Jones Coffee Roasters is one of the oldest coffee roasters in LA. But the Jones family has been involved with coffee much longer, with their family owning a coffee farm in Guatemala for generations. Before Chuck Jones – the founder of Jones Coffee Roasters – started the roaster, he drove around the US and Canada with a truck, trying to sell his family’s green coffee.

Many of the roasters we work with have occasional cause coffees, where a portion of each coffee sale is donated to a specific cause. Just Love Coffee is unique in that it was born out of this model.

In 2009 the founders of Just Love Coffee, Rob and Emily Webb, had just gone through the expensive and lengthy process of adopting two children from Ethiopia. They had the idea to use coffee to help others go through the same process they did. With this goal in mind, in their first year of operation, Just Love Coffee raised over $100,000 to help finance adoptions.

One of our requirements for our roasters is a passion for the art of coffee. 3-19 is fascinating because not only do they enjoy the art of coffee, one of their passions is encouraging and supporting artists within their communities. As they put it so well, “there’s magic in coffee, art and community. We’re seeing what happens when these three ingredients come together.”

As their name suggests, Utopian Coffee from Fort Wayne, IN, wants to use coffee to make the world a better place. Like many of our selected roasters, one of the keys ways Utopian does this is by selling “relationship coffee.” Though a very small roaster, they spend a significant amount of their time and resources meeting the farmers they buy their green coffee from and making sure their needs are met.

While we first heard of Generous Coffee because of their coffee and mission, many other’s introduction to the roaster was through Ben Higgins, who was The Bachelor for the show’s 11th season. After his time on the show, Ben worked with his friend Riley Fuller with Humanity and Hope, their non-profit. H&H aims to create lasting impact through job creation, clean water initiatives, and access to education via collaboration. They do this by working with communities in Honduras to find what they need and then create systems that can continue long after H&H has left.

Brandywine Coffee Roasters is located in the Brandywine Valley in Wilmington, DE, which is known for its rich illustration history going back to the 1800s. Brandywine gives a nod to these roots with fan and unique artwork for each of their coffees along with a more old-school wax seal. The juxtaposition of these makes Brandywine’s coffee bags some of the most unique I’ve ever seen, making them almost a center-piece in my kitchen.

Tandem Coffee Roasters in Portland, Maine is all about building community. I got a chance to talk to Will Pratt, one of the founders, who is still riding the high from their huge annual Christmas gathering that saw hundreds of guests come and enjoy the Tandem Coffee band play carols and other songs. While they can’t throw a party like that every day, building a community around their roaster is part of what inspired Will and his wife Kathleen to found Tandem Coffee.

It can be difficult for small roasters to find and build the relationships needed to facilitate direct trade with farmers all over the world. It is even more difficult if the roaster has only been operating for a few years. But at Queen City, brothers Scott and Eric Byington were able to use their past work with various non-profits (including running one themselves) in Africa to ensure the vast majority of their coffee is imported from farmers they know.

Our coffee for the month is from Conscious Coffee’s part coffee laboratory and part production facility nestled in the mountains in Boulder, CO. Conscious Coffees started in the early 90s, and has been sourcing via Cooperative Coffees since 2003. We’ve worked with many Cooperative Coffee roasters, as they are the gold-standard for coffee sourcing transparency. Each and every customer can easily look up the contracts in place for the coffee you’re sipping on. Keep reading