We buy coffee directly from our farm partners, eliminating as many people as possible and costs in between us and them.

El Recreo is a family-owned and operated 255-acre farm that has produced premium coffee for over 50 years. From soil and water management, to reforestation, and protection of their native ecosystem, they are a model of regenerative practices. The farm employs more than 40 permanent families, as well as approximately 200 seasonal workers. They provide many facilities to ensure employees maintain a high standard of living including a school for children, a health center, and retirement housing.

Maria Esther Saut and Pascual Castillo are the proprietors of Finca La Fortaleza, a beautiful model farm in Chiapas, Mexico. Finca La Fortaleza was born as a response to a devastating outbreak of the coffee fungus Rust, which wiped out all of the small producers in Chiapas in 2014. They hired as many as they could to help them transform their 266-acre cattle farm back into coffee production. To do this, they first reforested the entire area, which in turn reestablished the natural habitat. In addition, they work with more than 2,000 small producers in the region, providing them technical advice and assistance to keep them one step ahead of climate-change induced plagues, and to improve the quality of their coffee.

Mozambique is a perfect place to grow coffee. It is near the equator, between the tropics of Capricorn and Cancer. Parts of it are at an elevation of more than 2,000 feet. And those parts have the ideal temperature range of between 60 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit. It gets, on average, 70 to 80 inches of rainfall a year. And all its neighbors (Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Tanzania) have long histories of being successful coffee-producing countries.

But there was no coffee production in Mozambique. Why? Because it is a former colony of Portugal. And Portugal already had a colony that produced coffee: Brazil, which grows about 40% of the world’s crop. They didn’t need to do it in Mozambique.

And because there was no history of coffee production, there was literally no awareness of coffee either. There’s no coffee culture in the country. Few people drink it. And certainly, the people who lived in the buffer zones around Gorongosa Park had never heard of it.

In the remote western highlands of Guatemala, Aurelio manages a series of multigenerational farms that regularly win “Cup of Excellence”  awards for their spectacular coffee.