The fair trade is at the crossroads. This concept, which defines itself as an alternative approach to conventional trade, was born around fifty years ago. In the late 1980s, non-profit fair trade organizations began labelling fair products to facilitate their entry into the largescale distribution. The sales figures are very hopeful in North America, but a decline appears in some precursory European countries. This article presents the fair trade concept and its evolution, as well as the debate on the introduction of fair products into the large-scale distribution. Some data on price and shelf spacing have been collected in the coffee department of supermarkets in Paris and close suburbs. The results of the discriminant analysis show that the fair trade is the first argument which explains the difference between the stores and that their strategy is related to the retail store chain.