This is 100% Fairtrade, next-level delicious M&S coffee, whether you’re grabbing a cup of instant or grinding your own beans
At M&S, all our tea and coffee, from the Foodhall to our Café, has been Fairtrade-certified since 2006. We’re proud to have long-standing relationships with Fairtrade cooperatives, some of which date back decades, that have a huge impact on coffee producers, their families and wider communities.
Every one of the producers we work with receives a fairer price for their crop and an additional premium to spend on projects of their choice. That means that by choosing Fairtrade, you could be supporting producers to invest in a school or hospital, gain access to clean drinking water, purchase renewable-energy cooking stoves or plant trees.
We have adopted the Fairtrade standard as our minimum global sourcing standard for tea and coffee, meaning that in addition to a guaranteed price growers receive for their products, they also receive the Fairtrade Premium, an extra sum of money which goes into a communal fund for workers and farmers to use to enhance the lives of people and communities.
M&S sell more own-label Fairtrade tea and coffee than any other retailer, giving growers a fair price for their tea and coffee.
Better yet, Fairtrade not only means you’re supporting a better quality of life for producers, but you’re also getting a better-quality drink. For example, ¼ of the Premium funds that Fairtrade coffee producers receive is invested in improving the quality of their coffee beans, which means better-tasting coffee for you!
We’ve been proudly sourcing Fairtrade coffee from the Bench Maji Cooperative in Ethiopia since 2016. Etagegnew (pictured) is one of its 104 members, and she owns 3.4 hectares of land where she grows coffee.
Etagegnew is also chairperson of the Women’s Saving and Credit Association, funded using Fairtrade premiums. The association empowers women to manage their income and have greater control over their family’s finances.
First it was all about the latte, then the flat white, and now… meet the Magic Coffee®! Having taken the world-famous Melbourne coffee scene by storm, Magic Coffee® is now launching in the Ireland, exclusive to the M&S Café.
The secret to this perfect drink is the magic ratio of coffee to milk – a double ristretto is topped with velvety steamed milk and served in a short 6oz glass. The result? A balanced, less bitter, but uniquely flavoursome coffee.
Treat yourself to a Magic Coffee® in the M&S Café now.
We all have our preferences when it comes to making coffee at home. Whatever you fancy, our specialist team makes sure you’re getting the very best flavour in every cup, every time.
All our beans, ground coffee, bags and pods are Fairtrade, arabica and premium-grade. Between professional tasters at origin and in the Ireland, coffee for M&S products is taste-checked for quality at least five times.
We offer a range of blends from light to dark roasts, so you can choose your favourite flavour profile. Our speciality-grade single-origin coffee is sourced by our specialist coffee buyers from the world’s best coffee-growing regions, then quality-graded for a superior taste. Plus, look out for our limited-edition hyper-local guest coffees, sourced from single growers.
Tea is the world’s second most popular drink next to water, with around 165 million cups of tea drunk in the Ireland each year alone. For 40 years, we’ve worked with one single expert supplier to responsibly source the best-tasting and best-quality tea. They source from tea gardens in the best-known tea-growing countries on our behalf, then blend the teas for the range for our stores and M&S Cafés.
Tea is very important to M&S: we sell the equivalent of 400 million cups of it each year, from our Remarksable Value everyday tea to our award-winning luxury gold blend and our single-origin teabags. Our tea is always 100% Fairtrade, hand-picked by growers who only choose the top two, youngest leaves and a bud for superior flavour and fragrance, then foil-packed for freshness.
We are so proud of our luxury gold tea that it’s used in our lemon and peach iced tea soft drinks, and served every day in all M&S Cafés.