The first ever out-of-store promotion for Cafédirect's roast and ground Fairtrade coffees will take place between 3-16 March to coincide with the UK's Fairtrade Fortnight.
The promotion is designed to support the re-packaging and new launches of the coffees, and will feature a branded mobile coffee sampling unit, designed in a café bar style, which will tour four supermarket chains in the south of England (Asda, Safeway, Sainsbury and Tesco).
Customers of the stores will be able to sample Cafédirect's Organic Machu Picchu and Medium Roast coffees, while at the same time, to drive purchases in store, they will be handed a leaflet offering them a chance to win two free flights to one of seven European cities with a coffee heritage: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Florence, Paris, Rome, Venice and Vienna.
Alka Dass, Cafédirect's promotions manager, said: "Fairtrade Fortnight is a crucial time for our company as it's when consumer awareness is at a peak. Reaching consumers close to the point of purchase is a new promotional approach for us and it will give us the opportunity to demonstrate first the excellent quality coffee and also the benefits of paying a fair price to the farmer."
Cafédirect claims to have a 6 per cent market share in roast and ground coffee in the UK, and last year increased its sales of roast and ground coffee by more than 20 per cent. The company has just re-packaged its entire roast and ground coffee range and launched two new products, Espresso and Decaffeinated, to appeal to an even wider range of consumers.
It is more than 10 years since Cafédirect began setting the standards for ethical trading in the UK, and it still buys all its products directly from growers. It claims to be the only hot beverage company in the UK to guarantee that 100 per cent of its range carries the Fairtrade mark and is committed to its mission to set new standards for commercial trading in developing countries.
The company is paying between 80 and 160 per cent more for its coffee than the current world market price, while for tea and cocoa the mark-ups are 20 per cent and 9 per cent respectively.