.
| Africa.. |
Cupping to America
How an Aquapulper electrified a society
To most Americans, coffee is how we start our mornings or finish a three-course meal. To the coffee farmers of the third world, however, it’s a cash crop that sometimes costs more to sow than it reaps. Plus it’s physically hard, repetitive work, especially if you want to produce specialty coffee, which draws a higher price. The “cherries” must be hand-picked numerous times in order to pluck ripe—not green or overripe—cherries, which result in heavier beans that roast into more flavorful coffee.
 Workers sort through the just- picked cherries to remove the green and defective cherries. |
Coffee permeates the Kenyan culture, which is ironic because it is a tea-drinking country thanks to its years under British dominance. Kenyans export the premium beans and keep the inferior ones for their own use. So it’s no wonder that when Dunn Bros CEO Chris Eilers, VP of marketing Mark Christenson and I were invited to lunch at the Gakurari Factory in the Gatanga region of Kenya, we were served instant packets of Sanka and hot water. The locals are just now learning how to brew coffee, rather than boil it, so it tastes superior to the instant variety and can compete with the tea, also grown in the region.
It’s not often a company will go out of its way to pay more than required for its signature product, but Dunn Bros Coffee, based in Minneapolis, has made a commitment to coffee farmers in both Latin America and Eastern Africa: Provide the quality coffee we require and we’ll buy straight from your farm or your co-op at better than fair-trade prices.
It won’t surprise anyone to learn that coffee by the cup is ubiquitous— so much so that the mega-player in the segment, Starbucks, is closing units and experimenting with no-name neighborhood coffee shops in an attempt to return to its counterculture roots.
In order to prune itself from the overgrown industry, Dunn Bros needed to distinguish itself. The chain is already unique in that it roasts its coffee on-site, plus its size—94 units in nine states—allows the chain to buy smaller batches of beans, which means it can go to “origin.” Going to origin (where the coffee’s grown) is a potent experience, which is why Eilers is considering making the trip mandatory for all new franchisees.
His return trip to East Africa in October, however, had a dual purpose: Establish new coffee-buying sources in Uganda and Ethiopia and witness the official launch of the Aquapulper Dunn Bros and the World Bank funded for the Gakurari Factory, a “washing station” that services 850 farms outside Nairobi. The new machine will use a quarter of the water the old pulper used, which in an area of the world where water is not only precious, but polluted, less is definitely more. Washing, by the way, is the process by which the fruit is separated from the bean. The outer casing, or cherry, is discarded or used as fertilizer. The air around the factory is permeated by a slightly sweet, rotting odor that is not all that pleasant. But to the locals, it’s the smell of success.
The players
Christenson, Dunn Bros’ new marketing guru,
was on the trip to not only document the experience for the company’s
Web site and promotional materials, but to embellish his already high
enthusiasm for the product. He claims to have been a fan of the coffee
long before joining the chain.The fourth member of our group, John Mwangi, president of Gatto
Estates, Dunn Bros’ coffee exporter based in Washington, D.C., was more
than a translator of the language for the three “mzungus”: He
interpreted the experience. “We know coffee like guys in the city know
cars,” he says. Mwangi’s father, Simon Muriithi (Kenyans have an
elaborate way of giving surnames based on alternating paternal and
maternal names) and his grandfather were both life-long coffee farmers.
Mwangi introduced us to not only the farmers in the district, but to his extended family and his passion for helping the people who had ensured that he received an education. Since his father couldn’t afford to send him to college, Mwangi held a fundraiser where his neighbors brought whatever they could afford—from goats to sugar cane—to auction off to the community. They raised $12,000. The community spirit is extraordinary in Kenya. So much so that it can be detrimental to commerce.
 Chris Eilers shows off the goat rib that he stripped clean, a sign of respect to his dinner host. |
One of the points Dunn Bros is trying to drive home to the farmers is that in order to earn more money, they must produce superior coffee. Since the farmers in a co-op, or “society” as they call it, are tied together by their washing station, if one farmer takes a shortcut and adds unripened cherries to the communal batch, it lowers the quality of all the coffee from that district. The system has been set up since the beginning of time as a communal operation. The idea of one farmer earning more than his or her next-door neighbor when the coffee is sold at auction is new—a slightly unsettling proposition for Kenyans.
Mwangi started Gatto Estates after his father pointed out the plight of the farmers during a visit to Washington. “When dad came to the U.S., he was surprised at how much coffee cost in the U.S. and yet the farmers (back home) were getting so little,” he says. Pennies per pound, in fact.
Coffee culture
The four of us arrived at the Gakurari Factory in a chauffeured van. Driving in Nairobi is not for the faint of heart. Not only are the bumpy roads jammed with cars, but crowds of people walk along the major highways as their means of transportation. Unattended cows grazed where the grass meets the asphalt. Outside the city limits, the landscape turned lush and tropical. Delicate purple bougainvillea vines spilled down crumbling stucco walls. It’s a country of paradoxes—both its beauty and its poverty break your heart. When we pulled into the factory’s parking lot, we were greeted by the chairmen of the factory, dressed in mismatched suits and eager to show off their premier farms. One of the jobs at the washing station is to keep track of the high producers on a blackboard outside one of the buildings. It’s a source of pride to be ranked on the board.
 In honor of technology entering the factory setting, more than 200 people came to hear speeches dedicating the Aquapulper. The group prayed for Dunn Bros, asking that the principals of the company stay healthy so they could continue to buy the society’s coffee. |
Three
of the four farms we visited were run by women. When I asked one of the
chairmen, Francis Ndungu Njoroge, why the women outlive the men, he
confided that the women, unlike men, don’t drink alcohol. But after a
couple of days of observing, my assessment was that the women work too
hard. They are responsible for not only farming, but growing all the
family’s food, cooking, cleaning, child care, and other duties to be
assigned at a later date. They simply don’t have time to die.
As
Simon Muriithi opined: “Coffee is a lot of work.” But then so is living
in rural Kenya. People grow their own food, walk most places and
perform the laborious chores without the benefit of modern equipment.
Even children are included. Mwangi’s aunt remembers as a child having
to weed two rows of coffee trees before heading off to school in the
morning.
Villagers rarely go out to dinner, which is one
explanation for the lack of American fast food restaurants. In the
entire time I was in Kenya I didn’t spot one American franchise. The
only American corporate name I did spot was Coca-Cola: It was the drink
served at the hotels and restaurants we visited. I only saw Pepsi
once—on a supermarket shelf.
The skinny on coffee
Most of the farmers have limited land, with 500 trees on average. If one tree produces two pounds of green coffee beans, the income produced is around $700 a year. For that ROI, the farmer pays workers, if there aren’t enough family members to do it, plus all the other costs associated with coffee—from fertilizing to irrigation to pest control to transporting the cherries to the washing station to drying to milling to export.
There is no prepayment—farmers only receive payment when their coffee is sold.
After visiting the farms and the washing stations, we toured the Thika Coffee Mills, where the Gakurari Factory beans are weighed, sorted, graded, bagged and delivered to auction. The farmers receive a report on how their coffee fared, and what grade it will be sold as.
One of the most interesting aspects at the mill was the process of “cupping” or tasting the coffee. A small portion of the beans are roasted and then brewed. Dressed in a white lab coat and hat with a veil, Eilers was one of the testers. The process is similar to wine tasting. Cuppers slurp the coffee off a spoon, swish it around their mouth and then spit it out. They then rank it on a number of predetermined attributes, such as acidity and smoothness. Next they rinse their spoon in a glass of water and the lazy-Susan device is twirled and they all taste the next brew. The resulting information is part of the farmers’ reports.
The Aquapulper runneth
After three days, the only business left was ensuring the donated Aquapulper was up and running. When we arrived, two days before the ceremony, electricity was still being installed to the building. The next day when we checked back, the electricity was on, but the machine’s settings were off. Water gushed over the sides of the machines, creating a tidal wave of cherries. Eilers looked grim. But not as grim as the mechanic who had been sent to install the primary-colored machine. He had the chairmen and other society members watching his every move, not to mention giving advice.
 Workers struggle to get the Aquapulper, donated to the factory by Dunn Bros, to work before the next day’s ceremony. |
The next day, as if it was a movie, the clouds parted and sun shone
down on the shiny Aquapulper and the crowd of dignitaries who had come
to officially launch its maiden voyage. The workers had been up all
night.
The village women, dressed in Western skirts and blouses
with colorful scarves on their heads, sang and danced around in a
circle. Extended prayers were offered, as well as speeches delivered in
both English and Swahili. When it was Eilers’ turn to talk, Mwangi
translated. Eilers got a big laugh when he told the story about
visiting the farms and being so impressed by 90-year-old Peris
Wanjiku’s coffee that he proposed marriage to her on the spot. “She
turned me down,” he said sorrowfully. “She saw how I was dressed
(jeans) and how slowly I picked coffee.” Before Eilers left for home,
he presented Wanjiku with a Dunn Bros hat, which is viewed by the
farmers as a trophy.
After the speeches, the crowd of 200 or so made its way down to the
Aquapulper, which was housed in a shed next to the old-fashioned diesel
pulper it was to replace. The switch was flipped and everyone involved
let out a collective sigh of relief as the water began to flow and the
cherries separated from the beans. The result was a much cleaner batch
of beans than the old machine had delivered.
The expensive machine will improve and increase the society’s production. The key, however, is for all the members to commit to producing superior coffee, Eilers told the farmers. The idea behind the gift and the visits is for the specialty coffee production to be sustainable.
Dunn Bros will continue to tell the farmers’ story to the coffee drinkers who buy their coffee—as long as the quality is in the cup. The problem, Eilers confided later, is that every farmer they talk to believes they are going to buy their coffee. That’s not the way the coffee business works. In order to receive specialty prices, farmers have to grow specialty coffee.
During the ceremony, the local parliament member promised Aquapulpers to the remaining factories in his district. Although it is a politician’s promise in a country not known for its benevolent government, a young, progressive farmer said he believed the man would deliver on the promise. After all, the government official had already repaired roads and helped get electricity to the factory, he pointed out.
If progress is indeed coming to the area, can competition be too far behind?
