Cafe Imports was founded to find the world’s best coffees and coffee producers. We made friends along the way and wanted to ensure the hard work that coffee farmers were doing was made known around the globe. So, we started telling their stories to coffee roasters, supporting them with price premiums, repeat business, and exposure to the people who roast their life’s work of coffee.

The coffee world and the world we live in have changed remarkably since then and coffee farmers continue to innovate in a landscape of new fermentation processes, a troublesome commodities market, high interest rates and inflation.
We have experienced more uncertainty around pricing the last several months than ever in my time in coffee. On one side, producers are getting more money for their crops, but on the other side, roasters are struggling to increase pricing to keep their businesses profitable. We need to continue to work together to both pay more for coffee and educate customers on the value represented in the increased prices they will see on the shelves and in the cafe. We view this as critical for the future of specialty coffee both on the growing and consuming markets.

Even amidst this challenging landscape Café Imports has been true to its mission and values of:

INCREASE the quality of life for those involved—from the tree to the cup—through the commerce of coffee.
DECREASE our negative impact on the earth through responsible and proactive business practices that emphasize environmental sustainability.
SHARE our passion for great coffee through education and example.

We love this company and are proud to have had the same Mission and Values for the many years we have been working in Specialty Coffee. We are thankful for our tremendous producer partners as well as our clients and friends in the pursuit of “Specialty Coffee”.

Thank you for your continued support!


Andrew Miller
Founder

The friendly faces you see and voices you hear around the Cafe Import’s office or sipping at your local coffee shop are the heart and soul of Cafe Imports. We rely on 75 amazing people from 16 different countries or regions who call one of our three offices homebase. We’re a crew full of coffee nerds, gardeners, winter explorers, wine connoisseurs, photographers, painters, movie buffs and one or two of us might even throwdown on a turntable.

At Cafe Imports, our goal is to share data that reflects our culture and workplace diversity, while respecting each employee’s choice to self-identify. We share information collected under federal law for Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) reporting, but we know this doesn’t paint the full picture of the folks who make Cafe Imports tick. So, every year we also run a voluntary survey so you can get to know us a little better.

Every year we conduct a wage checkup based on position, employee tenure, and the employee’s location. We use these three factors to ensure that each employee is compensated fairly and equitably. This checkup includes a reassessment of base compensation to ensure we remain the 85th percentile of wages for all positions relative to the job market.

With more than thirty-years of operation under our belts and such a broad range of experience levels and backgrounds on our team, it has always been a challenge to measure our gender wage gap. While we hire based on job class and experience without factoring gender, we recognize that there are additional drivers of wage inequity faced by women that must be proactively addressed if we are to close the gap and keep it closed. In 2024 we calculated a new baseline that we can use moving forward to better understand if our employee support programs and professional development incentives are leading to pay equity.

We utilized Logib, a pay analysis tool developed by the Swiss Federal Office for Gender Equality and recognized internationally for its multi-factor approach to analyzing the gender pay gap. This tool considers multiple factors such as gender, age, tenure, bonus payments, and role specific requirements like physical, social, and task specific skills to give us an in depth snapshot of how we’re doing and where we can improve.

We support agricultural methods that minimize reliance on chemical inputs such as pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides, helping safeguard water quality and foster biodiversity. These sustainable practices not only elevate coffee quality but also contribute significantly to the health and vitality of the communities in coffee-growing regions. We recognize, however, that access to organic farming resources isn’t universally available, so we actively partner with farmers who demonstrate a clear commitment to protecting their local environment. In 2024, all coffee we sourced was 100% GMO-free, and 22% of our total purchases were certified organic.

Reducing our own emissions and the waste we generate can only go so far. Each step coffee takes from farm to cup is an opportunity to look for new value streams and ways to cut back on the environmental harm of coffee. But where can we all start?

As one of the may hands in the coffee value-chain we know that we have a responsibility to growers, roasters, employees, and everyone in between to be a partner that is reliable and trustworthy. It’s in our core values – to increase the quality of life for everyone involved from tree to the cup. For us this sometimes looks like our stratified buying methods which aim to buy 100% of a farmer’s production, working with partners to provide pre-financing during tough times, donating to charities in our employee’s communities, or visiting customers to slurp some coffee and work with them on aligning with our sensory team. As they say “it takes a village” to make this little industry of ours special!

We are honored to be ambassadors for farmers and producers in 24 countries, connected to nearly 2100 roasters across 54 countries that align with this belief.

Our role is more than just “who you get your green coffee from”. We strive to be partners in exploring the world of specialty coffee, working alongside roasters and producers to bring the world’s best and most interesting experiences to their customers. Your needs and input help shape the way we do business; through daily conversations and more formal methods like our annual stakeholder engagement survey, we track our alignment with your priorities, leading to stronger, more resilient partnerships. Our customers are all shapes and sizes, 81% of them are small to medium (we love you too weekend warriors!), and 19% have hit the big time.

While our sourcing team is always on the go visiting with partners throughout the season, our other teams get around as well, visting suppliers and customers. Last year sales, marketing, and our sensory team spent some time reflecting with Mr. Zelelu in Ethiopia, exploring new processes in India, saw our stratified buying model in action in Colombia, and aligned with fellow tasters in Costa Rica.

As the benchmark for arabica coffee pricing, the commodity market (C-Market or sometimes just “the C”) often sets a base price or serves as a reference point when buying green coffee. Specialty coffees typically earn a premium based on factors like quality, certifications, farming practices, processing methods, and/or social impact. At Cafe Imports, we continuously evaluate our sourcing choices and the premiums we pay to ensure they align with both market realities and our commitment to supporting sustainable livelihoods. This approach helps us determine whether our pricing reflects the true value of coffee while fostering long-term stability for producers.

In 2024 that stability was challenged for everyone with the rise of the c-market at the end of the year, which brought us to price points that just a year ago would be considered strictly the realm of specialty. This elevated the average commodity market price by nearly 100USC/Lb compared to 2023, heavily influencing our average premiums for coffees contracted at the end of 2024. Despite this, we’ve chosen to stick with our methods in calculating these premiums utilizing the relatively higher average c-market price as we believe it accurately reflects the current reality of producers and the buying environment of our sourcing team.

In 2023 we committed to donate 1% of revenue to organizations that are doing some good in the communities we call home, be they near or far. These funds are wholly managed by employees, who team up to find and get to know not-for profits, grassroots organizations, or humanitarian projects that are making a real difference. We call these “Progress Projects”. In 2024 we donated to 10 new projects in addition to our ongoing price premium programs.

The Coope Libertad Integral Attention Center in the Central Valley area of Costa Rica is an initiative designed to improve the well-being of coffee farmers and their families. As urbanization and climate change impact coffee production in the central valley of Costa Rica, this center will provide three essential services: farmer training, access to credit, and medical and dental care. By addressing gaps in access to these critical resources, Coope Libertad helps smallholder farmers sustain their livelihoods and strengthens the community as a whole. Cafe Imports is supporting this effort by funding much needed medical equipment.

This year as we sat down to write this report we found it difficult to know where to start. It’s set against a backdrop of unprecedented times in the coffee commodity market and strained diplomatic relations globally. This report has always been about celebrating the good while recognizing what we need to make progress on, it’s a self-reflection that we feel is more important than ever. The industry is facing some of its biggest challenges yet, but if there’s anything we’ve learned in our 30+ years in the biz, it’s that the people make “specialty coffee”, special. And those people can do incredible things when they work together.

Thank you for another year of doing coffee with us,
Cafe Imports