Coffee Break

Thirteen Coffee Roasters You Should Get to Know

I was planning to write a post about Equal Exchange, a worker-owned coop that started life as a small coffee importer and is now one of the largest and most successful worker owned coops in the country - but I forget it was Thursday and that means Thursday 13 - so y’all get real lucky. Instead of writing about just ONE coffee company that I admire, I’m putting together a list of 13 coffee roasters you should get to know and why I think they’re something special. My one outside criteria is that the company has online ordering so that you can order from them if you’re so moved. And in the interests of full disclosure, I’ve ordered from some of these myself and I get nothing in return for writing about them. In fact, they don’t even know who the heck I am!

1. Equal Exchange (that’s Equalexchange.coop - NOT .com) has been around since 1986. They sell Fair Trade coffee, cocoa and snacks (including nuts!), but that’s not what makes them unique. They are a business model whose time has come - one that’s been called “social capitalism”. Every single employee who has worked with the company for at least one year is an equal-share owner of the company and shares equally in the profits that the company makes. They are the largest and oldest company that imports and sells 100% Fair Trade and alternative trade products, and living proof that alternative business models really do work. I am going to write more about Equal Exchange (I might even make a field trip out there one of these days since they originated locally), but for now, if you do nothing else, PLEASE check out their not business as usual page to see why they’re #1 on my list of coffee roasters you should know.
2. Dean’s Beans is where I get my fresh-roasted coffee. They’re local enough that I can pretty much be sure that the coffee I order from them was roasted the day before I get it. Owner Dean Cycon is an activist who is thoroughly involved in sourcing fairly traded coffee, and has been outspoken in his criticism of TransFair USA’s certification policies. The coffee is incredibly good, the company has a great fundraising model for charities, and they have one of the coolest online tools that let’s you put together your own coffee blends - and they’ll roast and ship it out to you within 24 hours.
3. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters may be one of the big guys, but the company is conscientious about both the environment and about their workers. They’re working really hard to strike a balance between being a BIG coffee company and being responsible to the earth and to society. Green Mountain makes no bones about being too big to source all of their coffee through Fair Trade channels, but they are working toward that goal, and part of their effort includes education and credit to small coffee farms with whom they do business. If you’re a single serve coffee system fan, Green Mountain-Keurig is the way to go. Just be sure to look for the Fair Trade coffees - they label them blatantly and feature 23 Fair Trade & Organic coffees.
4. Higher Ground Coffee Roasters sells ONLY Fair Trade, 100% organic shade-grown coffee, and lives by their motto Better Beans By Fairer Means. Because they believe that action doesn’t stop at your doorstep, they’ve also been involved with a number of other worthy organizations since the start, including 1% for the Planet, an alliance of companies and organizations that donate 1% of their profits to environmental causes every year. The company also invests in Energy Credits to offset their energy usage, and has invested in things like an afterburner for their roasters to reduce emissions by 98%. All their organic waste is contributed to local farmers for composting, and as much as possible, they purchase post-consumer recycled paper and plastic products. Also very cool, their coffee product pages often feature information about the Coop from which the coffee was purchased and how they’ve used Fair Trade premiums to better their communities. And did I mention that the coffee is great?
5. Cafe Campesino was founded in 1997 by a graduate of Georgia Tech with a degree in industrial engineering. Bill Harris believes in the Golden Rule, and has translated his vision of a world where all companies do business according to the Golden Rule into a successful coffee business that sells 100% Fair Trade, organically grown coffees. You can read about Bill and other members of the Cafe Campesino staff (and their pet projects) at the company’s staff bio page and read one of the most cogent explanations of how one man got involved in Fair Trade coffee at the company’s history page . It’s one of the best coffee stories I’ve ever read.
6. Peace Coffee has been in business since 1996, and was one of the first roasters to import Fair Trade coffee. The business began after the owner attended a meeting held by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy held in Minnesota and met a Mexican coffee farmer who told the group, “You guys should be selling Fair Trade coffee.” What makes Peace Coffee so cool, apart from their investment in 100% Fair Trade coffee? Their delivery policy. Since 1999, Peace Coffee has delivered as much of its coffee by bicycle as possible. Where it’s not possible, they make deliveried to locals in a biodiesel van, backing up their commitment to “roast coffee, not fossil fuels”.
7. Alternative Grounds is my one exception to the “you can order online” rule for a couple of reasons. 1) you CAN order their coffee wherever you are - you just have to call them to place the order and 2) they’re Canadian, and I did want to include at least one company for my Canadian readers (I know I’ve got a couple!). Alternative Grounds is another coffee company that was doing Fair Trade coffee before Fair Trade was cool. In business since 1996, the company was one of the first companies to be certified by Fair TradeMark Canada.  Alternative Grounds is one of the original members of Cooperative Coffee, a buyers cooperative that now has 23 members. The Coop trades directly with small coffee farmers rather than with large estates so that they can be sure their trade is doing the best work possible.
8. Heines Brothers Coffee brought me to tears. Okay, I admit that I’m a sentimental sap who gets weepy over television commercials, but I really didn’t expect to be squinting back tears while reading about a coffee company. Heines Brothers is a Louisville, Kentucky coffee company started back in 1996 by an ex-lawyer and an ex-copywriter. They started out brewing home-roasted espresso and selling it from a cart in a grocery store, and they’ve grown to own three of their own stores (with a 4th in the planning stages). They’ve taken a step beyond handing out their coffee grounds to be used by local farmers in compost, though. In 2006, Heines Brothers started the Breaking New Grounds program out of a desire to help struggling families in their own communities. These guys don’t just hand out bags of compost. The BNG program combines the grounds with other compost ingredients, then feeds it to their worms to turn out a rich soil nutrient additive - but they’re not stopping there, either. Their vision is a project that will bring together local farmers and residents of low-income neighborhood in a mutually beneficial relationship that will create jobs, provide food for the community and empower everyone as part of an energized community cooperative. Yeah, that kind of social entrepreneurship brings tears to my eyes. Again.
9. Coffee Exchange has been selling organic and Fair Trade coffee since 1988 - no, that’s not a typo.  The Providence RI coffee shop is owned and run by Bill and Charlie Fishbein and their parents, Mel and Rose. Today, the shop sells 100% Fair Trade coffee and 95% certified organic coffee. What makes Coffee Exchange extra special to me is partner Bill Fishebein’s “side project”, Coffee Kids, an organization he founded in 1988 to help alleviate poverty in many of the communities he visited while sourcing coffee. Coffee Kids works in partnership with communities that identify their own needs and create projects to alleviate them. It’s just one more example of why I think coffee people are among the best people in the world.
10. Pura Vida Coffee was founded by a guy who says he was “in high tech at the right time”. John Sage also says he was “the black sheep” of his family, a capitalist child of progressive parents who carted him around with them during the 70s on the trail with Cesar Chavez. Throughout his successful career, which included a stint with Microsoft and left him a multi-millionaire, he always knew that he’d find a way to combine successful business with charitable works. In 1998, a meeting with a college friend, Christopher Dearnley, provided him with the idea he’d been seeking - coffee. The pair developed a plan for a business that put its profits back into the communities that provide the coffee, and Pura Vida coffee was born. To date, Pura Vida coffee has distributed more than $1.5 million that has provided  clothes and food to street kids, job training, libraries, computer centers, and scholarships. In an interview with U.S. News and World Report, Sage said, “I believe that business can be driven by good, not greed.” And still be successful.
11. Just Coffee Coop is another 100% Fair Trade coffee company. According to the company web site, “You either get it or you don’t.” Committing to Fair Trade any less than 100%, they say, is charity, not economic justice. Just Coffee also believes in economic justice for their own employees. Like Equal Exchange, the company is 100% employee owned and democratically governed. What’s very cool about Just Coffee is the way that they work to spread the word and the knowledge about Fair Trade and economic justice. Several times a year, the Coop puts together coffee delegations to travel to one of the farmer coops with which they trade and learn about coffee from the source. Employees, customers and “coffee lovers or anyone with an interest” are welcome to sign up for a coffee delegation and learn about coffee farming first hand.
12. Grounds for Change is the first certified Carbon-Neutral Coffee in the United States. In addition to their membership in 1% for the Planet and the Fair Trade Federation, Grounds for Change has taken steps to use 100% renewable energy in their day-to-day operations, and has completed a crop-to-cup audit so that they can offset any carbon emissions with reneweable energy credits. Some of the steps that they take in their waste-not coffee production include using 100% recycled/recyclable bags for their coffee and contributing both their burlap bags and their coffee pallets to organizations that reuse them. None of it ends up in landfills. Pretty impressive!
13. Thanksgiving Coffee is what happens when a pair of self-proclaimed 1970s hippies decide to start a coffee company. Thanksgiving Coffee is the oldest of my Thursday 13 by a long shot. It started in 1972 when owners Paul and Joan Katzeff set up a 25 pound coffee roaster in a Mendocino hotel and began roasting coffee for the hotel’s cafe. The Thanksgiving Coffee company went public at just about the time that most other coffee companies were getting started, but it’s still about 75% family-owned and operated. The Katzeff’s are committed to sustainability to the tune of over 70,000 shade trees planted in Ethiopia and the use of biodiesel fuels in all of the company’s vehicles. The company’s slogan, “Not just a cup, but a just cup” was born on a flight back from Nicaragua in 1985. While there, Katzeff had seen first hand the poverty and misery of the coffee farmers, and become committed to coffee as a cause for advancing social and economic justice. What’s really cool? Owner Paul Katzeff sued the Reagan White House to end the coffee embargo on Nicaragua that was harming coffee farmers.

I know this was a really long-winded Thursday 13 - and the truth is that I barely scratched the surface of those coffee roasters and coffee companies who are committed to doing business by doing good. I hope that you take the time to check out at least one of the companies I briefly profiled, and maybe order yourself a bag of great coffee from a company that believes that doing good in the world can be profitable for everyone involved.

Be sure to check out more Thursday 13s  and see who else is putting together their lists of 13 awesome things (a special hat-tip to Eclectic Witch who reminded me how important it is to be self-aware in everything you do with her 13 Daily Practices.

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