As Ethiopia and United States coffee shop giant Starbucks fight it out in a high-profile trademark dispute, little notice is being taken of another potential row brewing in the backstreets of a highland town.
Owner of a small business Ambes Tewelde has a roaring trade selling about 400 cups a day of fine Ethiopian coffee in a perpetually packed coffee shop named … Starbucks!
”An Ethiopian friend of mine in Atlanta suggested the name, and people seem to like it,” Ambes said in his shop.
Here, coffee is roasted on charcoal in front of customers, and women in traditional white dress offer the aromatic beans to smell first, before the coffee is drunk.
Proud of the big hand-painted ”Starbucks” sign over the door, and even displaying his own version of the famous logo with a picture of his baby son superimposed, Ambes does not fear a visit from the company’s lawyers.
”If they complain, I will change it. But I am sure they will be happy here,” he said. ”After all, nobody knew their name before. I have made it famous in town. Maybe I could even be the one to open their franchise!”
Ambes and his customers in the town of Mekele — capital of the northern Tigray province where the coffee-drinking ceremony is an essential part of local culture — have little sympathy, however, for their US namesake in its trademark row.
The Seattle-based coffee retailer is accused of blocking a bid by Ethiopia — the birthplace of coffee — to trademark its top-notch Sidamo and Harar coffees, thus denying farmers potential extra income of $90-million a year.
Starbucks says it is in talks with Addis Ababa and is helping local farmers in Ethiopia and across the region with numerous assistance programmes.
”You have to ensure the farmers get the advantage from their products, but in this case they are not,” said Ambes, to approving nods from locals sitting on stools littering the small establishment where the floor is strewn with long grass.
In a reminder of Ethiopia’s pre-eminent place in the history of coffee, drawings inside the shop tell the story of how centuries ago a local herder saw his goats ”frolicking” over-excitedly after eating a bean from a local plant.
According to legend, the curious herder took the bean to a local monk, who boiled it up and found it to have a similarly stimulating effect. Thus was coffee discovered. — Reuters