That is me, Charlie Wallace, with the assistance, help and patience of my family. Anna is our creative genius who can take a general idea and turn it into art. Grace is also working to become a contributor to our visual media. Amy provides inspiration, judgment and sound counsel. Although we are currently a small circle we certainly do not intend to put a limit on who can participate and fully exp
ect to attract others as our ideas grow and our message takes on a shape that can be communicated. We have taken the advice of Muhammad Yunus to, "Start Small, Start Now." We have started to explore the history, tradition and practice of quality coffee. We fully expect that this will lead us on a lifelong journey, and we are thrilled to be on our way. Create. We are taking an idea, refining it, solidifying it and bringing it into being. It is not clear in how many ways the idea will become manifest, but we are sure that in every way it will lead to works of imagination, art and conversation. We know that there are physical objects like equipment and buildings that will be required, but we are sure that at its heart our creation will be one of connecting people. Business. At the moment this part of the mission is future. Without purpose and intent it would be easy to allow the idea to become a wonderful hobby. However, in order to bring about the greatest good and impact the largest number of people we intend to allow the idea to sustain itself financially. It is temping at this point to insert the word 'social' in front of the word business. Social businesses have an objective of addressing a human need and are self-sustaining financially with all profits flowing back into the business objective. Our objective is to create an environment where coffee producers are incentivized and rewarded for producing high quality coffee, and consumers are allowed to purchase and enjoy high quality coffee with the knowledge that their enjoyment is helping sustain the well being of everyone involved in it. Educates. We found that even though we had consumed and enjoyed coffee for many years we knew little about its origins, cultivation or production. Our coffee education had come from coffee advertising and it was inaccurate to a point of absurdity. As we began to learn about coffee we found that our enjoyment deepened along with our concern for the people who produce it. Good coffee is labor intensive and often the coffee workers are a segment of the workforce that are vulnerable to exploitation. Through knowledge we believe we can connect hard working farmers with well meaning consumers to the benefit of all. Enlightens. Coffee is a social drink. It is meant to be enjoyed slowly with thought and conversation. No well meaning person would enjoy indulging in something at the expense of a poor person. We believe that by understanding and connecting people we can be an enlightened business with enlightened customers. Delights. Aroma, taste, conversation. We want our business to be a joy for us and a pleasure to our customers. Coffee. From farm to processing, from green bean to roaster, from coffee shop to home we want to be involved. We can imagine trips to coffee producing countries and time spent with the workers who carefully pick each ripe coffee cherry. We want to form business relationships with producers and then roast great coffee beans near the people that enjoy it. That's a lot and there is a whole lot more. Give it some thought. Take a look at our art and photography and then let us know what you think.
-Charlie.
