July 28, 2020
MINNEAPOLIS — Peace Coffee’s supply chain has won the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) 2020 Sustainability Award in the Business Model category. Peace is a founding member of Cooperative Coffees, a roaster-owned, green coffee importing cooperative based in Georgia and Montreal, who will receive the award. Minneapolis-based Peace Coffee is one of the coop’s 23 North American community-based coffee roasters. The coop partners with 54 coffee producer organizations in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
Sustainability is a cornerstone of Cooperative Coffees’ business philosophy—the cooperative’s innovative importing model incorporates transparent and fair-trading practices to foster long-term relationships with farmers as partners in trade.
“It’s great to see this recognition of Cooperative Coffees for its leadership in the coffee industry. When Peace Coffee started we wanted to import directly — in the most ethical manner possible — from coffee farmers around the world, so we helped found Coop Coffees to do just that. Over the years, we have built on that work to ensure maximum impact,” says Lee Wallace, Peace Coffee’s owner and CEO.
Anne Costello, Peace Coffee’s Director of Coffee, has been working with Cooperative Coffees for nearly a decade, “Peace Coffee believes that strong, transparent, and long term relationships are at the center of sustainable and meaningful impact, and our partnership with Cooperative Coffees is what allows us to achieve this. Whether it’s implementing initiatives like the Cool Farm Tool, a resource that helps farmers understand how climate change is directly impacting their fields and crops, or committing to prices that are responsive to the needs of coffee farmers year after year, Cooperative Coffees sets the gold standard for creating an equitable coffee supply chain”
“Cooperative Coffees is honored to receive this award. Our roaster-members treat producer organizations as equal business partners in the prices they pay, the projects they support, and the consistent harvest-after-harvest engagement they show our origin partners,” says Ed Canty, Cooperative Coffees general manager.
Cooperative Coffees believes coffee growing should be economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable. The minimum price they pay producer organizations for fair trade, organic coffee is US$2.20/lb, with the average price in 2019 of US$ 2.55/lb. The importer and its roaster-members work closely with producer partners and allies to support regenerative organic agriculture practices, contributing to the health of and sustainable development in producer communities, and strengthening direct relationships across the supply chain. Recent initiatives include Carbon Climate and Coffee: Moving the Needle from Cool Farms to Soil Carbon Premiums, a pilot project implementing the Cool Farm Tool, and the Carbon, Climate, and Coffee Initiative, a “voluntary carbon tax” invested in producers’ environmental service projects.
Learn more about the SCA Sustainability Awards here.
About Cooperative Coffees
Founded in 1999, Cooperative Coffees is an importer of Fair Trade and organic coffee, committed to improving the livelihood of small-scale coffee farmers, providing services to its members, and creating connections that have a regenerative and sustainable impact. Today, the cooperative has 23 roaster-members throughout North America and partners with 54 producer organizations in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Cooperative Coffees is a Certified B Corporation.
About Peace Coffee
Since 1996, Peace Coffee has been In It For Good. The socially conscious coffee roasting company is a Certified B Corp, bringing transparency to the coffee industry while delivering expertly roasted, small batch organic and fair-trade coffee (often via bicycle in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area) to its many fans. The beans for its blends, which include customer favorites like Tree Hugger, Twin Cities, and Birchwood, come from farmer-owned cooperatives in Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Colombia, Sumatra and the Democratic Republic of Congo. For more, visit www.peacecoffee.com.
###
