Not Made in the Shade

The blogger and fellow coffee enthusiast who runs Coffee Habitat recently contacted me to see if I knew anything about Dunkin' Donuts environmental claims. Specifically, she had read that DD brews mainly shade-grown coffee, and as an expert on shade-grown, she was highly skeptical. Rightly so, as it turns out! See "No proof of shade coffee" for her exhaustive research, which includes a lot that I did not know about DD, its suppliers, and even its finances and franchisee relations. Hint: the story does not include anything flattering.

See my Coffee Hell page for my admittedly off-the-cuff musings about the company.


The Coffee Habitat article mentions DD's connections to Sara Lee and Procter & Gamble, the latter of which formerly owned Folger's. Sadly, my wife Pam and I played a small part in the growth of Folger's, by participating in a marketing study they it conducted in the 1980s. I also learned that DD is backed in part by Bain Capital, a.k.a. Mitt Romney, nemesis of public education. It is indeed a small world of coffee.