Meet Our Stellar Partners #1: Girls Who Grind Coffee
A few years ago, Casey Lalonde and Fi O’Brien decided to join forces and set up an all-female specialty coffee roaster, based in the UK. They are committed to only buying coffee from female producers, aiming to give them recognition for their hard work, which makes them a perfect market partner for Bean Voyage!
Read on for a Q&A with Casey, on all things coffee, gender, and shaking up the industry.
What’s the origin of Girls Who Grind Coffee (GWGC)?
I can’t really think of a time that I wasn’t obsessed with coffee. I don’t know why; I just always knew that I wanted to work in coffee in some way. I worked as a barista, and then when I got my first job in a roastery I just thought, this is amazing, this is what I want to do. I met my business partner [Fi] through our kids, and I already had the coffee background and knew that’s what I wanted to do. However, I had no idea how to sell coffee, how to market it, or how to brand it. So, when I met Fi I thought, we need to do this! We both have a strong love for coffee and also for women’s empowerment. We started meeting and thinking about how we could start a business that would be different to other coffee roasteries. We wanted to make some sort of an impact, and we both agreed that there were major issues relating to gender in the coffee industry which we wanted to address. So that’s when we decided to buy 100% of our coffee from female producers and really highlight their stories. And that was 4 years ago. We actively seek out organisations like Bean Voyage, that are working to empower women through training and education. It’s amazing!
How did you come to partner with Bean Voyage?
We have a mutual friend, Sierra, who has worked in various roles in the coffee industry, and who told us about Bean Voyage. We got in touch with Sunghee and just took it from there! She’s been sending samples and we absolutely love what Bean Voyage does and what they stand for. We obviously need to work with Bean Voyage: it’s just everything we’re about.
What does gender equity in the coffee industry mean to you?
We want to highlight the fact that it is an issue, since a lot of people don’t think about it. We still have people saying that women are involved in every step, and that all coffee is picked by women. And whilst that’s true, they are also not the ones who are making decisions, who have financial independence. So, it’s really about highlighting the stories of women who are breaking out of that mould, and working with organisations like Bean Voyage which are helping to empower women. I think that we need to be telling their stories, highlighting them, shouting about the women who are making a difference. It’s not necessarily about showing their faces, but having an emphasis on women, without it being a token gesture. A lot of other roasteries will, for instance, have a monthly female coffee, but we wanted to make it the core of our business. The only way things will change is if people actively seek out these producers to purchase from.
How do you see pricing as playing a role in gender equity in the industry?
I think we need a major shift in the way that we buy coffee, and that can be done by empowering producers to know the value of their product. Bean Voyage does a really good job at that, because at the moment in the industry, producers get told how much they are going to be paid, or they use a baseline of what commodity coffee will be getting and then go up a little bit from there. But I feel like if there’s more transparency going the other way, so producers know what we’re selling their coffee for, they have an understanding of the value. They will be in more control. And then there’s also taking into consideration the cost of production, although it’s not as simple as asking a producer to work out their cost of production and then charging a buyer based on that.
I know from speaking to producers that records aren’t always kept on farms, and a lot of things are done casually, so producers maybe don’t know their exact cost of production. I even had one producer tell me that if she charged the cost of production and made a profit, there’s no way anyone would buy her coffee. It shouldn’t be like that. So, I think we need to trust the people who are helping producers come up with their pricing models. The goal shouldn’t be a fair price, but rather a price where producers are thriving, and not just breaking even. They should actually be making a decent living like everybody else in the industry. That’s the goal: for everybody to win.
How does sustainability play into that?
I think creating these relationships is really important: for us, when we buy from a producer, we make sure that we carry on buying from that same producer. And then the bigger we get, the more producers we can buy from. Having these long-term relationships really fosters sustainability, because you’re not just buying from random importers spot coffees that are already in the country. You are already invested in producers, in organisations like Bean Voyage, and when you become involved like that, you’re willing to pay a better price. And you’re also willing to give producers that reassurance that you’re going to carry on buying from them, because selling their coffee every year is also a huge issue for producers.
What does your Cheek to Cheek programme involve?
We believe that producers add so much more value to their coffee than they know. It’s quite trendy to put a producer’s photo on a package of coffee or tell the story of a producer — like we do –, and a lot of the time, producers have no idea. They sell their coffee, they don’t know where it’s going, they don’t know how the coffee is being marketed. We don’t think that’s very fair. You know there’s so much value and we make money because we’re telling somebody’s story, and we feel that producers should benefit from that, and that they should get paid. So, Cheek to Cheek is another business transaction, and we feel it’s money that producers have earnt rightfully. It’s theirs, for the use of their name and their story. We like to think of it that way, rather than a charity programme. For all of our retail 250g bags of coffee we give 10% of the profits directly back to producers.
Finally, what’s your favourite brewing method for BV coffee?
So far, we have been selling Monse Prado’s coffee, and we just love it. I’m a big fan of filter coffee, so I drink her coffee with a V60 at home. It’s such a lovely fruity coffee, and it works super well with the filter.
GWGC currently has Monse’s delicious coffee back on stock! Soon, they will also be releasing three different lots from our partner producer, Aracelly Robles from Frailes. Stay tuned by following their IG for the release date!
Interviewed & Written by Alice Mee
Edited by Kayla Sippl
Photo credits: Girls Who Grind Coffee
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Bean Voyage is a feminist nonprofit social enterprise that collaborates with smallholder women farmers to eradicate the gender gap in farming communities. Visit our website to learn more and find us on Instagram and YouTube to stay updated!
