Caltech Dining and Coffee Roasters of Pasadena developed OCS (Office Coffee Service), intent on bringing high quality coffee to each department on campus.

Coffee beans will be roasted daily at the Red Door Café, then ground and packaged for retail sale. There are three convenient locations on campus to serve you; Red Door Café, The C-Store and Café at Broad. OCS also offers two different sized programs, one aimed at small offices (250 cups of coffee per week or less/40 people or less) and one intended for large offices (250+ cups per week/40+ people).

Small Office Program: Orders can be picked up or delivered by Caltech Dining staff. Small offices provide their own coffee equipment (coffee pots).	Large Office Program: Orders can be picked up or delivered by Caltech Dining staff. Full service coffee equipment will be provided for your convenience. Please set up an appointment for a technician to set your office up.

Frequently Asked Questions:

	Is this program only available to offices on campus?
	How do I place an order?
	Can I make orders in person?
	How do I pay?
	How do Commercial and "Specialty" Coffees differ?
	What is an Estate Coffee?
	What is Shade-Grown Coffee?
	What is Organic Coffee?
	What is "Bird Friendly" Coffee?
	What is Sustainable?
	What is Fair Trade?
	Why is certification impportant?

Is this program only available to offices on campus?
OCS is available to everyone on campus. Students may choose to order coffee and tea for their houses and staff and faculty can pick up a bag of coffee to take home. Whatever your coffee needs are, OCS can work for you.

How do I place an order?
Ordering is fast and easy. Simply e-mail your order or call it in! Please specify what items you would like to purchase, and the quantity of each item. Please provide your contact information so we may confirm your order if needed.

Can I make orders in person?
Whenever it is convenient for you, please stop by one of our three locations to pick up a bag of fresh roasted coffee, boxes of tea or condiments. The OCS program is not restricted to offices on campus. Order coffee to take home too!

How do I pay?
When placing email and phone orders, please provide us with your contact information as well as your office PTA account number. When ordering and picking up in person, we will accept your Personal Account card, Student Id cards, cash and PTA numbers.

How do Commercial and "Specialty" Coffees differ?
Commercial coffees are distinct from Specialty coffees. They are generic, roasted and ground coffees offered primarily by the three major coffee companies (Phillip Morris/Kraft, Proctor & Gamble and Nestle). Commercial coffees usually blend beans of both arabica and robusta types. Even if the beans come from only one producing country, the sources or growing attributes of the blended coffees are difficult to trace or identify.

The bulk of coffee sold as specialty coffee is known as conventional. A conventional coffee is not "farm identified". The designation may describe bean size (e.g. Mexican Altura), but conventional coffees are always processed and purchased in bulk. Suppliers of these coffees, such as processors who mill or export coffee, are hard pressed to provide specific growing information on the harvesting or labor conditions. Price is the primary variable, although these coffees are priced at a premium compared to commercial coffees.

Farm-identified coffees include single-estate, organic and socially responsible coffees. These come from a specific farm. Elements of the harvest are usually identifiable – i.e. the type of arabica cultivar, the shade coverage over the coffee plants, or the farm’s ownership structure.
Organic and socially responsible coffees can only come from "farm-identified" sources, because certification provides the only proven means to verify the market claims.

An excerpt from:
"A Quick Guide to Sustainable Coffee "
By David Griswold

What is an Estate Coffee?
Estate coffees are harvested from a single farm or common soils. The coffee carries the name of the farm or grower. Estate coffees usually exhibit far better quality control and more consistent taste profiles from crop to crop than most conventional bulk sources.

Sophisticated palates recognize the quality of estate wines, made from a winery’s own grapes and processed and bottled on-site, so too, those same palates recognize a quality cup of estate coffee, made from coffee beans grown and processed at a particular farm.

The "little guy" was once the heart and soul of the coffee business. Small farms grew and processed their own beans until after World War II, when major coffee companies began to dominate the market with generic coffees produced in large mills. (Similar to the way in which small breweries in the United States gave way to large producers like Anheuser-Busch in the years after the prohibition). Both industries are coming full circle with more small; hand crafted products, though specialty coffee lags behind beer and wine in the public consciousness.

What is Shade-Grown Coffee?
This is a term with no clear-cut definition, generally referring to coffee grown under a natural canopy. Concerns began when natural corridors that host migration of birds from North America were being interrupted for the purpose of planting coffee. (This is most notable in southern Mexico.) Unfortunately, what started out as a scientific discussion at the Smithsonian Institute’s Migratory Bird Center has quickly migrated in the commercial arena, with numerous roasters and consumers promoting "shade grown is good, all others are bad". Rainforest Alliances’ ECO-OK program and the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center are working to better define this. Shade certification needs to be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

What is Organic Coffee?
Organic coffee is a coffee production practice. Organic coffee is grown on farms that don’t use chemical inputs. To market a coffee as certified organic, a farm must be inspected to receive certification. At each step in the processing chain, inspectors track the coffee beans as they move from source to cup. To protect the integrity of the process, the coffee must be sold through certified importers and roasters. This certification process helps protect consumers as well, guaranteeing the products they buy are genuine. The USDA has just announced that 95% organic may bear the label organic. 50% organic may be labeled made of organic ingredients.

Organic farming as a philosophy and ethos is actually much more complex, a process that envisions a farm as a living ecosystem. Organic farmers are committed to improving the health of this ecosystem by maintaining and rejuvenating their soils. The end result is a farm that drastically reduces its inputs and outputs, because most of its needs are provided by the ecosystem itself. Organic farmers believe even using synthetic chemicals would disrupt this natural balance.

What is "Bird Friendly“" Coffee?
Simply put, "Bird Friendly“" coffee is coffee that comes from farms in Latin America that provide good, forest-like habitat for birds. These coffees are planted under a canopy of trees. Because of the shaded, forest-like setting created by these canopy trees, this coffee is called shade-grown. Not only are "Bird Friendly" coffees shade-grown, they are also organic, meaning that they are grown without the use of chemical pesticides which poison the environment. These coffees are certified by a criteria developed by the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center of the National Zoo. Companies that sell these coffees contribute 25 cents per pound to support the Center’s research and conservation programs.

What is Sustainable?
For coffee agriculture and resource development, the term implies concern both for laborers’ working conditions and for trading practices and land tenure systems that do not impoverish farmers – as well as sensitivity to the environment, minimization of pollution and independence from non-renewable energy sources. At the intersection of ecology, economics, and politics, sustainability is concerned with the equitable allocation and consumption of resources now and in the future.

It would be near impossible to certify for such a broad spectrum of attributes, but it is the hope of the industry that when sufficient awareness is developed for each if these important areas, that credit be given to the producers, brokers and roasters who support sustainability.

What is Fair Trade?
Fair-trade coffees refer to the economic system under which coffee is purchased. Roasters must purchase fair-trade coffees from farmer cooperatives, and they must follow established minimum prices. (Conventional coffee, in contrast, is subject to the volatility of the New York Coffee Exchange "C" price)

Fair-trade principles stipulate that farmers are guaranteed a minimum best price when the world coffee "C" market price dips below the cost of production. By buying directly from the worker-owned co-ops, proponents say the money goes directly to those who grow and pick the beans, not the middlemen.

Certification bodies in the U.S. and Europe regulate supplier cooperatives listed on an international register and inspect them annually. Opponents of the concept as it has been established by U.S. certifiers protest
1. Roasters are required to purchase regardless of quality.
2. Only small farms and cooperatives are eligible.

Why is certification impportant?
The greatest threat facing sustainable, organic and shade-grown coffee is the possibility that uncertified product will clutter the market and confuse or willingly mislead consumers. One problem is that many roasters and retailers label their products without obtaining certification themselves. Sadly, whenever people pay premium prices for a particular point of differentiation, free riders will always have an incentive to commit fraud.