It’s been quite some time since we featured a roaster from Coop Coffees, one of our favorite groups of roasters. This month we circle back to them by selecting Desert Sun Coffee Roasters from Durango, CO. Coop Coffees is a coffee importing cooperative that is owned by its member roasters. While a true direct-trade model is incredibly time consuming and expensive to run, Coop Coffees allows smaller roaster work together as one larger importer that prides itself in being able to cut out middle men to pay producers more as well as transparency that sets the bar in the industry. Previous Coop Coffees roasters we have worked with include Wonderstate Coffee (previously Kickapoo coffee), Larry’s Coffee, Bongo Java, Sweet Waters, Cafe Campesino, and more.

What does transparency mean to Coop Coffees? It means every person, yourself included, can look up the details of every coffee purchased at their website www.FairTradeProof.org. In addition to the price paid for green coffee, you can see how much money goes to their “Social Premium,” a self imposed tax that goes to social projects at source and even see how that money ended up getting spent.

Desert Sun works on many of their own initiatives as well. They just installed solar panels to cover 100% of their electricity usage at their roasting facility. They pay a living wage to their employees and encourage a healthy work-life balance. Desert Sun regularly donates coffee in their local community.

In addition to all they do via Coop Coffees, Desert Sun is also part of a project called Cool Farm Tool. This is an online tool created for producers to help them more accurately calculate the environmental impact of the actions they take. It is made free to any producer that wants to use it in thanks to membership fees paid by members such as Desert Sun.