayer Street, Providence, and on the web at www.bluestatecoffee.com. New England Wind Fund is available through the web at www.newenglandwind.org. New England GreenStart is available through www.ripower.org.
###
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September 1st, 2007
Posted by Drew at 2:14 am
Web journalist Dan Haggerty of WPRI.com produced a video report about us, including interviews with me and some of our customers. Visit his page to check out the story!
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August 14th, 2007
Posted by Drew at 11:25 pm
The Providence Journal ran a great article about Blue State Coffee today:
Now, you can put a double shot of liberal politics in your latte.
Blue State Coffee, on Thayer Street, was started by the father-and-son team of Marshall and Drew Ruben of Wallingford, Conn. Blue State’s mission is to offer premier coffee with a social conscience. The owners donate 10 percent of the gross sales to four progressive causes: global warming, People for the American Way, the National Even Start Association and Democratic candidates.
Customers vote on how to allocate the proceeds by putting a wooden chip in one of four glass jars on the counter. Before too long, the public will be able to choose which causes the coffee shop supports, including a local charity.
In a riff on the classic John F. Kennedy quote, the cafe’s motto is, “Ask not what your coffee can do for you, ask what you can do with your coffee.”
As Marshall Ruben, a lawyer and confirmed liberal, said, “We felt we could deliver a terrific cup of coffee and provide a venue for political discourse and social activism.”
With names like True Blue blend and Patriot blend, the coffee touches all the crunchy, green bases: it’s organically grown, fairly traded and roasted by a Pawtucket company called New Harvest Coffee. It’s also kosher. Even the coffee cups are eco-friendly because they’re made out of processed corn, which can be composted commercially. True Blue also buys locally whenever possible, from home-grown produce to bagels.
“We’re trying to keep it personal,” said Colin Blankenship, one of the baristas. “If someone wants a mocha latte with extra syrup, we’ll make it sweeter. There’s no corporation telling us to use one shot of this and one shot of that.”
Leonard Lardaro, an economics professor at the University of Rhode Island, thinks this is an idea whose time has come.
“This is the most well-defined niche I’ve seen in a long time,” he said. “This is taking Starbucks and going five leaps further.”
The idea of a coffee house with a heart struck one Saturday morning when Drew, who is 18 and headed to Yale University, and his father were waiting in line at an upscale cafe in Wallingford. Looking at the $5 lattes, Drew turned to his father and said, “Why couldn’t we channel the money into causes we care about?”
Marshall said he would back his son if he came up with a sensible business plan. A year later, the family began selling coffee on-line. The actual coffee shop, which offers free Internet access and outdoor tables, opened a week ago. The Rubens are in business with another family, Tom Clark and his daughter, Bridie, a 20-something writer from New York.
“We named it Blue State Coffee because it represents Blue State ideals,” said Drew, a recent graduate of Choate Rosemary Hall, a prep school in Wallingford. “What sets us apart is we support good causes. You know where your money is going.”
Drew, who describes himself as a centrist, said he has always been drawn to progressive politics. At Choate, he was president of the Young Democrats and editor of The Democrat, a weekly newspaper. Last summer, he worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington, D.C. Asked if he was a Clinton Democrat, Drew said, “Which one?”
The Rubens knew they wanted to open their first store in a college town; the challenge was finding the right location.
“We came to Thayer Street and said, ‘This is it,’ ” Drew said. “I love Brown. I love the campus.”
It didn’t hurt that Drew’s mother, Carolyn Greenspan, is a Brown alumna.
“But it’s not just Brown,” Marshall added. “It’s the Rhode Island School of Design. It’s Johnson & Wales.”
Thayer Street is only the beginning. The Rubens plan to go regional, opening Blue State Coffee shops in college towns throughout New England.
Since Drew is bound for Yale, New Haven may be their next spot. Thanks to the store’s Internet business, the Rubens are getting calls from blue states like California and Michigan.
Blue State also hopes to become a hot spot for local political gatherings, from fundraisers to candidate debates. The owners plan on putting a soap box in the shop, and Marshall said that the store will host a big bash that will feature national figures from the Democratic Party.
“Nancy Pelosi knows about us,” Marshall said.
Would the Rubens ever open a coffee shop in a red state?
“Our initial idea,” Marshall joked, “is if a state turns red, we close.”
See the article on the Providence Journal’s website here.
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April 4th, 2007
Posted by Alex Payson at 8:16 am
Today, April 4th, the Hartford Courant ran a great article on Blue State Coffee.
Grab a cup of joe and then read the article here.
Posted in General news, Blue State Coffee news, BSC in the press | 1 Comment »
March 12th, 2007
Posted by Alex Payson at 12:36 pm
A few more websites have been kind enough to give some attention to Blue State Coffee.
Rhode Island’s Future- (A great RI political blog.)
Waterbury Republican American- (Even our Republican friends are giving us some love!)
Brave Astronaut Blog- (A personal blog, clearly a person with good taste!)
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February 23rd, 2007
Posted by Alex Payson at 11:52 am
We are ever so appreciative for the good press that we are receiving. Thank you to all the people who are putting their time and energy into helping spread the word about Blue State Coffee. We can’t wait to thank you all in person at our store in Providence when we open at the end of this spring!
Read the article by Helen Mou that appeared in the Brown Daily Herald here.
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