Our Coffee Purchasing Criteria
We set new standards for fair coffee trade. No distance is too far for the best coffees in the world. We maintain direct relationships with our partners, paying them high prices for their unique coffees. Trading coffee is complex. That’s why we have defined 7 criteria that we aim to meet when purchasing our green coffees.
Our 7 Purchasing Criteria
We believe that, together with our customers, we can change the coffee supply chain.
Only if we offer an optimal product will our customers‘ willingness to pay increase, and only then can more reach the producers. We believe that we can achieve this goal sustainably through high coffee quality and high social and environmental standards. That’s why we buy our coffees directly from producers according to seven qualitative, social and environmental criteria. We are constantly working to fully meet these criteria in order to achieve higher quality and sustainability.
1. Traceability
We can trace our coffees back to their origin, which means we know which cooperatives, fincas or farms our coffees come from. We regularly visit long-term partners and exchange information with them. For us, traceability means not only naming the country and region, but really knowing where the coffee was grown and by whom it was harvested and processed. You can find this information on every coffee package.
While we are in close contact with our partners via email, WhatsApp and video meetings, it is important to us that we also visit each other regularly in the growing countries. Only if we know where our coffees come from can we also make reliable statements about the conditions on the ground. The quality of the coffee plays a role here, as does ensuring sustainable cultivation methods.
Traceability is easier for us to implement compared to the other criteria. However, it can happen that we have to buy additional coffee due to an emergency. The origin is then no longer 100 % traceable back to the cooperative and usually ends with country and region. If, for example, a coffee component of an espresso blend runs out, we have to „cross buy“ to avoid having to stop production. In this case, we buy from coffee suppliers we know who have similar standards of quality and sustainability. We strive to continue to purchase 100 % of our green coffee in a traceable manner. We achieve this through improved purchasing planning and the experience we have gained over the years in coffee purchasing.
Specialty Coffee for a better tomorrow
2. Personal relationship
Our coffees come from direct trade relationships. For us, this means that we communicate regularly with our partner producers and visit them annually. Direct communication is essential to build a relationship of mutual trust, to motivate improved coffee quality and to truly understand local living conditions.
Direct communication is essential to build a relationship of mutual trust.
In addition to communication, we work directly with farmers during visits. For example, we can motivate them to improve the quality of their coffee. We are taking a major step in this direction through our ongoing investment in projects in the growing regions. You can find more details in our annual Impact Report.
As our portfolio has expanded, it has recently become more difficult to visit all our partner co-operatives every year. The coffee-producing countries are spread far apart, and the coffee harvest often takes place at the same time of year. Furthermore, we don’t want to just pay “fly-by visits” and leave again after a few hours. Nevertheless, we remain committed to our goal and visit some of our partners every year. You can find our latest travel reports on our blog.
3. High quality
High coffee quality is important to us. For example, we only buy coffees that we have assessed with a cupping score of > 80 points (international scoring model of the SCA, the Specialty Coffee Association). When purchasing our green coffees, we not only make sure that they meet our preferences in terms of taste. We want to offer each customer the coffee for his or her needs, so we strive to have as diverse a coffee portfolio as possible.
The search for the best coffees is carried out through so-called cuppings. These are tastings in which countless coffees are tasted and evaluated. The cupping score is a good reference value for evaluating the quality of a coffee in the purchasing process. This is a proven method in the specialty coffee trade. This structured method of SCA has tradition and justification in the purchasing process of specialty coffees. Nevertheless, it remains a subjective evaluation of the respective grader. Therefore, we always try to use the opinion of two graders at a time in „blind cuppings“ to assess the quality. In short: You can rely on the fact that we only buy coffees of which we are completely convinced of their quality.
We constantly motivate our partners at origin to improve the quality of their coffee – and not just for us. After all, higher quality means higher prices for them. That’s why we are committed to doing just that with our coffee-growing projects.
4. Fair purchase price
For high quality, we are willing to pay high prices that are independent of the world market. A high price is important to us so that the farmers are sustainably motivated to continuously work on improving their coffee quality. The income from coffee cultivation thus contributes to improving their living conditions independently.
The world market price is a benchmark derived from the international coffee exchange. Put simply, it is an average price across all coffees traded worldwide – for example, the Arabica variety – regardless of quality, country of origin and production costs. In other words, this price includes both coffee harvested efficiently and mechanically on highly productive coffee plantations in Brazil, and coffee from African countries, where production is largely based on smallholder farming systems involving manual harvesting.
This results in a more or less meaningful reference price for producers worldwide. Around 90 per cent of coffee is traded in this way. The remaining 10 per cent is traded outside the stock exchange. And this is where speciality coffee comes into play.
For us, paying high prices means ensuring economic sustainability throughout our coffee value chains – something that is not possible through traditional coffee trading on the stock exchange. It means offering our customers excellent quality and exceptional coffees at a price that enables us to remunerate our partner producers and other stakeholders fairly for their work and the risks they take.
In Colombia, we can already report successes thanks to high purchase prices. Our partner cooperative COOCAFE was able to finance a Quality Lab thanks to quality premiums that we paid in addition to the purchase price, in order to improve the coffee quality of the farmers of the cooperative in the long term.
Details about our coffee pricesA high purchase price is important to motivate the farmers to continuously work on improving their coffee quality – and thus to independently increase their income and thus the quality of life.
5. Projects
We are proud to have reached over a million people in coffee-growing regions.
With € 1 for every kilogramme of coffee sold, we fund projects to improve health, education and sustainable agriculture in coffee-growing regions. Together with our partners, we build clean drinking water supply systems, improve hygiene and nutrition, organise training for farmers, support women-led initiatives and help communities to grow from within. Over the last five years, this model has generated more than € 1.4 million for the Coffee Circle Foundation e.V. All projects are designed so that they can be continued in the long term, independently of us.
Our finished projects
Marquee Ticker Sanity Awards
6. Sustainable cultivation methods
Our coffees are grown in an environmentally sustainable manner. This is, independent of a certification, a purchase requirement for us. For example, we welcome the official organic seal. Ultimately, however, quality plays a greater role for us than official certification. Therefore, we also buy non-certified coffees, as long as we are sure that the coffee is grown in a sustainable environmentally friendly way.
In reality, verifying sustainable cultivation methods is very difficult. It requires a great deal of trust with our producer partners, as we cannot check the extent to which chemical fertilizers are used, for example, throughout the year. Greater presence and better relationships certainly help here, see point 2. But even certifications are only based on an annual survey and control. Also with this criterion we learn and can only become better with increasing presence.
7. Continuous improvement
The coffee trade is complex and we have learned in recent years that it does not allow for „black and white“ thinking. Rather, we must continually learn and regularly review our purchasing criteria to ensure high quality, fair trade and sustainable cultivation.
Current Projects
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Project Accomplishments
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Impact Report
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Coffee Circle Foundation e.V.
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