Hello readers, if you ever wonder whether the principles behind the phrase "happy wife, happy life" applies to companies as well, the answer is absolutely YES.
We love knowing that we make our partners happy and that, overall, we contribute to making the world a better place.
Connecting Grounds has been collaborating with Europa Kaffe & Te for a few months now, and it was important for us to hear a bit more about what Stian had to say about our collaboration and future opportunities.
Stian has been in the coffee business for over 15 years now and with his first job with coffee he fell in love with the product at once. Coffee is both his job and his hobby, he loves to explore the different kinds of coffees out there. To be able to work with a product that affects so many people in so many countries is very motivating and always looking to make a positive impact on the supply chain is what gets him up in the morning. Stian is always looking for the best coffees, traded with respect for the people that are involved in the business and always work together with the producer to improve quality.
One of the questions that we asked Stian was to share his short-term and long-term goals for Europa Kaffe & Te, and how he sees our partnership fitting into those plans.
"Our goal with our roastery is to open the door for specialty coffee to more people and to give the possibility to drink better coffee. On this coffee journey with our customers, we also focus on making the best choices when it comes to sustainability. For example, most of our assortment is organic. We now are also investigating our packaging to see what we can do to reduce the impact on the environment. We also focus on making our supply chain as sustainable as possible. One thing here is to focus on the producer to ensure that they get fairly paid for the product they’re producing" - and we could not agree more - "Most of the coffee in the world is traded for a price that is not sustainable in the long run. To change this, it is important for us to make sure the producers get more money for the product they are producing. Our benefit from this is that we get higher quality coffee and can create long term relationships with producers that give us both stability. With Connecting Grounds this closes the circle for us, the coffee grounds that today mostly go into waste now can be used in producing food. That way the product that before was looked at as waste, now is being reused. This strengthen our green shift that is so important to create a more sustainable world."
To this Stian added that "if waste can be reused, up-cycled and get a new life, we, as a business, can be part of making the world a better place to live. For us it was an easy decision to make to ensure that coffee waste gets a new life, and it fits our company profile."
At this moment, I won't lie to you, I blushed. Of course hearing this makes me happy as a co-founder. But there is more that Stian shared with us:
"Today Connecting Grounds makes sure that one of the places we deliver coffee to, most of the waste gets reused. For us this is also an opportunity to talk about this with the consumers that drink coffee from the machines that they’re part of making the world a better place. All of us want to do what we can regarding the environment, and this solution makes it easy for a lot of people to contribute by “only” drinking coffee."
Stian described, on behalf of Europa Kaffe & Te, that we at Connecting Grounds are proactive, self-driven and create new life for coffee waste. Europa Kaffe & Te provides the waste through their customers and we at Connecting Grounds make sure the grounds get into good use.
"What’s there not to like? For us it demands very little, but in return we know that the coffee waste is being reused."
To which, I blushed again.
Lastly, but definitely not least, Stian shared with us that his dream is that all their customers can take part of this movement. That way all the coffee they produce can get into a circular system. To do this, he believes that we need to take it in steps, first look at the customers that are close to them and then expand further. We are with you Stian, as we totally agree that change can happen even from the smallest cup of espresso.
"A major milestone would be that the waste comes back to us as a ready to eat product that we can share with the customers again. That would be a great milestone to reach. I would love to experience that we get people to contact us to be part of this with both Europa Kaffe & Te and Connecting Grounds. That would be fun to share with you guys."
Thank you for the conversation Stian, and thank you for the values that you share through your coffee and the passion you put into your work. We look forward to see what the future holds for Europa Kaffe & Te and Connecting Grounds, one step at a time.
To know more about the great work behind Europa Kaffe & Te, check their website and find the shop closest to you for a real coffee experience that will blow your mind: https://europakaffeogte.dk