When you buy a cup of coffee, you’re participating in a supply chain that stretches thousands and thousands of miles. What appears as a simple drink has actually traveled from a coffee farm somewhere in the mountains of Colombia, Ethiopia, Guatemala, or beyond, to Klatch Coffee’s roastery in Rancho Cucamonga to be roasted, to a cafe location somewhere in Southern California to be ground up and used to make your favorite latte.
Before our baristas and even our roasters start to work with our coffee, there’s a producer that’s done their part first. They’ve planted coffee trees and taken care of them for years before they grew enough to produce coffee, they’ve maintained the soil and water quality of their farm to ensure the highest quality coffee is growing, they’ve harvested perfectly ripened coffee cherries, often picking by hand, and they’ve processed the coffee, dried it, and prepared it for its flight or boat ride here to the U.S.
Each part of the supply chain is important, but oftentimes, the producer becomes the unsung hero behind the scenes. Producers need more than a good harvest - they need a supply chain that keeps coffee farming economically viable, environmentally responsible, and sustainable for future generations. This long-term goal of creating a sustainable supply chain is exactly why operating models such as Direct Trade Sourcing and organizations such as Fair Trade USA and Fair Trade are so important.
As October is Fair Trade Month, Klatch Coffee is taking the month to highlight our Direct Trade Partnerships, our Fair Trade Certified coffees, and our work with organizations such as World Coffee Research (WCR).
What is Fair Trade?
Fair Trade is built around the idea that the people producing the goods we rely on should have the opportunity to earn a fair return for their work while operating within responsible social, environmental, and economic standards.
Fair Trade USA, a nonprofit organization and third-party certifier of Fair Trade products in North America, describes its mission as building a model of responsible business and shared value that supports sustainable development for farmers, workers, their families, and communities. Its standards address social, environmental, and economic requirements throughout certified supply chains.
The most widely known aspect of the Fair Trade system is the Fair Trade Minimum Price. This system is like a minimum wage, establishing a baseline price that helps protect producers when market prices fall. Green coffee prices can be extremely volatile, especially with unavoidable circumstances such as weather ruining crops and tariffs increasing import costs. When global market prices fall, producers can be particularly vulnerable because the cost of maintaining a farm does not necessarily fall along with the price of coffee.
Fair Trade Certified products also generate a Fair Trade Premium, which goes into a Community Development Fund at origin. These funds can then be directed toward projects and investments chosen by the people responsible for the product, helping address the needs of their communities and environment. In 2025, our Fair Trade partnerships helped generate $8,340 for Community Development Funds, supporting community-led investments at origin.
As an example, our partners in Honduras have directed their Community Development Fund toward creating a program with the U.N. to uplift, empower, elevate, and educate women in leadership roles within the coffee farming industry. Of the Fair Trade Premium generated through our partnerships in 2025, $993 went toward COMSA’s Community Development Fund. That’s equivalent to 26,629.55 Honduran Lempira.
Fair Trade is about creating greater stability and accountability within a complicated global supply chain that sees countless people and countries. It’s not the only step roasters should be taking to better the overall industry, but it is an important first step. A sustainable supply chain cannot exist if the people growing the coffee cannot sustain themselves while doing so.
But, Fair Trade also involves more than just pricing. It can be easy to reduce the idea of Fair Trade to just the price paid for a pound of coffee, but sustainability is much bigger than that. Fair Trade standards incorporate social, environmental, and economic considerations, as the main goal of the concept is to create a system where farmers and workers have greater opportunity, communities can invest in their futures, and businesses have a framework for more responsible sourcing. That very philosophy aligns with an important reality about specialty coffee: the quality of the coffee and the well-being of the people producing it are connected.
When farmers have the resources to invest in their farms, they can focus on better agricultural practices, processing infrastructure, equipment, education, and their communities. When producers are rewarded for quality, skill, and innovation, it creates an extra incentive to continue investing in the craft of coffee. And, when coffee farming can provide a viable future, the next generation has a reason to stay connected to the land.
Where Klatch's Direct Trade Model Comes In
At Klatch Coffee, we take many of these same principles and apply them through our Direct Trade model. Rather than relying on a traditional third-party middle man for our green coffee purchasing, Klatch Coffee buys coffee directly from growers whenever possible. By simplifying the supply chain, we can build relationships with the people producing our coffee, better understand their farms and practices, and pay prices that reflect the quality of the coffee we are buying. In general, we pay our producer partners at least 25% above Fair Trade minimums, oftentimes paying two or three times those minimums, depending on the quality of the coffee. Fair Trade helped create a recognized framework and minimum standards for responsible trade, and for us at Klatch Coffee, Direct Trade gives us the opportunity to go further in our individual relationships with producers.
Paying for Quality Helps Build a Sustainable Future
We seek out Cup of Excellence-quality coffee, only purchasing coffees that score 90 points or higher. These coffees represent an enormous amount of knowledge, labor, experimentation, and care on the part of the producer. Why is this increased cost worth it? A farmer may carefully select coffee varieties, manage shade and soil health, monitor ripeness, hand-pick only the best cherries, experiment with fermentation, and meticulously dry the coffee. We see this high quality coffee and we value these relationships, because they aren’t just production or business costs. For us, it’s about sourcing expertise, and compensating a fair amount that ensures our partners are paid for their value, their time, and their efforts.
Our Direct Trade model is designed to recognize that expertise by rewarding producers for the quality and craftsmanship they bring to coffee. When a farmer knows that exceptional quality can command a meaningful premium, there is an economic reason to continue investing in that quality.
Better practices → better coffee → greater value → greater investment in the farm.
Sustainability Has Three Sides
When we talk about sustainability, it's easy to immediately think about the environment. Healthy soil, responsible water management, biodiversity, shade, and thoughtful agricultural practices all contribute to the long-term health of a coffee farm, but sustainability also has an economic and social side.
A farm cannot remain environmentally sustainable if the business itself isn't economically viable. And, coffee farming cannot remain economically viable if the people doing the work don't have a sustainable livelihood.
Ultimately, sustainability is a connected system: Environmental sustainability means protecting the land that produces coffee. Economic sustainability means ensuring producers can earn enough to continue farming and investing in their operations. Social sustainability means supporting the people, families, workers, and communities that make coffee possible. Though they can be looked at separately, these three pieces ultimately depend on each other.
Building a Supply Chain That Rewards the Future
Coffee faces enormous challenges. Climate change is affecting growing conditions, production costs continue to change, global coffee prices can be volatile, and farmers face labor challenges, weather events, disease, and the increasing complexity of producing high-quality coffee. There isn't one solution to all of these challenges, but each one is just as important as the next to consider when thinking about the future of coffee. One way we’re able to do our part in contributing to a sustainable industry where coffee will still exist decades down the line is by creating stronger relationships with our producer partners. When a coffee roaster is willing to pay more for quality, maintain long-term relationships, communicate directly with producers, and understand what is happening at origin, more of the value created by exceptional coffee can make its way back to the people responsible for producing it.
Fair Trade has helped bring important conversations about fair pricing, responsible sourcing, and producer livelihoods into the mainstream. Direct Trade allows us to take those principles and apply them through individual, long-term relationships with the growers we work with.
Neither concept is simply about putting a label on a bag of coffee. Instead, they're about recognizing that coffee is a relationship.
From the Farm to Your Cup
Ultimately, sustainability in coffee isn't something that happens in one place. It happens at every stage of the journey. It starts with a farmer caring for the land, it continues with workers harvesting and processing coffee, it continues when producers receive compensation that recognizes the value of their work, it continues when coffee companies build relationships rather than treating coffee as an anonymous commodity, and it continues with consumers who care about where their coffee comes from and how it was produced.
At Klatch Coffee, Fair Trade and Direct Trade partnerships are just some of the ways we participate in that larger system. Since 2012, our Fair Trade partnerships have helped generate $71,400 for Community Development Funds, while our Direct Trade relationships allow us to work directly with growers and pay significantly above Fair Trade minimums.
Our goal isn't simply to buy, roast, and serve great coffee. It's to help create a coffee supply chain where producing great coffee can be a viable, rewarding, and sustainable career for the people who grow it.
How do we support Fair Trade with our purchases from Klatch Coffee?
Although coffees are seasonal and our crops change often, we always try to carry at least one or two Fair Trade Certified coffees at all times! Check out our Organic and Fair Trade Coffee category, which features coffees such as our Organic Honduras Manos De Mujer Fair Trade and our Organic Decaf Peru Cecanor Fair Trade Select Water Process.