Sourcing & Cooperative Coffees

Everything starts with our coffee producers, the farmers who cultivate the finest certified organic and fair trade coffee we roast for you. Bean North Coffee Roasting Co. Ltd. is owner member of Cooperative Coffees, a green coffee importing cooperative, and together we purchase coffee directly from small scale coffee farmers. We visit these communities, meet the producers and their families and have long term relationships with them.

Cooperative Coffees exists to import high-quality, organic green coffee from small-scale farmer organizations to build long-term relationships and foster fair and equitable trading practices. The goal is to make coffee-growing a sustainable and beneficial endeavour for farmer families and their communities. 

Cooperative Coffees strives to be:

A Thriving Importing Business – Our terms of trade are the best choice in the eyes of our trading partners and our business practices are defined, documented and disseminated to serve as a model for the coffee industry.

A Thriving Community – We understand the basic needs of our trading partners and facilitate access to specific expertise to help small-scale farmers improve their production capabilities and meet their basic needs. We measure the impact of our relationships not only economically, but also in terms of overall quality of life for our partners and their communities.

A Thriving Cooperative – Our governance and operations are: explicit, effective, efficient, forward-looking, fun-loving, fair-minded, and sustainable.

Read the other menu items to learn about our Fair Trade Practices, Organic Practices, and Coffee Quality.

In 2011 Bean North hosted the Cooperative Coffees AGM. Check out the photos here!

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Cooperative Coffees Canada is based in Montreal, QC and intricately linked to Cooperative Coffees, located in Americus, GA. Cooperative Coffees Canada is the nonprofit arm of Cooperative Coffees. As a solidarity cooperative its structure allows Cooperative Coffees to convene roasters, staff, producer partners, and allies for the purpose of organizing and aggregating their voice formally into our organization. 

Cooperative Coffees Canada is a trilingual office and serves as a communications center between Cooperative Coffees and producer partners, facilitating the planning and logistics of our coffee contracts, verifying that quality standards are met and offering feedback to producers. They also help circulate producer information to Cooperative Coffees roaster members. 

Cooperative Coffees raises 3 cents per pound of green coffee on every sale as an Impact Fund to support our Carbon, Climate and Coffee Initiative. Our goal - and one of Cooperative Coffees Canada's tasks - is to leverage this fund through public and private matching funds for greater impact in the communities we work in. 

Cooperative Coffees Canada is a multi stakeholder solidarity cooperative  giving all Cooperative Coffees members, staff, producer partners and strategic allies a formal voice in our organization. All members have the like-minded objective to deepen Fair Trade and the relationships that it helps sustain. The exchange of ideas between roasters and producers is crucial to build understanding around issues and to build mechanism to address these issues collaboratively.

Information courtesy of Cooperative Coffees