The lifecycle of a coffee generally goes from farmer to importer/exporter to roaster to consumer. There are exceptions to this rule, of course—coffees that are roasted in the same country where they’re grown do not require an exporter—but by and large, coffee follows a fairly established path of travel, with lots of room for quality and innovation along the way.
And then there is Paso Paso – Farmer Owned Coffee, a new global collective of farmers that seeks to upend this model by going directly to consumers. Five producers representing four different countries have come together to create a roasting company of their own, headquartered in Hannover, Germany.
The newly-formed brand will act as a showcase for the coffees grown by the five producers. The project was brought together by Bram de Hoog, a former green coffee buyer with Ally. Acting as a sort of managing director, de Hoog helped select the five producers to be part of Paso Paso, each of whom have an ownership stake and are registered shareholders in the brand, allowing them more involvement and decision-making as well as profit sharing.
“The value of coffee soars after roasting, and our goal is to make this added value directly available to the coffee producers without any complexities,” de Hoog says. “Shared ownership eliminates hurdles in today’s coffee trade, fostering open data sharing, feedback, and empowering producers to represent themselves in the European market.”
The five producers involved are:
Diego Robelo – Aquiares Estate – Costa Rica
Diego Baraona – Los Pirineos – El Salvador
Hester and Dawit Syoum – Bette Buna – Ethiopia
Jorge Vasqúez, Daniela Vega, and Alex Vega – Roble Negro – Costa Rica
Silvio Sanchez – Santa Teresa de Mogotón – Nicaragua
“We joined Paso Paso because we feel that it is an incredible opportunity to be owner of a [roastery] in Germany to get closer to the end consumers,” Diego Robelo says. “We can control the whole supply chain and the consumer can taste the coffee as it is supposed to be. Furthermore, we can tell our story like we want to tell and finally, we want to understand the consumer dynamics and learn from their world.”
Coming out of the gate, Paso Paso has six different coffees on offer, one from each of the producers as well as their Cafe de la Casa, a blend of coffees from Aquiares Estate and Roble Negro in Costa Rica and Guji Meguda in Ethiopia. All coffees can be ordered directly from the Paso Paso website.
We have seen roasting companies in the past created to highlight a single farm or producing country, but Paso Paso feels like a notable expansion on the farmer-owned roaster model, most especially because it is trans-continental and multi-national, offering a broad swath of coffees and origins as part of its model. And in that sense, it operates like a more traditional roasting company, offering coffees from all over the world as opposed to just a single origin. For more information, visit Paso Paso – Farmer Owned Coffee’s official website.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
