We don't source our beans from just anyone. We don't let just anyone roast our beans. And we certainly don't let just anyone serve you your coffee. To create a great coffee experience, while remaining ethically and environmentally sound, we have created our own unique supply chain. We call this the Crop2Cup™ process.
Before we even opened AGRO Cafe, we established AGRODEV, a Non-Government Organization in Kenya where farmers are paid a decent wage. We wanted to be sure we could trade fairly and directly with small-scale producers in developing countries, providing our customers with a direct link between the farmer and the customer. By paying farmers a fair price for their beans, we are encouraging them to produce a higher quality, more environmentally sound coffee bean.
Our coffee is generally grown by small-scale farmers on 5-7 acres of land. The coffee plant produces round red 'cherries', each of which contains two oval seeds. Our cherries are picked exclusively by hand while the fruit is at it's peak of perfection, instead of machine picked where green berries can get caught into the mix. Red berries, with a higher aromatic oil and lower organic acid content are more fragrant, smooth, and mellow. The farmers and community laborers collect the cherries in large sacks when the cherries are the right shade of red.
At this point, the cherries go through a lengthy process of depulping to extract the green coffee bean inside; fermentation, wet and dry processing, before being put through our rigorous quality control process of 'cupping'. This is where our producer partners take representative samples from each coffee harvest and sends them to AGRO Cafe for approval.
If AGRO Cafe and our partners have approved the coffee, the coffee is milled, sorted for defects, sized, re-bagged for shipment, loaded into containers for export, and put on a ship to Canada to be transformed into roasted coffee in our cafe.
The beans are roasted on site, in our Granville Island Cafe, so there is the shortest distance between the fresh roasted coffee and you. When roasted, the green coffee bean expands to nearly double its size, changing in color and density. As the bean absorbs heat in our roaster, the color shifts to a yellowish color and then to a light "cinnamon" brown, before ending as a dark and oily color that most people associate with coffee beans. During the roasting these oils appear on the surface of the bean.
At lighter roasts, the bean will show more of its origin's flavor, the flavors created in the bean by the soil and weather conditions in the location where it was grown. Coffee beans from famous regions like Sumatra and Kenya are roasted lightly so that their signature characteristics dominate your palate. As beans darken to a deep brown, the origin flavors of the bean are humbled by the flavors created by the roasting process itself.
Our coffee is roasted to bring out the finest characteristics in each bean and provide the intoxicating aroma of freshly roasted coffee to our patrons. We combine art and science to determine the proper roast and blend combinations. Roasting onsite allows us to link the coffee lover closer to the source and also encourage education on the crop to cup practices employed by AGRO Cafe. Through roasting on site we also reduce the negative impact that continuous transportation of coffee has on the environment.
Finally, the coffee is ready for you to enjoy. At AGRO Cafe, you choose the way you prefer your coffee. Our experienced and talented Baristas will ensure your drink is customized to the way you like your coffee. There's no right or wrong way to enjoy coffee, so if you have a special request, just ask. We'll be happy to make your drink just the way you like it.
Learn more about our farmers.
Find out more about our partner organization, AGRODEV.
© 2007 AGRO Cafe coffee is Fair Trade and roasted in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Certified Organic by PACS. 16-326
AGRO Cafe Inc. Coffee & Roasting House
Agricultural Growers Resource Organisation
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