Opinion: PACT Coffee

Pact Coffee’s growth director, Sophie Sheach, talks about how speciality coffee can be a force for good – and the challenge of bringing this to the mass market. 

In the last few years, we’ve seen plenty of businesses struggle as luxuries have been cut due to the cost of living crisis. But it seems that a decent cup of coffee is the affordable treat that people won’t give up. 

We’ve seen significant amounts of independent coffee shops popping up while the High Street continues to struggle, and this standard of coffee is now the only acceptable norm for most discerning coffee drinkers. 

Better for farmers

Coffee sold in most independent coffee shops is known as ‘speciality’ coffee. You’ll also find this on the top shelf of specialist shops and some supermarkets. This coffee is, by definition, the best quality available – think of it as the fine wine of the coffee world – and it’s usually better for farmers and the planet, as well as the taste buds. 

Why? Traditionally, the coffee industry operated unfairly because it relies on the commodity market, an erratic system where you can buy goods like gold, oil and coffee. More often than not, market investors make the big bucks here while farmers lose money on a year’s crop. We call what’s bought through this system ‘commodity’ coffee.

Speciality coffee is sold separately from the commodity market and its value is based purely on its quality. Speciality coffee must score at least 80/100 points on the quality scale, compared to 65 for commodity coffee. 

All Pact Coffee is sourced directly from uniquely talented smallholder farmers. This way, we can skip the middlemen – in this case market traders – and pay farmers a truly fair price for their phenomenal coffee.  

Until last year, our core route to market was direct-to-consumer. While our subscription service and online store are still our bread and butter, we are now delivering more and more exceptional coffee to offices and hospitality venues, and Pact is now on the shelves of Waitrose and Whole Foods Market. 

So how do you significantly increase the amount of speciality coffee your business is selling without compromising your core values, the quality of your product and your relationships with farmers? 

There’s not a farm on the planet that could produce enough speciality coffee for the task. Farms that produce this quality of coffee are usually no more than four hectares in size – often a lot smaller. 

Our first solution is in blending. Our grocery listings include our customers’ favourite blend, Bourbon Cream, named after its natural flavours of chocolate and biscuit, which we stock year-round, regardless of our seasonal menu. We do this by keeping the roasting style consistent (lots of what you’ll taste in your coffee is down to expert roasting), and always using one exceptional coffee from Brazil and one from Colombia.  It’s always going to be an independent, small-scale farmer behind the coffee, and we’re always going to trade directly with them to make sure they rightfully thrive as a result of their excellent work.

Washing stations

Our second solution is in washing stations. These are processing facilities in East Africa which are made up of thousands of smallholder farmers. These farmers typically have a tiny plot of coffee trees, farmed amongst fruit and vegetables; they bring their small lots of coffee cherries to be processed with those farmed by their neighbours each harvest.

When you tend to a tiny lot you don’t cut corners, and these cherries make for truly outstanding coffee. What’s more, the washing station we brought to supermarket shelves, Kibirizi, supports its members with training, loans and efforts towards gender equality. Thrillingly, this means that the choices supermarket customers now make  support social impact projects in Rwanda and contribute to thousands of coffee farmers being paid a truly fair price. 

It goes to show that you can expand into new channels, scale up as a business and actually increase your social impact, rather than trading it off.