Photo by Jeriel Calamayan, courtesy of Boon Boona Coffee.
A deadly pandemic triggers massive job losses. Global protests erupt after George Floyd’s death at police hands. This year has brought upheaval and a renewed focus on racial inequality and calls for social justice. JNP Coffee has a role to play in these movements.
As an American Black-owned business, we have long supported social justice through our partnership with women coffee farmers in Burundi, distributing premium payments coupled with financial literacy education.
Customers are noticing. More than ever, people want to align their values with those of the companies they buy from.
Our supply of socially conscious coffee and our business model of training and rewarding coffee farmers to elevate the quality of their coffees resonates with roasters. They want to share our model with their own customers and offer coffee drinkers a meaningful start to their day.
Events of the past months have inspired our customers to support the JNP Coffee mission for social justice in a number of creative ways.
Top-scoring coffee
Our customer Boon Boona in Washington submitted our Karehe coffee to a tasting by Coffee Review magazine, featuring coffees from Black-owned coffee companies. Judges cupped 44 coffees and the magazine reviewed the top 14. Our Karehe was one of the two top-scoring coffees, both of which received 95 points! We are grateful to Boon Boona for submitting Karehe and proud to have this special coffee achieve the highest score.
BLM support
Treeline Coffee Roasters in Montana reached out to ask us if we would like them to promote our Kinyovu coffee with a Black Lives Matter label and have a portion of the proceeds from each bag donated to an organization that is involved in BLM work. We’re thrilled to see our coffee involved in supporting BLM!
Image from Casa Agria Specialty Ales
Black is Beautiful
Black is Beautiful is an imperial stout beer made with coffee supplied by JNP Coffee. Black is Beautiful is also an initiative by a collaboration of more than 1,000 breweries throughout the world to fight racial injustice and foster inclusivity in the brewing industry. Participating breweries add their own ingredients to the beer and agree to donate 100 percent of the proceeds to an organization that supports police reform, equality and inclusion.
Casa Agria Specialty Ales in California teamed up with its neighbor Ragamuffin Roasters and JNP Coffee to source our high-quality coffee for this beer. The stout base recipe and label design came from Weathered Souls Brewing Co., a Black-owned business in San Antonio, Texas. We thank the collaborators for including our coffee in this special stout and for donating the profits to the ACLU Legal Defense Fund.
More quality coffee ready to ship from Burundi
We’re almost there! Shipping arrangements are underway to bring this year’s harvest to global ports, despite the challenges of the coronavirus. While it was unusually rainy in Burundi, this harvest is of exceptional quality. Call me at 858-518-7437 or email me at info@jnpcoffee.com if you’re interested in a micro-lot of these remarkable coffees.