Wheaton coffee shop owners prep for Africa trip
Coffee, connection and community.
That's what River City Roasters in downtown Wheaton has been all about since it opened in late 2013.
Now, the owners are hoping to make that mantra even more real with a trip next month to Africa. They'll be visiting small farms in Kenya and Uganda in hopes of setting up direct trade with the coffee growers there - many who are widows and orphans of HIV victims.
"Really there's not huge profit for us, but we want to do it because we want to give back," owner Erich Goepel said.
Goepel will be accompanied by co-owner Tyler Fivecoat and Fivecoat's wife, who also works at the coffee shop. Their two-week trip begins Feb. 7.
In Uganda, the group will meet with members of Venture Corps International, a nonprofit group based in Wheaton that works with a school in Machakos, Kenya - a town that happens to be where some of the coffee farms they'll be visiting are located.
"We actually didn't even know that connection prior to scheduling this trip," Fivecoat said.
Some of the people they'll be meeting with include a young Ugandan farmer who hopes to start selling his coffee to River City Roasters in a few years and the relatives of one of Tyler and Erich's friends, who was born and raised on a coffee farm in Kenya.
"The only means they have to survive is to sell coffee, and they can only sell to the co-op because they're so small," Goepel said of the farmers they plan to visit.
Through a co-op, farmers typically make $1 or less per pound, Goepel said. The farms Goepel and Fivecoat will be visiting contain about 500 trees, and on average, a tree produces about two pounds of coffee a year.
That totals out to families living off about $200 per year.
Goepel and Fivecoat hope setting up direct trade with the farmers will result in more kids being able to go to school and get better jobs in the future.
The plan is to start serving Kenyan coffee at the store by October, should everything on the trip to Africa goes as planned. Goepel and Fivecoat estimate they'll begin with the purchase of about 1,500 pounds of coffee, which amounts to about $4,000 to $5,000.
A fundraiser held earlier this month for trip expenses sparked interest in a lot of customers who didn't know about direct trade, Fivecoat said.
"It was a great way for us to get the community involved," he said. "It was just a blast. That's why I'm excited to go, to bring back that experience to the people who were here and supported us to go there."
The event raised awareness and about $2,700, which covered the cost of plane tickets. Now, Fivecoat and Goepel are hoping their young business will continue growing so they are able to pay the farmers they meet three to four times more than they're making now.
Currently, the coffee sold at the store comes mostly through a distributor in Minnesota that sources the product responsibly.
It works for now, but the goal, Fivecoat said, is to eventually sell only direct trade coffee. Until then, he and Goepel hope to highlight the relationships they are building with farmers through stories written on their bags of coffee and special products that will have proceeds directed to the growers.
"For me to be a part of something bigger than me is way cool," Goepel said. "To see our community here in Wheaton connected with the community in Kenya and in Uganda, it's just, to me, so exciting to see, to know we get to be an active part of their lives there through what we're doing here."
Anyone who wants to receive updates on the Africa trip can ask to be put on an email list by visiting the store or contacting Fivecoat at tyler@rivercityroaster.com.