Meet Caravela Coffee: 2022 Sustainability Award Winner, Business Model Category

Caravela is a specialty green coffee exporter and importer that responsibly sources coffee from more than 4000 smallholder coffee producers in seven countries in Latin America, from Mexico to Peru. The company is also a Certified B Corporation.

Since 2004, the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) has been proud to recognize outstanding work in the field of sustainability with its annual Sustainability Awards, giving thanks to extraordinary individuals, businesses, and organizations that have created projects or business models shown to expand and promote sustainability within the coffee world. The Business Model award recognizes the role that for-profit companies play in the sustainability of the coffee sector. In addition to recognizing the individuals involved in creating the business, the award also aims to inspire others to build sustainable business models.

For 2022, the Sustainability Award Business Model Category winner is Caravela Coffee. 

Caravela focuses on smallholder farmers because they tend to consistently produce some of the best coffees available; but these smallholders traditionally have had to sell their coffees to intermediaries or coyotes, leaving them unable to earn the full potential value of their coffee. Caravela's operating model rewards producer passion and recognizes excellence through a tireless commitment to quality and transparency at every level, from farm to cup, while caring for the environment by measuring its carbon footprint and purchasing carbon credits in forestry projects in Latin America to offset their carbon emissions. Ultimately, Caravela's goal is "to make coffee better, for everyone involved.”

Caravela’s purpose is to make coffee better for all.

That purpose involves making an impact on all our stakeholders, including coffee farmers and their communities, our customers (coffee roasters) and their clients (coffee drinkers), our employees, society at large and our planet. Caravela is a company that connects talented and quality-minded coffee producers with some of the best coffee roasters throughout the world. This connection is not only through a great-quality coffee, is also through their stories, education, transparency, and sustainability.

SCA Knowledge Development Manager, Julie Housh, asked Caravela Coffee a series of questions about this achievement, and the future of sustainability in coffee.

Here’s what they said:

What does it mean to you to win this award?

 We’re only one small fraction of the entire coffee industry and supply chain, we only work in seven of the more than 50 countries that produce coffee, and we know that we aren’t the only ones aiming for a better coffee world, but we aim to make a greater call for those around us. We are proud that Caravela has been recognized by other members of the industry as a proactive agent fostering sustainability. We are aware that sustainability is a step-by-step process with ever increasing challenges and growing opportunities, but this award is an assurance that our voice is being heard, that our actions are having the right impact upon our stakeholders and that we are in the right track to keep promoting the empowerment and development of Latin-American coffee growers and their families. For us, winning this award is an opportunity to be role models and to spread and share that there is in fact a way of making coffee better. By winning this award, we pretend to raise our voices even higher and send an eye-opening message that for the coffee industry to thrive and prosper, we all need a change of mindset and understand that coffee is an extremely human product that also happens to depend on the planet’s health. For us, winning this award reiterates that our efforts are worth it and brings gratitude to all the people that have joined us in making coffee better.

How is sustainability different in 2022 than it was when Caravela was established?

The idea of sustainability today is much more complex than it was 20 years ago. Although sustainability has been one of Caravela’s guiding principles since day one and a key part of the DNA of our business model, throughout the years we’ve been part of the lives of coffee growing families and we’ve been able to see their problems and challenges with compassion. This has made us understand that sustainability for the coffee industry is much more than paying better prices to make it profitable today, it’s about how we contribute and take action today to make an impact in the long run, it’s about being part of something much bigger than us and understand that we will not see the results today, rather we see a brighter future for coffee. For us, today Sustainability is not just about prices, is an endless journey, is about tirelessly working towards a better future. Additionally, today we know that Sustainability is not a journey that we could sail alone, that there are multiple partners with our same purpose within the coffee industry, so we constantly look to build new and prosperous commercial relationships to increase our impact with farmers and the environment.

 How do you hope to see businesses continue to evolve in pursuit of sustainability?

Caravela is aware that sustainability is infinite and that it is always possible to make coffee even better for everyone. We want to keep working together with all different actors in the coffee industry for the development of different strategies and initiatives that will foster sustainability within the sector, taking care of the people, preserving the natural resources from which we all depend on and preparing ourselves for known and unknown challenges we are certain the future upholds.

Additionally, we imagine a world in which coffee companies give their voice back to coffee growers and giving them their spotlight. We hope to have an industry where we have hard conversations equally as much as we have easy conversations. Not only talking about innovations in coffee consumption, who are the best baristas in the world, new fermentation processes or exotic varieties breaking records, but also talk and take action on hard conversations about the cost of living of coffee growers, how they struggle with climate change, what it takes to have profitable business, how uncertainty is not present only during a pandemic but every single harvest when they don’t know who’s going to buy their coffee and at what price. A sustainable coffee industry is where the spotlight and conversations are equally distributed among the people who produce the coffee and the people who prepare it and consume it. And this is not only about putting a face to the coffee and telling the story, is about empathy, and letting the coffee growers tell their own story, communicating the positives, but also sharing growing opportunities for everyone involved.

Inspired?

Keep up-to-date with Caravela Coffee on their website.

About The Sustainability Awards

The selection process for the 2022 Sustainability Awards was led by a committee of staff and volunteers, including previous SCA Sustainability Award winners. Learn more about the Sustainability Awards, including this year’s Project Category and Individual Category award winners, as well as previous winners here.