All our coffee is ethically sourced. Greenbean Coffee Roasters has been buying coffee since 1987 and we have great relationships with a whole series of excellent coffee co-ops, brokers and growers. Although many of our constituent beans are bought as Fairtrade, the certification itself is not the most important thing for us.

All the coffee we buy is top quality and is priced at a premium. If we weren’t prepared to pay this premium, someone else would. In most cases we pay significantly more than Fairtrade prices. Growers at this level have plenty of options and choices. They are experts at the top of their game and they are not being exploited by anyone, certainly not by us.

Even though we buy coffee which is Fairtrade certified, we do not promote it as Fairtrade because we do not have the time, the energy or the headspace to deal with the paperwork involved. Everyone here at Greenbean / Dreambeans really dislikes the tracking, the tracing, the paperwork and reporting that is a necessary part of promoting coffee as Fairtrade or Fairtrade certified. It’s a lot of bureaucracy and it isn’t what we want to spend our day doing. So we don’t mention Fairtrade in our promotion. We understand that it is necessary to ensure that the coffee is properly traced. The big coffee companies have clerks to do this work. We haven’t, and we really don’t want to have to do it ourselves.

We have been working with some of the same brokers for more than 25 years. We only deal with ethical, honest and transparent intermediaries and importers. We deal with people we trust and who share the same beliefs as us. We are happy to stand over our commitment to transparency and fairness in what we do. Our growers, farmers and co-0ps produce a premium product that commands a premium price and we are happy to pay this premium.