The first version of this text about what we understand by sustainability was from 2019. It was time to revise it. And this second version won't stay here forever either. We are constantly learning and integrating that knowledge into our actions, so today we have developed an ever more multifaceted picture of the topics that shape our thinking.
Sustainability and fairness are processes, not finite states.
Over the next few years, we will continue to refine our approaches, continuously reflect on our actions, and thus remain in the process.
Good coffee for everyone
Many follow us on social media and read our blogs. Others drink coffee with us at Café frühling or at the Kaffeemacher Cafe at Basel train station, come to courses in Basel or Dinslaken, or order our coffee delivered to their homes – we create various points of contact, but we operate from the same fundamental motivation that drives our company:
We want to make good coffee accessible to everyone, share our knowledge of the coffee world, and provide new impulses to advance the industry.
In the following, we will explore various topics and explain how we at Kaffeemacher:innen understand, live, and cultivate sustainability.
Sustainable Entrepreneurship
Our work and our aspirations are inherently sustainable. We see our creation as long-term, social at its core, and this aspiration and goal are even enshrined in the GmbH's statutes and in the commercial register.
We are committed to connecting and cooperative activities along the coffee chain. From cultivation to the cup, we promote knowledge exchange, transparency, and balance along the coffee value chain.
We highlight challenges, seek solutions for the industry, and contribute to a socio-ecological transformation.
We see ourselves as a learning company that shares learned knowledge with the market. Concrete examples include our training courses for restaurateurs, roasteries, or baristas, as well as our articles and videos. We operate a coffee farm, cafés, and a roastery, and are thus confronted with the real challenges of the coffee industry. Our perspective is therefore informed by practical experience and is the driving force behind our work as well as the experiential basis for our decisions and recommendations.
Purpose-driven and Goal-oriented
We are a purpose-driven and goal-oriented company. This means that a specific goal is at the center of our activities, not the generation of profit. We understand profit as a prerequisite for achieving corporate goals. For this reason, profits in our company are not withdrawn but remain within the company and are invested in the purpose-driven operation. For us, "purpose" is not a buzzword but reflects the fundamental motivation and guiding principle for our founding.
The Team as a Driving Force
Employees shape and develop Kaffeemacher:innen from within with their ideas and visions. Our philosophy appeals to and attracts like-minded individuals, and we support team members in developing their potential and implementing their ideas. Our corporate philosophy allows for mistakes and sees them as an opportunity for growth. Our collaboration is based on trust and enables everyone to find their path and further develop within it.
Customers and Co-businesses as part of the Community
Our customers are not just buyers of our products, but also part of our coffee community. Mainly through our presence on various social media platforms and the sharing of knowledge about coffee, we have steadily increased our profile. We provide information on current developments in the coffee market in live discussions, offer articles on coffee-specific topics, and invite our customers to live Q&A sessions.
Co-businesses are often partners and are valued as such. Be it in the purchase of green coffee or in the promotion and support of coffee farmers when it comes to new equipment - together we are stronger and can achieve more. Our goal is to find synergies and to be able to build on a network.
Social Responsibility
Due to our size and reputation, our social responsibility also grows beyond the coffee supply chain. We are aware of this, and as a young company, we see development opportunities in this regard and would like to forge alliances beyond coffee in the future.
Regarding the ecological impact of our company and its products, we are in the process of generating facts and figures. We are already initiating projects on waste prevention and recycling, investing in research in this area, and constantly looking for more sustainable alternatives in packaging and accessories.
In Mexico at Rancho San Felipe, our partners who make the decaffeinated coffee for us.
Sustainable Green Coffee Sourcing
As a coffee company with its own roastery, we are aware of our function as a hinge in the coffee chain. We have a selection of millions of green coffees, but we "only" purchase about 25 different green coffees per year.
We equate selection with responsibility - since we have far more choices of different green coffees than our customers have of roasted coffee, we are in the position of an opener and with our decisions have a great influence on the realities in the coffee origin country. This is a beautiful task that motivates us.
Because this responsibility offers an incredible number of opportunities to make the coffee chain more sustainable step by step. By turning to the origin, where coffee comes from, in dialogue with producers and regular trips to coffee countries, we realized how much leverage we now have with the purchase of green coffee. We purchase green coffee with care. Because the inclusion of certain producers is the exclusion of others. That is why we work in green coffee purchasing with partners who share our philosophies.
A Fair Price for Coffee Producers
Since we started buying green coffee as a roastery, we wanted to understand what a fair price for coffee producers is. Thus began our intensive years of learning. We held discussions, wrote articles, and made podcasts about production costs, FOB, ex-farmgate prices, Fairtrade, and direct trade. Each of these concepts helped us sharpen our perspective and at the same time ask the question: what if we don't determine the price at all?
How can we naturally put price setting in the hands of the producers?
They are mature entrepreneurs on equal footing, so why shouldn't those who are responsible for a product be the ones to set the prices?
To achieve this inherently natural way of doing business, transparency in the supply chain, direct contacts, and partners who all pull in the same direction are required. Today, we only work with green coffee suppliers who share our ideals and have internalized transparent practices.
The prices of our green coffees are either set by the producers themselves, or our import partners offer prices that are significantly above local market rates and include premiums for efforts toward ecological production.
There is no single fair and just coffee price – these are contextual and vary seasonally. Dependent on weather patterns, foreign exchange rates, inflation, and economic shocks with global impact, we renegotiate prices with our partners year after year. The fluctuations are generally not very large but reflect the realities. Two examples:
Apas, Brazil
The Apas Cooperative aligns itself with the stock market price for coffee, the so-called C-Price. This fluctuates strongly seasonally. Apas adds a differential of 3.30 USD/kg to their organically produced coffee.
So, if the coffee price on the stock market is 5 USD/kg, Apas would charge 8.30 USD/kg. This is the strategy chosen by Apas itself.
Toca, Mexico
In the Toca project, we collaborate with Ensambles as our export partner. The paid coffee price covers project costs, field staff, payments to coffee producers, and premiums for promoting the transition to organic-regenerative principles.
Ensambles monitors the local market price, the so-called plaza, and makes a higher offer based on it, which is beneficial for the producers.
In 22/23, we are paying significantly above plaza, importing twice as much as the previous year, guaranteeing premiums, and thus slowly building trust with the producers to commit to the project long-term.
Being a Partner, Giving Impulses, and Initiating Change
As a coffee company that purchases green coffee and sells roasted coffee, we bridge a wide gap: on the one hand, we are deeply rooted in small-scale, subtropical agriculture; on the other hand, we deal with the precise positioning of roasted coffee in the end-consumer market. At these ends, and at all stages in between, we can provide impulses and bring about change.
- With the Apas cooperative in Brazil, we switched to organic coffee production in 2022 and are buying almost their entire organic harvest.
- In the Toca project in Mexico, we are guiding an indigenous community towards organic coffee production and bringing direct market access to a highly marginalized region.
- Also in Mexico, with Rancho San Felipe, we have established what is probably the most local decaffeinated coffee – the coffee is grown, processed, decaffeinated chemical-free, and shipped within an 80km radius.
- With Macenta Beans in Guinea, we have found partners who turn Robusta into specialty coffee while protecting the rainforest.
- And on our farm in Nicaragua, we are experimenting with various post-harvest processes, varieties, and shade trees to be able to produce coffee as autonomously as possible from external influences.
Juan Boillat, roaster and barista. In the background: our Reicat catalytic converter, which we use to purify exhaust air.
More ecological agriculture
An important pillar in this way of working is the clear focus on soil health. The healthier the soil, the more resilient the coffee plant. We support agricultural approaches that work regeneratively and understand coffee production holistically. This also includes the self-production of fertilizer, which makes producers more independent of market fluctuations.
Small-scale producers, in particular, need a broad toolbox to be able to respond to the constant challenges in coffee cultivation. Whether organic, bio-dynamic, regenerative, or a mixture of different approaches – we support anything that strengthens coffee producers and empowers them.
We learn when we talk to FiBl about soil erosion and fertilizer , when agricultural advisors explain various types of compost to us , when scientists recommend agroforestry systems to us , and when sustainability consultants from large companies describe their strategies on how they intend to adapt coffee farms to climate change.
The solutions are complex and contextually diverse. Neither a single label nor a single form of agriculture can survive in an unpredictable and rapidly changing climate. Mixed forms and flexibility are required, which necessitates openness and curiosity, and we want to commit ourselves to these two virtues.
Ecological Footprint and Environmental Impact Points
Coffee companies, by definition, operate globally within the coffee chain. This is inherent in the nature of the business, as coffee is grown in the southern hemisphere, shipped here, roasted, and dispatched. The coffee bean not only connects distant worlds in terms of content, but also travels astonishing distances.
The ecological footprint of coffee is not undisputed – depending on the cultivation method, logistics efficiency, roasting method, brewing method, and not least the decision of whether, how much, and what type of milk is added to a coffee, coffee can range from climate-neutral to climate-damaging. Worlds lie between these extremes, and analyzing, calculating, understanding, and deriving courses of action requires patience and energy that should be invested in this analysis.
Since 2022, we have been working on calculators to determine our ecological footprint; on the coffee farm, in the roastery, and in gastronomy. We work with consulting firms that verify our calculations, giving us certainty that we are calculating correctly.
We do not aim to calculate individual products, business areas, or the entire company and then offset our emissions. We calculate so that we understand where we can initiate which reduction paths, where we need to move which levers, so that we not only emit less, but also bring about positive change and, in the optimal case, achieve a sink effect.
By switching from conventional to organic coffee production at the Apas Cooperative, we likely influenced Apas' CO2 emissions in the single-digit range (figures under review). In our internal calculations, it is even in the higher double-digit range.
By establishing the new decaf supply chain with the smallest radius in Mexico, we were able to save more than 18,000 nautical miles in logistics compared to our previous decaffeinated coffee.
Through precise energy consumption measurements on espresso machines, we can provide increasingly better recommendations on which devices perform most climate-friendly and which anachronistically pursue the pure focus on 60s espresso machine aesthetics.
Measure, measure, measure. We generate knowledge about the efficiency and ecological footprint of machines and report on this in our tests.
New tasks through self-assessment
Through our self-imposed and ever more stringent review of our actions throughout the coffee chain, we not only constantly discover new blind spots, but also continually set ourselves new tasks on how to improve existing practices.
How do we achieve the most ecological coffee packaging?
Which wood makes our tamper CO2-positive?
Which barista towels protect water from microplastics?
What type of milk has the shortest supply chain and the lowest footprint?
We don't perceive this self-assessment as a burden, but rather gain renewed enthusiasm to continue developing the company, to see and seize new opportunities, and thus to be able to co-create all our futures.
We cannot tackle these new tasks alone and will therefore rely even more on partnerships and alliances to manage complex projects and achieve overarching goals.
Sustainability in Gastronomy
As Kaffeemacher:innen, we operate two cafés in Basel. Our goal is to create places and spaces that convey our love for coffee and invite relaxed lingering. Our two concepts, Café frühling in Kleinbasel and the Café on the Passerelle at Basel SBB station, are both places where we can communicate our standards for coffee and food.
Since the beginning, we have maintained a trusting relationship with our suppliers, focusing on regionality, organic products, and preferentially sourcing products from small businesses or producers. For example, our baked goods come from the Vital Speisehaus organic bakery in Dornach, and the cow's milk from the organic farm Marchmatt in Reigoldswil. Both cafés are among the largest customers of our own roastery.
We co-founded the Swiss organic oat drink Gutsch, are part of the cooperative, and act as a distribution center for other gastronomic projects.
