News

COVID -19 Policy... what are we doing? 

As we are all well aware these are trying times for everyone and so we have to make some tough decisions for our business, staff and safety for our customers. 

The specialty coffee industry globally has been hit hard by this pandemic and are thoughts are with those who are sick, closed, in lockdown or facing staffing problems. 

We value every coffee shop, farmer, importer, exporter, restaurant, bakery, hotel and roasteries working during these times and your support in keeping independent businesses going is key to survival. 

Our team are here working hard ensuring we can keep you going with the beautiful coffees we work with.

Outlined below is some early information following the breaking news that is currently being delivered in the UK. 

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Tarqui ....Where is it? And what is the competition 

Tarqui is a small town in the Central Cordillera of the Anders Mountains in the South West of Colombia.  This is the second year that we travelled to Tarqui to purchase coffee, meet with the producers we work with and to Judge the growers competition arranged by Nordic Approach and Fairfield Trading. 

We first travelled there in November 2018 and fell in love with the coffee and the producers who work the land.  The farmers are small and very remote a good 1-2 hour hike into the mountains.  A typical farm is family owned and 1-3 hectares in size.  This family aspect means many of them work together to create larger lots of coffee, however during competition time family rivalry comes out in full.  This post is to give you a flavour of what coffees we have bought this year.  We will focus in more detail on each producer as and when we release their coffees. 

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Denbi Uddo School Project....What is it? 

For each bag we sell we will donate £1 in to a fund to buy the children of the Denbi Uddo school some text books, pens and paper.  These basic essentials are really important and much needed.

Denbi Uddo is a small town near the Jigesa Coffee Mill in the Guji Zone of Ethiopia.  The school is a short drive from the Mill and the export company Testi have carried out a lot of work in building the school.  When I visited in 2017 Adam from Testi was really excited to show us the school myself and other roasters on the trip wanted to donate or help in any way we could which lead us on to this idea for the 2018 harvest from Denbi Uddo.

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Price Increase and Changes to Shipping

We have been holding back from a price increase for quite some time now. The past few years have been hard on the coffee industry mainly due to the decision to Brexit in 2016.  In our business almost everything we purchase is imported with the main cost being green coffee beans which are priced in $USD.  As the value in the pound has dropped we have had to pay around 20% more for the same coffees we bought  in previous years and this has been a trend across all of our supply chain. 

We as a company continue to invest in our staff, equipment and quality of product as we want to showcase the worlds finest coffee and refuse to drop quality and cut costs to continue to grow.  

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Meet Rolando Ramirez Moreno in Ataco

During our time in El Salvador back in 2016 we were really fortunate to meet Rolando a new producer for us and also for our importer Mercanta.  Coffee has been in his family for three generations and in 2005 Rolando decided to commit himself further into the coffee world by taking on new farms trading under the company name of Cayro.  

We spent the day with Rolando being driven around in Mitsubishi Sport Shogun I believe (sorry not that it enhances the coffee but it adds to the off road charm).  We started by visiting Montes Urales a coffee which we were roasting late last year.  

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Sourcing Coffee in Apaneca Ilamatepec - El Salvador.

Our day starts in Guatemala City as always on these trips at 5:30 am, a solid and classic breakfast of eggs, re-fried beans, black coffee and the nearest thing to yoghurt and muesli I can find! Kas is ready and waiting for our short three hour drive across the boarder to El Salvador. This is a common route for lots of coffee producers as they may have farms in both Guatemala and El Salvador. We were heading to El Carmen Estate where we would cup 2 tables of coffee take a short tour of the farms and stay for the night in the farm house. This was so very welcome as El Carmen is more of palace than your classic farm house.

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