Why High-Strung Coffee: Ethics in Sourcing

In the greater Portland area there is a huge amount of coffee roasters and cafes--we know you have a lot of choices. Where you get your coffee from largely comes down to personal taste, but there are absolutely other factors to consider.

The coffee industry is massive, and because the vast majority of the world's coffee is grown in the global south, it is unfortunately often exploitative of some of the world's most vulnerable communities. As roasters and as people, it's important to us to do what we can to fight back against this by fairly compensating the farmers who work hard to grow our coffee beans.

We buy our green coffee beans from a supplier in Oakland, CA called Coffee Shrub (or Sweet Maria's for home roasters!). They share our values when it comes to the coffee farmers--they personally travel to the farms that they source from, build relationships with the farmers, cooperatives, and exporters, and test out the crops each year. Their direct trade sourcing ensures that the farmers are being compensated fairly--Coffee Shrub actually *always* beats fair trade standards for payment, often by 50%, 100%, or more! (You can read more about their stance on Fair Trade and Certified Organic here).

A consequence of this is that we as roasters are paying almost twice per pound what our competitors in the area are paying for their green beans. We are choosing to do this because it is deeply important to us, in this particular industry especially, that the people who are actually putting in the work to grow our coffee are paid appropriately. We could easily pay less, but we won't. Despite this, our prices match or beat those of our competitors because our personal values are 1) everyone deserves a high quality cup of coffee, and 2) the pursuit of profit at the expense of all else inevitably leads to a lower quality product, by design, and we refuse to sacrifice our quality. :)

When you're buying from us, whether it's coffee beans to brew at home or a vanilla latte at the farmer's market, you can know that you're making the best choice you can to support fair compensation for coffee bean farmers and their families.

Thanks, and we'll see you around :)

Chelsea and Devin