With over 500,000 coffee growers in Colombia, coffee is truly a part of the national landscape. From the Willys Jeeps to the traditional white farmers hats, colourful dresses, and local music, Colombia is the cultural embodiment of coffee culture.

Colombia produces primarily Arabica beans, which are of superior quality than Robusto beans which make up most of global production. The particularly high quality of the Arabica beans in Colombia, is a result of the rich soil in the mountainous regions and the perfect year around climate.
The mountains make coffee more expensive to produce since you can’t use machinery to automate the farming process. This means that most coffee fincas are small family operations with relatively limited production.

Coffee is sold through co-operatives and federations where the beans from the region are pooled and sold at international market prices. These federations assist in the marketing and sale of the product where the individual farmer lacks the resources to do it themselves.
Ultimately, this coffee is exported by international branding companies and middlemen who roast and pack the coffee for consumer use.

We are all familiar with the origins of coffee in Africa and the Middle East. The increasing popularity of the drink in European coffee houses and eventually in the USA, as a partial result of imposed taxes on Tea, are coffee lore.

What is not spoken about is the Economic history of coffee and it’s lasting legacy in the coffee growing regions. For us, this is the real story and the reason we feel compelled to disrupt the existing system in order to benefit the coffee growers.

As the popularity of coffee increased in Europe, each country saw the impact on it’s balance of trade; they were spending more and more to import coffee and didn’t like it. So they did what was common in the age of mercantilism and colonized coffee growing regions while applying tariffs and taxes locally. Much of northern Africa and Latin America was developed with an eye to producing cheap coffee for the Colonial powers in Europe.

Any economy born of this system will not benefit he local population except the land owners. In fact, this led to the expansion the Slave economy in Brasil and a legacy of inequality in all coffee growing regions. Today just one cent from every dollar spent on coffee at retail makes it into the hands of the coffee grower. No one thinks that’s fair.
Speaking of fair, attempts to change this dynamic through well intentioned organizations promoting fair trade, have largely failed. It’s the economic equivalent of an environmental “green wash”; designed to deceive the consumer while maintaining the status quo.

At D2CCafe.com, we intend to use digital technology and the power of the internet, to tilt the playing field in the opposite direction. We invite you to be part of the solution as only the consumer can, through your purchasing power and social communication.