Wisconsin to Bahia - The Benefits of Going Direct

In my last , I talked about the different ways that a coffee company can go about purchasing coffee from origin. For the coffee that we purchase from the Neves family in Brazil, we are working directly with the farm to purchase the coffee and get it here to Milwaukee.

Several years ago, my predecessor in the coffee buying role received a call from Daniel Neves, a coffee trader in Colorado. Daniel said that his family owned a farm in the state of Bahia in Brazil and he wanted to send us samples. After trying the coffee, Daniel offered to come and visit us in Milwaukee to tell us more about the farm and an interesting relationship they had with a nonprofit organization called Socially Conscious Coffee. The rest, as they say, is history…

For the past six years, we have been buying coffee from the Conquista Farm. The Neves Family has built their business so that their family can facilitate the entire transaction. Daniel’s uncle, Geraldo, is the owner of the farm and the “CEO” of the family business. His son, Fernando, manages the day to day activities of the farm – overseeing the harvest and maintenance to ensure that the best coffee makes it to us. The family has an export office in Salvador, Brazil where they manage the paperwork and customs hurdles on the Brazilian side of the shipment. Daniel, who is half American, lives in Colorado has an import office and manages the US side of the equation.

So the question remains, why buy direct? Purchasing this coffee is more than a transaction for our company…it’s a relationship. One of the purposes of my visit to Bahia was to discuss renewing our contract with the Neves Family.  This discussion included how much we would pay for coffee. If I were buying coffee from an importer, I would just call them and ask for a price. When I buy this coffee, Daniel’s family and I have a discussion about their goals and what they need to make the farm better and the lives of the people working on the farm better. They take the time to educate me about their cost structure and how the money we pay is helping to improve the quality of the product. 

Purchasing coffee directly also allows us to earmark a portion of our price as a donation to Socially Conscious Coffee. Daniel’s wife, Stefanie, is the Executive Director of this organization that operates a school on the farm grounds. This school serves the children of the people that work on the farm as well as anyone else in the community that would like to take advantage of it. Students at the Centro Rural EduCafe receive an elementary education, uniforms and three meals per day…for free. 

In addition to the elementary school, Socially Conscious Coffee runs adult education classes in the evenings. In the front of the school are medical and dental exam rooms where doctors come to provide checkups monthly…again, for free. 

$0.10 per pound for every pound of coffee that we purchase is donated to Socially Conscious Coffee to help keep the school running. Since we began working with the Neves Family, more than $5,000 has been donated to help the school. 

Direct relationships also offer our company a chance to gain a deeper knowledge of how the product we serve comes to be. Next week, I’ll talk about my education in coffee growing and how the Neves Family is marrying traditional coffee growing practices with modern technology to produce an amazing product.

Until then, be good and remember to sip slowly.