Five Origins, One Journey

In the volcanic hills near Cobán lies Samac, a community of Q'eqchi' Maya families. The land was once held by German settlers and worked by the people who lived on it as laborers. After agrarian reform returned it to them, they founded their own cooperative in 1971. Today more than 400 members from around 230 families produce roughly 90 tons of coffee a year. Our Lady Blue comes from a women-only project inside it.

At about 2,000 meters, the village of Wotto na Bultuma grows coffee next to fruit and vegetables in a forest garden, farmed organically by around 100 families and their cooperative. Their washed coffee became Meaza, named after the Ethiopian women's rights activist Meaza Ashenafi. Expect citrus, peach, apricot and berries.

The cooperative behind Frida takes its name from a phrase meaning "new light in the sky". It collects and processes coffee from Zapatista communities, with about 800 members across eight municipalities. In the cup: dark chocolate, hazelnut, blackberry and lychee, with a touch of jasmine.

Near Yasuní National Park, a group of young graduates known as Witoca grows Robusta in the soil of the Amazon rainforest. They took their name from the Wituk fruit, a symbol of the forest's ability to regenerate. Their careful fermentation and drying won them the Taza Dorada award in 2023.

Aldebaran-Aleph blends certified organic Arabica from both countries. It grew out of Cafè y Caffè, a cooperation project funded by Italian development cooperation with the NGOs ACRA and CEFA, to support small producers in remote mountain communities.

Five origins, three continents, five different harvests. Yet the road afterwards is the same: sorting and drying, bagging, export paperwork, a port, a container, weeks at sea. Then customs, a warehouse, quality checks, and finally the roaster. Every step has its own people, documents and deadlines, and a delay at any one of them is felt in the cup.

A long supply chain doesn't have to be an anonymous one. When you know the village, the cooperative and the people behind a lot, you can plan better, trace problems faster and pay fairly. For a benefit corporation, that transparency is part of the work.