“It’s a really good way to get together with people. It’s a social environment.”

The club, which had its first meeting Sept. 12, was formed by a small group of friends who did a lot of studying in coffee shops last year.

Jennifer Chen, president of the club and a zoology junior, said after a while it became apparent they were spending more time socializing than studying — and the topic of conversation frequently turned to coffee.

“We wanted to have a club focused on coffee,” Chen said. “We just love coffee so much we wanted to go beyond just drinking and talking.”

Though the club does focus on different tastes and flavors of the drink — at the Wednesday meeting the club held a blind taste-test between different brands — the focus of the club is to educate their members on the coffee industry.

Chen said there is a lot about the coffee industry students don’t know.

“We wanted to know not only what makes the drinks but also what goes into producing the drink we get at the coffee shop,” Chen said.

A focus on fair trade coffee laws is one of the subjects the club discusses. Lian Lin, vice president of the club and international relations and economics junior, also was the president of the MSU group Students for Fair Trade last year.

“The fair trade movement was started to eliminate the middle man between local producers and the consumer,” Lin said.

“Right now, there’s hundreds of people that get their hands on coffee before we get it.”

Though the club is new, Chen said there were about 40 people at the first meeting, and their mailing list has more than 100 students on it.

Chen said she expects that number to grow in time. The club has scheduled several speakers and events for their meetings in advance, including a concert called “Javapalooza,” which will feature six local artists during their Oct. 10 meeting.

And if that doesn’t bring in the crowds?

“There’ll still be coffee to drink,” Chen said.