Here at Rubicon, our philosophy guides our roasting. And one of our core beliefs is in fairness.
Too often in the coffee business, hardworking coffee farmers can be the lowest paid workers in the chain of production.
We’ve set out to change that, and so has a man named Justin Dena.
Justin’s the Director of Development at Singing Rooster, a social enterprise nonprofit working shoulder to shoulder with small coffee and cacao producers in Haiti. The organization partners with small producers to build better businesses, while simultaneously re-introducing the world to Haitian products.
A few months ago, Justin reached out to talk with us about collaborating with Singing Rooster to help support those hard-working coffee workers in Haiti, and to share their delicious beans with our community.
He thought Rubicon Roasting could be a good fit to offer great coffee to people in Western Colorado and support the Haitian coffee farmers at the same time – and he was right.
Singing Rooster has raised cupping scores for Haitian coffee considerably and are members of the Fair Trade Federation. Justin says, Singing Rooster is “bigger than Fairtrade or direct trade coffee; we have built inroads to first world markets on behalf of farmers for nearly a decade. We re-invest our proceeds with farmers to build better businesses.”
After collecting a lot of information about what Singing Rooster was doing and reading a lot about the Haitian coffee market, we decided to taste the beans. We roasted samples and were very excited about the opportunity to work directly with the farmers through Singing Rooster.
The coffee is awesome.
The price of the green beans is quite a bit higher than green beans from many other coffee-producing countries. There are many reasons for this – reasons we’re happy to support.
For example, part of the increased price puts funds into rural pockets that reinvigorate the local economies. Since Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world, we’re excited about helping them help themselves.
Also, interest rates in Haiti are extremely high, making it almost impossible for local farmers to borrow money and stay in business. The premium prices we pay help the farmer cooperatives save for their own working capital, not having to borrow from the very expensive credit market.
The farmers really win. AND – the coffee is great!
We decided to purchase a 55kg bag of the Haiti Mare Blanche ‘honey processed’ beans.
Knowing this was a very special project, one that does good for our international community, we wanted to go even bigger.
We wanted to help the local economy in Haiti and the local economy here in the beautiful Northfork Valley of Western Colorado.
That’s why we created a campaign to donate 100% of profits from this roast to our local public radio station – KVNF.
Our local station provides superb, unbiased news reporting, wonderful public radio shows, and many local programming events fitting for a farming community such as this area of Colorado.
This year, as KVNF celebrates its 40th birthday, we’ll be continuously working to help keep KVNF here in the Northfork Valley and beyond for their listening area.
KVNF will receive $4.00 for every bag of our new Haiti Mare Blanche roast purchased during this campaign.
If you’d like to help the Haitian coffee farmers and support our public radio station, please try a bag of Haiti Mare Blanche – IT’S WONDERFUL!
At Rubicon, we believe in supporting our local and global communities.
We encourage you to be involved in your communities, in causes that matter to you, and to support people and organizations who are, too.
Thanks for being a part of our coffee-loving community. We’re so grateful to have you.
