In early 2017, Dana, Micheal and Shak started talking specialty coffee.
The year prior, Dana and Shak moved to Uganda - where Micheal is from. Micheal and Shak had just finished their Masters at the London School of Economics (where they had become friends), and - at the same time - Dana had been setting up a specialty coffee shop with her sister in Prague.
After moving to Uganda, Dana spent some time looking at various coffee companies. She wanted to work directly with coffee farmers and focus on organic agriculture, coffee quality and environmental conservation - areas she is passionate about. Surprised by the limited amount of specialty coffee from Uganda on the international market, she spent time with a range of actors across the coffee value chain to try and understand why.
Seeing and learning first hand the challenges farmers face led to lots of late night discussions. With Micheal and Shak’s background in development, ideas emerged for a business that would address these obstacles and improve the conditions for smallholder coffee farmers.
In mid 2017, the three agreed to test out a small pilot: work with one farmer family whose coffee had potential and provide support to improve coffee processing practices, training, access to loans on fair terms, and above market prices. The aim was to see if, by improving coffee processing practices and creating better incentives for farmers, we could produce specialty coffee that could be sold internationally.
This pilot was successful and turned into The Coffee Gardens.
This nanolot is named after Donald Kiima, Quality Control Manager at Falcon Coffees, who is responsible for running their quality control lab and factory equipped with a colour sorter and whom worked on the fermentation of this experimental lot.
Details:
- Variety: Nyasaland, SL14, SL28, 100% Arabica
- Altitude: 1700-2100masl
- Processing: washed
- Notes: violet candy, lemon, pink pepper, paranuts.
- Quantity: 250 gr or 500 gr beans
- Our coffee bags are 100% recyclable, produced CO2-neutral and can be disposed of in the plastic waste (in Belgium: PMD-bag). Also check out our CoffeeVac containers, which we sell to shop without the use of packaging from us. When using this system (only possible for pick up- or personal delivery-orders), you save a discount per order.
- These beans are roasted on 100% green energy (solar + wind).
Foremost, we choose to supply beans. After 15 minutes the aromas of ground coffee are gone. We can grind on request, but it is not something we offer as standard. More info you can find on our blog!
On our website you can discover our range of manual and electric grinders .
