Improving the Coffee Supply Chain for Women

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:07)
You're listening to Bloomberg Businessweek with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Radio.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:14)
We get products and services from all over the world, including coffee. It's a global commodity. Coffee traders are betting Brazil's record harvest will ease a global supply crunch, but farmers in the world's top grower are in no hurry to sell beans, squeezing supplies and consuming countries. This is according to a recent story from our colleagues at Bloomberg News. Margaret Nyambumo watches global coffee prices closely. She's founder and CEO at Kahawa 1893 with partners with co-ops in Kenya, Rwanda, and Congo.
She joins us here at Uncharted. Welcome.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:44)
Welcome.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:45)
How are you?

**Margaret Nyambumo** (0:45)
Yeah. Thanks for having me. I'm great. It's great to be here and talk about Kahawa.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:50)
Yeah. We want to talk about premium coffee and just the niche that you have carved out. It's such a really interesting category, given that the way that people consume it around the world, it's different in many parts of the world, but also the way that you've been able to partner with these local co-ops for this socially responsible product. How did you do it?

**Margaret Nyambumo** (1:10)
Yeah. I had a background having grown up on a coffee farm in Kenya. My grandfather started a farm, and I'm third-generation coffee farmer, so I immigrated to the United States and saw the culture of coffee.
But there wasn't an African brand that was essentially building the story about coffee, because coffee is originally from East Africa, and we produce some of the best coffee in the world. Kahawa 1893 is a brand that's really bringing East African coffee and the stories of the growers with it to the global world.

**Carol Massar** (1:45)
Coffee, there's so many choices today. Tell us what makes Kenyan coffee so special and so particular.

**Margaret Nyambumo** (1:52)
Yeah. Kenyan coffee is considered the best in the world.
By coffee connoisseurs. And the reason for that is because it's a very special microclimate. So we have Mount Kenya, it's right on the equator and we have amazing soil. So all these factors converge to produce some of the best coffee. But also the farmers do an amazing job of making sure they're picking only the ripe cherries and the way that they process. Kenya has a special processing. It's called double washed. So they ferment the coffee for 24 hours, wash it again twice, which is unique. It's a Kenyan unique metal called double washed. Produces some of the cleanest coffee that any coffee connoisseur, when they taste them on the table, they're able to tell that they're Kenyan coffee.

**Carol Massar** (2:36)
I didn't know if you know, but this one is a bit of a coffee connoisseur. Okay.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:41)
Yeah. Carol warned me this morning. She's like, you're not going to like the coffee that they have on offer.

**Carol Massar** (2:47)
I will drink just about anything. But this one, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:51)
But Carol actually brings up a good point, which is about educating the consumer. Does the consumer realize the Kenyan coffee story, how good that coffee is?

**Carol Massar** (2:59)
They got it in Costa Rica and they're like, this is the best coffee. So help us.

**Margaret Nyambumo** (3:03)
Yeah. That's part of the reason we have the brand with Kahawa. We're really educating the consumers. One easy way is when they taste the coffee, they can really taste the difference. One distinct thing about Kenyan coffee is because it's grown at such high altitudes because it's mountainous. We can roast it really dark without burning it. You know how people say, burns coffee, right?
Our darkest roast, which is what we call our Serengeti blend, when people taste it, they're like, oh my God, this tastes like very rich and dark, but it's not burnt.
That's how you know that it's a very dense bean because it also grows for nine months out of a year. You get a very super high quality. People don't always know, of course, because Kenya is a newer and smaller country for coffee production. But once they taste it, they're able to tell the difference.

**Carol Massar** (3:51)
There's one thing, your mission of providing a product, but you're also giving back and helping your farmers. Tell us a little bit about what you guys are doing there.

**Margaret Nyambumo** (4:01)
Essentially, one of the reasons I founded Kahawa was when I was growing up on the coffee farm in Kenya, I saw that a lot of the labor came from women. Up to 90 percent of farm labor in general for coffee comes from women, but they're not always compensated because coffee prices are always fluctuating. Sometimes they're too low. So I wanted to find a way to make sure that the women behind the coffee are compensated. So we have a QR code on the back of the bag that you can scan and tip farmers, and we have people. People love doing that.