Coffeepreneur

Discovering what it takes to roast and sell fine fair trade coffee beans.

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Location: Siloam Springs, AR, United States

Join me as I follow my love for coffee into my first entrepreneurial venture. I'm sharing my vision, my excitement and what I learn along the way. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

December 28, 2008

An Entirely Too Wordy Mission Statement

Since I don't have my roaster yet, I'm left to muck through all of the technicalities that will one day make my business successful, so I started work on a rough draft business plan. I can tell that this is going to take a lot of time, work, revision, and advice to complete. I feel like I'm in WAY over my head with all the little technicalities, but to me that's also just proof that I need to put in more hours! I'm playing around with my mission statement, I want it to include the following:

- Only purchase coffee where the farmer is given a fair price for his work and care is taken to keep his land sustainable. I'm still learning about the different classifications that coffee can fall under. I don't want to be too narrow to only purchase TransFair, but I need to come up with a standard for what the minimum price I'll need to know is guaranteed to the farmer and whether I'll limit myself to 'organic certified' farms or just farms that don't use pesticides but maybe haven't become 'certified' because of cost or years needed to make certification.

- Educate consumers about coffee origins, flavor profiles, roasts and production (including the importance of fair wages and working conditions and the benefits brought back to the countries through efforts like Fair Trade and Rain Forest Alliance). Of course, currently, I'm stronger in knowing origins and profiles, and weaker in knowing the ins and outs of coffee roasting and production.

- Return 10% of profits back to social ventures within coffee producing countries. I have some inkling of what I want this to look like. I have a friend in Rwanda who is working to help translate educational material for children in Kigali, she is so much of my inspiration for wanting to give back, but as I learn more about the living and working conditions of so many farmers living in poverty, I know that I need to spread money out to the rural regions too. I realized just the other day what an absolute blessing it is that whenever I thirst, I have clean water, and whenever my 2 year old asks for a cup, I know I'm giving her a good thing. I can't imagine what it must be like knowing that your children are drinking water that could kill them. So, clean water sources are at the forefront of my mind right now.

I'm so excited just thinking about how this could become something bigger than a hobby or a passion, but a means for changing lives the world over.

Beyond that, I also spent time looking into the requirements for roasting and selling at the Tacoma farmer's market. I think the biggest trouble will be with making sure I'm properly licensed, and then the expense of buying a tent, table, sign and whatnot. Otherwise, the market takes 5% of sales after the $20 application fee.

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