Coffee Cupping with Higher Grounds Trading Company

Oryana has been collaborating with Higher Grounds Trading Company to offer a rotating featured coffee on the Lake Street Cafe's coffee bar. Recently, a group of Oryana employees visited Higher Grounds' tasting room for a coffee cupping to select the next three coffees for the rotation. These coffees highlight the seasonality of coffee across different growing regions and come from limited batches of coffee that are of particular high quality. We hope you will come enjoy a unique cup of coffee and help us support these coffee co-ops and their farmers from our global community.

Organic Guatemalan CCDA Cafe Justicia Medium Roast
Campesino Committee of the Highlands (CCDA), a coffee cooperative in Solola, Guatemala works toward agrarian land reform; labor, human, and indigenous rights. Through their work, several members receive support with questions of land, credit, educational scholarships, and have the opportunity to participate in various trainings offered by the CCDA and other affiliates. CCDA is a member of the Labour, Indigenous, and Peasant Movement of Guatemala (MSICG) which has developed the “Café Justicia” fair trade, organic coffee program as a means to provide a fair income to their coffee growers and support their work.

Sumatran Permata Gayo Dark Roast
Since 1997, the Gayo Farmers Association (PPKGO) has been a collaborative organic coffee project in the highland area of Takengon in Indonesia’s Aceh Province, on the island of Sumatra, the home of the distinctive Gayo ethnic group. Co-op members are small-scale coffee farmers dedicated to producing 100% shade-grown, organic coffee. It has maintained relative peace and unity among an ethnically diverse membership and twenty percent of PPKGO’s members are women.This production area was carefully selected due to its inclusion in the buffer zone of the Gunung Leuser National Park, a large forested area that contains critical watershed areas and wildlife sanctuaries for rare and endangered species such as Sumatran tigers, elephants, and orangutans. Work is also being done to develop economic alternatives and incentives for natural resources conservation with other crops such as vanilla, nutmeg, mace, and patchouli oil.

Bolivian Caranavi Medium Dark Roast
AIPEP (Incorporated Association of Ecological Producers of Pumiri) is a farming cooperative located  around the villages of Pumiri and Calama, in Bolivia. Organized in 2002 and comprised of 73 members, the cooperative has the potential to export 6 containers of coffee per year. The average area of cultivation is 7 hectares. All of their coffee is certified organic by IMO Control. AIPEP has a women’s organization, with 7 women members of the cooperative.The fair trade premium collected from coffee sales is put into a fund which is accruing over time, with plans to use it to build a new collection center/office building for AIPEP. There is also a project proposal from the women’s group for a child nutrition program and facilities for training women.