Growers and Grocers

Are you drinking stale coffee? 99% of North Americans are. According to the Merchants of Green Coffee, a truly fresh cup of coffee must be served within 5 days of roasting, within 3 hours of grinding and within 15 minutes of brewing. The key to ensuring this formula is obviously to roast your own.

My first encounter with the Merchants of Green Coffee came at an organic food fair. Set up in the middle of a downtown Toronto park, they were handing out free cups of the most delicious coffee I had ever tasted.

At that point (2002), organic, fair trade coffee was still hard to find in Canada, and the only green beans the average consumer ever came across was in the built-in display case at one of the local coffee chains where they were used as an example, but were not for sale.

My husband and I took a pamphlet and a few weeks later, made our way to the retail store. There, a very wired young man showed us how to roast our coffee beans in a counter-top roaster, and then brewed those same beans for us to drink. We were hooked.

While our brewmaster proceeded to run through the same routine for another customer (thus explaining his coffee jitters – he drank a cup with each customer) we wandered around the shop. Bags of beans from around the world were on display, as well as examples of the set-up used to air-dry certain types of beans. A cozy area of sofas and tables offered a place to sit down and learn more about fair trade and green coffee.

The Merchants have a three-fold philosophy to explain their business.

First, fresh coffee:

The best cup of coffee is a fresh cup of coffee made from high quality beans. Fresh roasted coffee is a naturally sweet tasting beverage with distinctive regional tastes and flavours. It is pure enjoyment for coffee lovers. It is also the economic driver of our business and our reason for being!

Fair Trade:

It seems only natural to us that in order to ensure a consistent supply of high quality coffees, one develop good relationships with, and pay fair prices to, coffee farmers. Paying fair prices lets farmers re-invest profit back into farms and communities to improve quality of life. Fair trade also means equal opportunity and pay, doing business with the highest level of transparency and an equitable exchange with nature.

And Green Business:

Coffee grows best at high elevations on natural biodiverse farms where nature provides the ingredients - fertile soils, rain, sun, warmth and protection - not us. A combination of traditional agricultural methods with new tools and technologies make it possible, and profitable, for farmers to grow coffee sustainably. Being a green business or consumer is making a choice to buy smart, reduce, recycle, and reuse.

The merchants source certified Fair Trade, Organic, Shade Grown and/or Bird-Friendly, and/or 100% Sustainable beans. They have created a sustainable coffee certification and are the only company to source sustainable beans from Costa Rica.

Their extensive website offers information on everything from the history of coffee to how to brew the perfect cup. They have an online catalogue of different beans from around the world – divided by continent – which they can ship anywhere. There are also a variety of subscription programs available so you can have coffee automatically delivered to your door each month.

We left that day with a countertop roaster and two pounds of green beans, and after four years of roasting our own coffee, we could never go back to store-bought. The roasting process is easy and fun (watching the beans brown and pop remains a fascination for me), and having super-fresh home-roasted coffee on hand has spoiled us for coffee anywhere else. Knowing that it is organic, fair-trade and sustainable is just cream.

Merchants of Green Coffee are located at
2 Matilda Street
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
M4M 1L9

Visit their website at:
http://www.merchantsofgreencoffee.com/