Learn about Direct-Trade Coffee

What is Direct-Trade Coffee?

In a world where consumers buy hundreds of products every year without having any idea where they come from nevermind who they come from, Direct-Trade Coffee is an exciting and important concept.

With terms like Fair Trade Coffee, Organic Coffee, Sustainable and Shade-grown Coffee floating around the world, do we really need another term to describe the coffee we buy and sell? At Poverty Bay Coffee Company we think the answer is a resounding YES! The reason is simple; the terms Fair Trade, Organic, Sustainable and Shade-grown all require either a leep of faith on the part of consumers or a third party that is paid to attempt to give the consumer the peace of mind that the coffee what they are drinking is doing more good than harm. With Direct Trade Coffee consumers know exactly where the coffee they are drinking comes from and because of that they know exactly how it is grown and processed. Simple!!

El Malinal
El Malinal is a community of about 850 people on the southwest slope of Cerro Jan Juan, an extinct volcano that lies between Nayarites capital of Tepic and the Pacific Ocean. In 1997 Poverty Coffee Company set sail in the coffee industry with the goal of roasting and selling World-class coffee that did a world of good instead of a world of harm. This of course, ended up being quite an education for all of us. Our knowledge was shallow, our learning curve was steep and we wanted very much to get it right. As we did more research we knew one thing for sure, we needed to find coffee importers who we could trust and who shared our passion for the important social and environmental issues surrounding the buying and selling of coffee. When we made our millionth phone call we finally found our friends at San Cristobal Coffee Importers. Devorah Zeitlin and Jim Kosalos and the farmers they were working with - the farmers at El Malinal in the state of Nayarit, Mexico, had everything we were looking for. Their coffees are Shadeg-rown, Organic, 100% Sustainable and the prices Dev and Jim pay the farmers of El Malinal exceed Fair Trade Cofee standards. Best of all we have a direct relationship with the farmers.

Café Selvanica & Café Inkaiko
In 1999 while exhibiting at CoffeeFest in Seattle, we had the good fortune of meeting two young men who were determined to make the contacts necessary to sell a special coffee from Café Selvanica in Peru.

Carrying a backpack full of green coffee bean samples from booth to booth KC O’Keefe and Steve Gunderson of Jungle tech Coffee Importers convinced us that their coffee was Shade-grown, Sustainable, Organic and that they were commited to paying their farmers prices that exceeded Fair Trade Coffee standards. We tried the coffee, loved it and another long term Direct Trade relationship was born. Since then KC has move to Peru, married his lovely wife Tatiana (a Peruvian) and has dedicated his life to a Direct Trade relationship with the farmers of Café Selvanica and Café Inkaiko.