The first version of this text about what we understand by sustainability came from 2019. It was time to revise it. And this second version won't stand here forever either. We are constantly learning and flowing that knowledge into our actions, so that today we have developed an increasingly multifaceted picture of the issues that shape our thinking.
Sustainability and fairness are processes and not finite states.
In the coming years, we will continue to refine our approaches, reflect on our actions again and again, and remain in this process.
Good coffee for everyone
Many follow us on social media and read our blogs. Others drink coffee with us in the Café frühling or in the Kaffeemacher Cafe am Bahnhof Basel, come to Kursen to Basel or Dinslaken, or bestellen order our coffee to take home - we create different touchpoints, but work from the same fundamental motivation that drives our company forward:
We want to make good coffee accessible to everyone, share our knowledge about the coffee world, and give new impetus to drive the industry forward.
In the following, we address various topics on how we understand, live, and cultivate sustainability at the Kaffeemacher:innen.
Sustainable Entrepreneurship
Our work and our standards are fundamentally sustainable in nature. Because we understand our endeavors as long-term, social at their core, and we have enshrined this standard and goal in the articles of association of our GmbH and even in the commercial register.
We have dedicated ourselves to a connecting and cooperative approach along the coffee chain. From cultivation to the cup, we promote knowledge exchange, transparency, and balance throughout the coffee value chain.
We make challenges visible, seek solutions for the industry, and contribute to a socio-ecological transformation.
We understand ourselves as a learning company that shares acquired knowledge with the market. Concrete examples are our trainings for restaurateurs, roasteries, and baristas, as well as our articles and Videos. We operate a coffee farm, cafés, and a roastery, and through this we are confronted with the real challenges of the coffee industry. This means our perspective is grounded in practical experience and serves as the driving force for our work as well as the experiential foundation for our decision-making and recommendations.
Purpose-Driven
We are a purpose-driven company. This means that a goal is at the center of our activities, not the generation of profit. We understand profit as a prerequisite for achieving our company's objectives. For this reason, profits in our company are not withdrawn but remain in the business and are reinvested in our mission. Purpose is not a buzzword for us, but reflects the fundamental motivation and guiding impulse for our founding.
The Team as Our Engine
Employees shape and develop the Kaffeemacher:innen from within through their ideas and visions. Our philosophy appeals to and attracts like-minded individuals; we support team members in unfolding their potential and implementing their ideas. Our corporate philosophy allows for mistakes and sees them as opportunities for growth. Our collaboration is based on trust and enables everyone to find their own path and develop further along it.
Customers and Partner Companies as Part of the Community
Our customers are not just buyers of our products, but also part of our coffee community. Primarily through our presence on various social media platforms and the sharing of knowledge about coffee, we have been able to continuously increase our visibility. We inform in live discussions about current developments on the coffee market, provide posts on coffee-specific topics, and invite our customers to live question-and-answer sessions.
Partner companies are often partners and are valued as such. Whether it's when purchasing green coffee or when supporting and assisting coffee farmers with new equipment—together we are stronger and can accomplish more. Our goal is to find synergies and be able to build on a network.
Social Responsibility
As our company grows in size and visibility, so does our social responsibility outside the coffee supply chain. We are aware of this, and as a still young company, we see development opportunities here and want 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 figures and facts. We are already continuously launching projects on the topic of waste avoidance and recycling, investing in research in this field, and constantly seeking 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 our own roastery, we are aware of our role as a nexus in the coffee chain. We have the choice from millions of green coffees, but only purchase about 25 different green coffees per year.
We equate this selection with responsibility—because we have much more choice in different green coffees than our customers have in roasted coffee, we are in a position of a gatekeeper and our decisions have a large influence on the realities in coffee-producing countries. That is a wonderful responsibility that motivates us.
This responsibility holds countless possibilities to make the coffee chain step by step more sustainable. By turning our attention to the origin, where coffee comes from, through dialogue with producers and regular trips to coffee-producing countries, we realized how much leverage we now have through our green coffee purchases. We purchase green coffee carefully. Because including certain producers means excluding others. That is why we work with partners in green coffee sourcing who share our philosophies.
A Fair Price for Coffee Producers
Since we started as a roastery buying green coffee, we wanted to understand what a fair price for coffee producers is. So our intensive learning years began. We held discussions, wrote articles, and conducted Podcasts on production costs, FOB, ex-farmgate prices, Fairtrade, and direct trade. Each of these concepts helped us sharpen our view while at the same time asking: what if we don't determine the price at all?
How can we naturally place price-setting in the hands of the producers?
They are independent entrepreneurs on equal footing—so why shouldn't those responsible for a product be the ones setting its price?
To arrive at this actually self-evident way of doing business requires transparency in the supply chain, direct contact, and partners who all pull in the same direction. Today we only work with green coffee suppliers who share our ideals and have internalized transparent business practices.
The prices of our green coffees are either set by the producers themselves, or we offer prices with our import partners that are significantly above local market prices and include premiums for efforts toward ecological production.
There is no single fair and just coffee price—these vary by context and season. Depending on weather patterns, foreign exchange rates, inflation, and economic shocks with global effects, we renegotiate prices year by year with our partners. The fluctuations are generally not very large, but reflect realities. Two examples:
Apas, Brazil
The Apas cooperative orients itself by the coffee exchange price, the so-called C-Price. This fluctuates seasonally significantly. Apas charges a differential of 3.30 USD/kg on their organically produced coffee.
If the coffee price on the exchange is 5 USD/kg, Apas would charge 8.30 USD/kg. This is the strategy chosen by Apas itself.
Toca, Mexico
In Toca-Projekt we work with Ensambles as our export partner. The paid coffee price covers project costs, field workers, payouts to coffee producers, and premiums to support the transition to organic regenerative principles.
Ensambles monitors the local market price, the so-called plaza, and makes a higher offer based on that, which makes sense for the producers.
In the 22/23 year, we are paying significantly above plaza, importing twice as much as the previous year, guaranteeing premiums, and slowly building trust with the producers to engage long-term with the project.
Being a Partner, Giving Impetus, and Initiating Change
As a coffee company that buys green coffee and sells roasted coffee, we are balancing on a tightrope: on one hand, we are deeply rooted in small-scale, subtropical agriculture, on the other hand we deal with the precise positioning of roasted coffees in the end consumer market. At these ends, and at every stage in between, we can give impetus and bring about change.
- With the Apas cooperative in Brazil, we switched to organic coffee production in 2022 and buy almost their entire organic harvest.
- In the Toca project in Mexico, we are guiding an indigenous community toward organic coffee production and bringing direct market access to a heavily marginalized region.
- Also in Mexico, we have established what is probably the most local decaffeinated coffee with Rancho San Felipe—within a radius of 80 km the coffee is grown, processed, chemically decaffeinated, and shipped.
- With Macenta Beans in Guinea, we found partners who are making Robusta into specialty coffee while protecting the rainforest.
- And on unserer Farm in Nicaragua, we are experimenting with different post-harvest processes, varieties, and shade trees to produce coffee as autonomously as possible from external influences.
Juan Boillat, roaster and barista. In the background: our Reicat catalyst, which we use to clean exhaust air.
More Ecological Agriculture
An important pillar in this way of working is a clear focus on soil health. The better the soil, the more resilient the coffee plant. We support agricultural approaches that work regeneratively and understand coffee production holistically. This also includes the producers' own production of fertilizer, which makes them less dependent on market fluctuations.
Especially small producers need a wide range of tools to respond to the constant challenges in coffee cultivation. Whether organic, biodynamic, regenerative, or a mix of different approaches—we support anything that strengthens coffee producers and gives them agency.
We learn when we FiBl talk with about soil erosion and fertilizer, when agricultural consultants verschiedene explain compost types to us, when scientists Agroforst-Systeme suggest to us, and when sustainability consultants at grossen companies describe their strategies for adapting coffee farms to climate change.
The approaches to solutions are complex and contextually different. Neither a single seal nor a single form of agriculture can survive in a climate that is changing unpredictably and rapidly. Mixed forms and flexibility are needed, which require openness and curiosity, and we want to commit ourselves to these two virtues.
Ecological Footprint and Environmental Impact Points
Coffee companies are by definition active globally along the coffee chain. It is in the nature of things, because coffee is grown in the southern hemisphere, shipped here, roasted, and sent out. The coffee bean connects not only worlds that are far apart in content, but covers remarkable distances in the process.
The ecological footprint of coffee is not undisputed—depending on the cultivation method, logistics efficiency, roasting method, preparation method, and last but not least the decision of whether, how much, and welche what kind of milk goes into a coffee, coffee ranges from climate-neutral to climate-harmful. There are worlds between these, and to analyze it, calculate it, understand it, and derive actionable measures requires patience and energy that should go into this analysis.
Since 2022, we have been working on calculators ourselves to calculate our ecological footprint; on the coffee farm, in the roastery, and in our gastronomy. We work with consulting firms that verify our calculations and give us certainty that we are calculating correctly.
We do not strive to calculate individual products, business divisions, or the entire company and then offset our emissions. We calculate so that we understand where we can initiate reduction pathways, where we need to move which levers, so that we not only emit less but also bring about positive change and, ideally, achieve a reduction effect.
With the Umstellung transition from conventional to organic coffee production at the Apas cooperative, we should have changed Apas's 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 in the smallest radius in Mexico, we were able to save more than 18,000 nautical miles of logistics compared to our previous decaffeinated coffee.
Through precise energy consumption measurements on espresso machines, we can provide increasingly better recommendations on which machines perform most climate-friendly and which anachronistically follow the pure focus on 1960s espresso machine aesthetics.
Measure, measure, measure. We create knowledge about machine efficiency and ecological footprint and report on it in our tests.
New Tasks Through Self-Review
Through the self-imposed and increasingly dense review of our actions throughout the entire coffee chain, we not only learn new blind spots constantly, but also give ourselves new tasks on how we can improve what exists.
How do we arrive at the most ecological coffee packaging?
What wood makes our tamper CO2-positive?
Which barista towels protect water from microplastics?
What type of milk has the shortest supply route and the lowest footprint?
We do not experience this self-review as a burden; rather, we gain new enthusiasm to continue developing the company, see new opportunities, take advantage of them, and thus help shape all our futures.
We cannot handle these new tasks alone and will therefore increasingly rely on partnerships and alliances to tackle 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 of coffee and invite relaxed lingering. Our two concepts, Café frühling in Klein Basel and Café on the Passerelle at Basel SBB train station, are both places where we can communicate our standards for coffee and food.
From the beginning, we have had a trusted relationship with our suppliers, pay attention to regionality, organic products, and preferably source products from small businesses or producers. Our baked goods come from the Vital Speisehaus organic bakery in Dornach and our cow's milk from the Marchmatt organic farm in Reigoldswil. The two cafés are among the largest customers of our own roastery.
We Schweizer co-founded the organic oat drink Gutsch, are part of the cooperative, and serve as a distribution center for other gastronomic projects.
