Our commitment to transparency
One of the reasons our coffee is so unique is the transparency we’re able to achieve…all the way from seed to cup.
We are directly involved in each step of the growing and harvesting process on our farm—from planting, to picking, to fermenting, to washing, to drying, to sorting—we have 100% control over each of these key phases.
Our coffee is then sent to another facility to be milled, graded, and exported. We work with coffee importers who are experts in logistics, and we as the producers take on the full expense of bringing the coffee from Ecuador to the US. Once in the United States, our family members who live there continue to monitor the coffee at a local storage warehouse and are the ones in charge of all operations stateside. When you place your order, the coffee is still under our care—up until the moment you take your first sip.
Although we love this model of transparency, it does come at a cost—literally.
Being vigilant about our entire process does mean that we pay a price for our efforts. We are not handing our coffee off at any point to become anyone else’s responsibility. We are also fully invested in the lives and well-being of each of our employees. We are committed to the integrity of both our coffee and our business as a whole.
We think that makes our coffee pretty special (along with delicious), and we hope that our vision for our coffee and the lives it touches will be meaningful to our customers, too!
Understanding costs
Coffee pricing can be a complicated subject, but it is more approachable when there is honest conversation about the realities of producing coffee. We want to bring you a farmer’s insight into what it takes to produce specialty coffee at our farm.
Ecuador is a US-dollar-based economy, where costs of production are higher compared to other coffee-producing countries. Labor alone is a considerable investment, not only because harvesting and processing coffee by hand is so time consuming, but also because of the approach to employment that we have committed to at the farm.
We say “investment” and not “expense” because we value people and understand the importance of creating consistent and reliable sources of income for our team. What we offer at our farm—full-time jobs with access to medical and paid time-off benefits in accordance to Ecuadorian labor laws—is not as common of a practice in the coffee sector as one might think.
We are considered a small coffee farm in terms of hectarage (acreage) and volumes we produce. On average, it costs us around $4.00 per pound to produce our standard coffee, and the export/import cost is around $2.50 per pound. This does not include the many additional costs of transportation, packaging, and general business expenses.
Coffee you know is good
Being a family-owned, small coffee farm in Ecuador and bringing our coffee to our customers in this more direct and personal way means that our coffee does cost more
than the commodity coffee sold by chains and large companies.
We hope that our much more intentional quality-control methods (done by hand rather than machine), our variety of environmental initiatives and pride in stewarding our land, and our desire to honor all of the people who are a part of this business…
…will make this coffee as worth it to you as it is to us.
It is truly our privilege and joy to share it with you!
