JulieCraves

Retail and specialty roasters

Solar Roast

Solar Roast is Fair Trade and/or organic coffee roasted in what must be the world’s only commerical solar roaster. According to the web site,

“…this roaster uses a 10ft solar array to focus the rays of sunshine onto a drum roaster. This roaster is capable of reaching temperatures upwards of 550 degrees F. The roaster swivels and tilts allowing it to track the sun throughout the day from sunrise to sunset.”

Based in Oregon, they have had issues in the past with being able to roast sufficient quantities to be able to keep up a steady supply.  The web site invites wholesale inquiries. It wasn’t clear if retail is available at times, but I did find it available for purchase at The Solar Store; the roaster currently resides in the front yard of this establishment.  There are five blends available at $8.00 per 8 oz. bag.

Background information / Corporate coffee

Who owns what?

[The coffee consolidation landscape has continued to evolve rapidly! This post is a starting point but not entirely up-to-date.]

You can find many different coffee brands on supermarket shelves, and frequently multiple brands are actually owned by one of only a few corporate conglomerates.  Some of these companies have poor records when it comes to environmental and social responsibility.

Below is a primer on common U.S. coffee brand ownership. Read about how much certified coffee these companies purchase here, and their role in the coffee crisis here.

Note that some brands may have split ownership representing different parts of the world, or a division of distribution lines between retail/grocery and coffee shop/restaurant. For example, Nestlè owns the distribution rights to Starbucks coffee in grocery stores and retail chains, but Starbucks does the coffee sourcing. I have tried to simplify here.

JM Smucker Co. — Through purchases of other companies, coffee is now the main business of JM Smucker, and their Folgers brand is the largest brand in North America, accounting for nearly 20% of the retail volume. Other brands include Millstone, Cafe Pilon, Cafe Bustelo, and Kava. They distribute Dunkin Donuts retail coffee (both companies have poor coffee sustainability records). Read more about JM Smuckers here and Dunkin here.

Kraft Heinz Company –Maxwell House (North America), Yuban, Gevalia, Nabob, Ethical Bean — about 10% of the U.S. market by volume. As of 2019, Kraft Heinz was exploring selling the Maxwell House brand. Ethical Bean is the company’s attempt at sustainable coffee as it is all organic; volume figures are not available.

JAB Holding Company — Privately held company that went on a large buying spree starting in 2012 and now controls an enormous market share through its subsidiaries and acquisitions. Some of the familiar and important brands under the JAB umbrella include: Jacobs Douwe Egberts/JDE Peet’s, Green Mountain, Caribou Coffee, Peet’s, Intelligentsia, Stumptown, Panera Bread, Krispy Kreme, Douwe Egberts, Einstein Bros Bagels, and many more. See a fuller list of brands under their subdivisions Keurig Dr Pepper and JDE Peet’s. Additionally, JAB also launched the subscription coffee service Trade. I rarely say this, but you may want to check Wikipedia to keep up! All together, JAB’s brands probably make up 5-6% of the U.S. Market.

Nestlè — Nescafè and Nespresso are their popular brands. Purchases 870,000 tons of coffee annually, around 10% of world production, of which only a tiny fraction of a percent carries eco-certification. Their market share in the U.S. is quite small, less than 5% if their distribution of Starbucks coffee in stores isn’t counted (Starbucks sources this coffee).

Tata Consumer Products — Eight O’Clock. This one brand makes up perhaps 2.5% of the U.S. market.

Massimo Zanetti Beverage USA — Hills Brothers, Chock Full o’Nuts, Chase and Sanborn, Kauai Coffee, Segafredo. Owns many of the brands previously owned by Sara Lee, which divested itself of its coffee operations. MZB is a huge privately-owned company which sources a lot of its coffee from it’s own massive full sun plantation in Brazil, said to be the largest in the world. Their profile at the Sustainable Coffee Challenge website indicates very limited and lackluster sustainability goals. About 2% of the U.S. market.

These large companies rarely divulge coffee volumes purchased. These figures are estimated based on retail sales by volume and retail volume of coffee sold, calculated in tons. Numbers for 2019 and 2020 were averaged due to the market skew that occurred during the covid-19 pandemic. Data was primarily from Euromonitor, but included other sources.

Coffee reviews / Latin America

Review: Cafe Femenino (Peru)

I first tried Cafe Femenino from Grounds for Change.  I liked it so much that I have a standing monthly order.  Grounds for Change categorizes this as a “medium bodied coffee with a fine acidity, sweet aroma and hints of baker’s chocolate that are accentuated by a slow, dark roast.”  I’ve since turned on several of my dark-roast friends to this coffee, who have become dedicated fans as well.  It is just a superb, complex, flavorful cup.

That Cafe Femenino is a great coffee, as well as certified organic and Fair Trade, and listed as shade-grown, is enough to make this my favorite cup.  However, there is also a fantastic back-story to this bean.  The Cafe Femenino Coffee Project is run entirely by women, who oversee all aspects of the coffee farming as well as marketing and sales, in an area of the world where there are few leadership roles for women and where oppression and abuse are shockingly high.  The project empowers women, and they also receive an additional two cents per pound over the Fair Trade price for their beans.  See the Roast Magazine link below for the full story.

I prefer to buy my Cafe Femenino from Grounds for Change, which donates an additional 25 cents per pound directly back to the women.  However, it is also available from a variety of other roasters, including Birds and Beans (Toronto, American Roast, the lightest I’ve seen available; green beans available, too), Caffe Ibis (Utah, roast not specified), Creemore Coffee Company (Toronto, medium and French roasts), MokaJoe (Washington, roast not specified), and Sacred Grounds (California, full city and French).

More info:

Birds and other biodiversity / Certifications / Research on coffee growing

Research: Biodiversity, yield, and certification

Perfecto, I., J. Vandermeer, A. Mas, and L. Soto Pinto. 2005.  Biodiversity, yield, and shade coffee certification.  Ecological Economics 54:435-446.

The more complex overstory (and thus shade) in a coffee plantation, the higher the diversity.  However, the more shade, the lower the yield (although the relationship is not strictly linear), as coffee grows best in about 35-60% shade.  Therefore, farmers have to be compensated for the lower yields if they preserve shade and biodiversity.  Since a switch to organic farming typically increases yield, while a switch to more shade-dense farming decreases yield, the premiums paid to farmers for growing certified shade coffee must be higher than those for certified organic coffee.

This paper outlines the factors and decisions that have to be taken into account to determine best way to define certification criteria that will effectively preserve biodiversity while keeping yields high enough so that financial premiums paid to farmers are not so high as to discourage consumption. Of course, not all premiums have to be paid by consumers; aid and conservation organizations can absorb some of the costs.  And the authors seem to agree with others that linking shade-grown certification with Fair Trade and organic certification could be effective as long as the premiums are high enough to offset reductions in yield.