|
|
[ back ]
'More than fair trade'
(by Tim Woodcock - March 31, 2008)
Wilman Ortega does not drive a hard bargain, at least when it comes to dealing with coffee farmers in his home country of Guatemala. “We pay what they ask us for,” he said.
Ortega is the founder of a Central West End-based coffee-roasting company called Beans for Hope, which is designed to give farmers a better deal than a typical fair-trade arrangement. The company sells its goods online and through church groups, farmers’ markets and grocery stores, including Local Harvest and the St. Louis branches of Whole Foods.
The fair-trade movement emerged in the 1970s in an effort to blend philanthropy with business, and it has taken hold more strongly in Europe than North America. By setting a price that farmers can expect to earn for their harvest of coffee beans, the fair-trade system protects farmers from the volatility of the market, Ortega said.
Ortega hopes that his less formal approach, which sidesteps the rigorous certification process that can be a barrier for smaller farms, will benefit the farming communities around Ortega’s hometown of La Industria in a targeted and sustainable way. The company dubs its approach “more than fair trade.”
In addition to providing income to farmers, a proportion of the company’s profits is plowed into meeting the basic needs of the school in La Industria, which does not have windows, electricity or running water.
For Ortega, who teaches at St. Louis University School of Medicine, this is a side project, albeit one that maintains his connections to his family and his hometown. Ortega grew up in the Guatemalan countryside before his family moved to Guatemala City, in part to avoid the civil war that engulfed the country in the 1970s and ’80s. Ortega enrolled in medical school in Guatemala City, a move that subsequently led to jobs in Chicago and St. Louis.
Despite moving away for a period, his family did not sever ties with the land that it has cultivated since the 1930s. As a teenager, Ortega came back for summers and helped with the harvest; more recently, his mother returned to live there and began to farm the land. After learning how little she earned, Ortega was moved to look into the possibilities of coffee farming from afar.
Ortega’s sister Lissett lives in Guatemala, where she buys the beans from farmers and arranges shipments to St. Louis. Currently the company’s only employee living in St. Louis is Project Director Sean Trani.
The price a coffee farmer can earn with his goods on the open market fluctuates greatly, but in recent years the price has been in the region of 30 to 50 cents a pound. This does not take into account the cut that often goes to middlemen. Coffee beans traded through the fair-trade system will earn a farmer at least $1.24 a pound; Beans for Hope is paying its farmers $2.55.
Fine-tuning the business plan
Based in a shabby building on Olive Street, just west of the Taylor Avenue intersection, Beans for Hope has a second-story office that is, quite naturally, infused with the smell of coffee. The office’s exposed brick walls are decorated with posters and photographs showing various aspects of coffee production.
The entire 5,000-square-foot space downstairs is being renovated, and this will likely become the site of Beans for Hope’s storage and roasting facility. However, the remodeling is taking longer than anticipated. As a result, the company’s beans are being roasted by local stalwart Chauvin, which was founded in 1930.
Originally the arrangement was negotiated as a short-term fix, but “Chauvin has agreed to keep doing it until we are on our feet,” Trani said. Beans for Hope plans on doing its own grinding and packaging of its beans once its space is ready.
The company set up shop in September 2007, after about seven months’ work on marketing issues, including website design and creation of the company logo. The process thus far has taken longer than expected, but one upside is that the delay has allowed more time to fine tune the business plan, Ortega said.
“We struggled a little bit with our own identity,” he said. But the company’s backers decided that what distinguishes Beans for Hope from other companies is that it creates a direct link between farmers and consumers.
It is impossible not be influenced by the legendary Juan Valdez marketing campaign, Ortega said, referring to the Columbian cooperative of farmers who put the face of a coffee farmer on its packaging and, in doing so, became a major player in the coffee market.
But the key difference is that while Valdez is a fictional character, Beans for Hope uses imagery of real coffee farmers in its marketing, Ortega said. On the company’s blog, Ortega writes about his trips to Guatemala — he visits about three times a year — and the company is organizing a trip in the fall, during which grocery-store managers, baristas and members of the public can get to know the people who grow Beans for Hope coffee and learn a little more about the origins of their favorite brew.
“A lot of people love coffee, but they don’t know much about it,” Ortega said.
Ortega wants to change that by offering local coffee-tasting seminars.
The way that coffee is typically roasted makes it too dark and too bitter, Ortega said. A medium roast is better for bringing out the “sweet flavors and nuances,” and it is only then that one can start to distinguish the difference between a coffee from Central America and one from Indonesia. Beans for Hope coffees are all “single origin,” as opposed to blends, which can be used to mask inferior quality coffee, Trani said.
Asked about the “Starbucks effect,” both Trani and Ortega agree that it has probably done more good than harm. While Starbucks has become a global brand and a money-spinner, the Seattle-based company’s success has also led to greater awareness of coffee generally, Ortega said. Now people don’t bat an eye at paying $3 for a cup of coffee, and other coffee-shop owners have been able to ride on Starbucks’ coat tails, Trani said.
The next step is to redesign the system so that the people involved in producing that $3 cup of coffee by growing the coffee beans are rewarded more equitably, he said.
Those living in La Industria who are involved in coffee production see the potential of Beans for Hope, but until the project starts generating money, “it is a dream, it’s an idea,” Ortega said. In St. Louis, “people are excited by it. People enjoy a cup of coffee and get to help people in Guatemala. That’s it at the basic level.”
[ back ]
|
|
|
