The Kickapoo Coffee coffee chain: From a small-scale farmer to a small-scale roaster (from left to right, photo from Jaen, Peru) Carew Halleck (Mugby Junction cafe owner), TJ Semanchin (Kickapoo Coffee), Monika Firl (Cooperative Coffees producer-relations manager), Anner Roman Netra (president of Cenfrocafe Cooperative), Cesar Camacho (Cenfrocafe), Lucia Zurita Zurita and Jesus Piña Zurita (farmers and Cenfrocafe co-op members).

Maintaining truly direct and meaningful relationships with farmers is extremely difficult for coffee roasters, as importing and communicating with farmers takes resources most small companies do not have. To overcome this obstacle, Kickapoo Coffee is an owner-member of Cooperative Coffees, a fair trade importing business owned by 23 like-minded roasters who are actively engaged in supporting our own importing cooperative. We import over 80 percent of our coffees through Cooperative Coffees, and this number is increasing each year as we develop partnerships with new producers around the world.

Through Cooperative Coffees we set the bar higher for the fair trade world. Our pricing minimum is set 10 cents above fair trade standards at $1.61, a price that in practice we routinely exceed. We also offer our farmer-partners much-needed preharvest financing.

Fair trade at Kickapoo Coffee goes beyond pricing to building relationships and partnerships with our growers. Because we import our own coffees, we are communicating with growers directly, not through a middleman. Maintaining direct relationships with producers is very different from buying and selling fair trade coffee from an importer. We get to participate in the lives of our farmers directly, seeing where the roadblocks are, and devising solutions for a more sustainable partnership.

Every year we invite and often sponsor farmer coop representatives to our annual meetings and give them a voice in our business decisions. Cooperative Coffees also sponsors an annual meeting with representatives from a dozen Latin American farmer groups. These meetings allow roasters and farmers to learn from each other and look for ways to improve trading relationships. What’s more, farmers from different countries are able to share their experiences and learn from each other. This kind of involvement is very difficult to achieve as a small, independent coffee roaster.

Visiting our growers is a very important part of what we do. Our cooperative makes annual visits to each of our producer groups. These trips are focused on mutual benefit. We want to make sure farmers are treated fairly and that we in turn are getting the best quality possible. Our goal on these trips is to better understand the conditions that our farmers are working under and to find where we can encourage further quality initiatives.