Pricing transparency is one of the ways we’re building a coffee company you can trust. Why does it matter? Farmers have some concerns with the fairness of Fair Trade certification. They believe that the minimum compensation should be higher and currently only farming co-ops are able to obtain Fair Trade certification, leaving out many small farms that put in a lot of effort to produce high-quality products. Additionally, the high costs associated with USDA Organic certification, which are often unaffordable for small farms in other countries, make it challenging for these farms to showcase their dedication to producing organic coffees. Large corporations tend to benefit from these certifications, using them to enhance their public image, while the small farms, which actually produce the type of coffees we value, handpicking their crop, carefully milling it, and abstaining from industrial pesticides, often miss out. If these certifications aren’t serving their intended purpose, we need to find another way to evaluate our ethical sourcing efforts.
While some City Boy coffees are officially certified as Fair Trade, USDA Organic, or Rainforest Alliance approved, we are committed to offering more than these industry standards. Our goal is to earn your trust and the trust of the farms we source from by maintaining complete transparency about our purchasing practices. Equity is a central value for us, and we firmly believe that sharing this data is a meaningful step forward. While this information is prominently featured on each coffee’s product page, this particular page provides an in-depth analysis of our past procurement.
Annual Transparency Report for 2023
City Boy offered our first transparent coffee in September, 2020 but 2024 is the first year we are breaking down our purchasing decisions, sharing them in one place, and examining our program’s strengths and weaknesses. By reflecting on these purchases, we are confident that we can continue to improve what we do as time goes on.
Vocabulary
We want to break down a few terms:
- Cup Score: This is a measure of coffee quality using the Specialty Coffee Association’s grading scale. These scores are meant to be objective, but cuppers can at times disagree on a cup score. In that case, it is commonplace to ask for another opinion. We are a small company and it’s not yet feasible for us to contract a third party to perform this service, so we have averaged these numbers when there were discrepancies. Any score above 80 is considered to be specialty coffee. Very few coffees score above a 90. When this happens, they tend to be competition coffees, and typically sell for a premium.
- Green: This is the full price that we paid for coffee minus shipping after import. It includes all the other profits that went to all our intermediaries and partners. While it shows our good intentions, it is the least transparent of prices and as such, we will not be counting it as a transparent coffee.
- FOB: This stands for “Freight On Board.” It literally means the coffee is on a ship and it’s no longer the responsibility of the individuals at origin. FOB pricing tells you how much money went to people in the country we purchased the coffee from, and it too likely includes intermediaries although it includes fewer of them.
- Farmgate: This is the most transparent price we can offer because it shares exactly what the farmer received. We have this type of pricing typically with a direct-trade relationship.
- C-Market: The global commodity price paid for coffee.
The Data
Analysis
Our average cup score was 87.94. We paid an average of $6.12/lb for green coffee. The average Freight On Board was $3.68/lb, in contrast. We paid $6/lb directly to Javier Cabrera for the one direct trade coffee that we arranged in 2023. Lastly, 75% of our coffees were able to be sourced with enough transparency that we were able to receive FOB prices.
Overall, we feel this is a pretty positive place to start our annual reporting. We’re pleased with an FOB average that is more than double 2023’s median C-Market price of $1.63 per lb. It’s worth mentioning that 2023’s median commodity coffee price was higher than the Fair Trade minimum price for washed Arabica, $1.40. Still, there is room for improvement. FOB pricing is just a starting point, and we will continue to work on our supply chains to find more transparency in the years to come. We would like to provide some additional context for each of the coffees:
Bolivia, Yulissa Chambi
$3.30 /lb FOB
This was a very exciting purchase for us. It’s not every day you get to purchase from a farmer that’s just beginning her career and still studying at university. This coffee was delayed and so the green prices wound up being higher than typical. (
Indonesia, Pak Gunawan
$2.60 /lb FOB
The FOB is on the lower end for this coffee, but we were thrilled to find a coffee with this level of transparency. Pak is a coffee collector. Most collectors in Indonesia take everything they get and throw it into one lot. Pak separates and pays by quality. This model is more similar to what we see mills and exporters in other countries doing. In this instance, it’s not traceable back to the actual farm though. Still, for Indonesia, this was a noteworthy difference. The price of this coffee also reflects the difference in the Indonesian economy. Prices there tend to be lower than in other countries.
Last, we feel it’s noteworthy to address the premium that we paid for the green compared to the FOB. There were a lot of issues with shipping during this time and our importing partner had to jump through a lot of hoops to get the coffee. In the end, the coffee was delicious, and particularly unique for a wet-hulled coffee. We’re happy to have purchased it.
Uganda, Mountain Harvest
$3.60, $4.10 /lb FOB
We love Mountain Harvest. They are an exporter but they’re so much more. Ugandan coffee has had an unfortunate reputation for being low-quality. But it’s not the fault of the farmers. Lack of infrastructure and access to capital have hurt the country inexplicably. Mountain Harvest actually goes to farmers and collects their coffee and brings it back to their mill, eliminating the transportation issues that some farms face. They provide agronomy training, advice on what other crops can be grown alongside coffee, they provide access to credit based on production, and they pool crops from small farms in each region and market them to roasters. There’s a high level of traceability and you’ll notice that the FOB price is respectable, particularly given the economy in Uganda. We liked them so much, we purchased from them twice in order to showcase the same lot of coffee processed two different ways. The washed coffee got $3.60 FOB and the honey coffee got $4.10 FOB. While there were too many farms that were too small to produce an exportable lot involved to hope for a meaningful farmgate price, this is a partner we really trust and hope to work with again. For what it’s worth, these coffees were USDA Certified Organic.
Peru, COOPBAM
$6.71 /lb green
While we did not get transparency information with this coffee, we felt confident that the members of COOPBAM were receiving a fair price for their coffee. This was a Fair Trade certified coffee and Peru is one of the few countries that has had luck with Fair Trade coffees the certification was originally workshopped there. Money tends to go back to collectives to improve their infrastructure and tools as it was intended. Also, the prices paid for Peruvian Fair Trade tend to be well above the Fair Trade minimum. That alone isn’t a great justification but, we also know that COOPBAM has been the recipient of significant international money for agronomic education and to help with marketing, as their co-op is part of an exciting effort to protect the Alto Mayo rainforest. Their partnerships and customers within the coffee community are numerous and they could have their pick of buyers. We purchased this coffee because it was delicious, and we love that the purchase helps protect the rainforest. Ideally though, we hope to replace purchases like this with more transparent options. Growing our business will help us give us more options in situations like this where a coffee felt like a perfect match but the method we used to get it meant giving up some data.
Rwanda, Gitwe
$3.45/lb FOB
In Rwanda, there’s a regulatory approach to what one pays for coffee, which could certainly be the topic of a more in-depth discussion. For this report, we are content to say that given this system in place, this coffee was as equitable and fair as it’s possible to be.
Ethiopia, Mesfin Dabessa
$3.50/lb FOB
This was our anniversary coffee, and it was incredibly delicious. The price we paid for this was on par with higher end Ethiopian coffees and most coffees from Ethiopia aren’t traceable to a farm level, so we were happy to be able to buy from Mesfin. This coffee was USDA Certified Organic.
Vietnam, Dalat
$6.24/lb green
Without a doubt, this was our least transparent coffee of the year. There’s no other way to say it, we wish we could have done better. However, part of our mission is to bring you coffee from different countries throughout the world and several of you have been asking for coffee from Vietnam for a while. After a tasting countless coffees over the past couple of years, we finally encountered this one from the Dalat region, that sparked genuine excitement. It had that unique and memorable quality, reminiscent of the bold brews we’d savored on Vietnamese streets.
Scale also eliminated several options that might have allowed us to make more transparent purchases. Despite Vietnam’s position as the world’s second-largest coffee exporter, most of their coffee is commodity grade—scoring below 80 on the SCA scale (see our vocab above)—and primarily supplied to large corporations. Many of the specialty grade lots coming out of Vietnam are very small, which leads to logistical challenges. We will continue to keep an eye on this country as time goes forward, but we will not purchase a mixed community lot with this little traceability again as it doesn’t mesh with the values we’ve been establishing. Reflecting on this experience has only strengthened that commitment.
Guatemala, Javier Cabrera
$6/lb FarmGate
We followed up Vietnam with our most transparent purchase. This was a direct trade purchase that came from a relationship we established with Javier in 2020. One of the challenges that we have as a company that constantly wants to share new origins is being able to purchase coffee from people that we like multiple times. We started the Season Select program alongside Javier’s coffee. It gives us the opportunity to showcase and market coffees in a new way, which opens up the door for us to be able to buy coffee from farms we love more than once, and it gives our customers the chance to enjoy coffees that stick around a little longer.
We’re also quite proud to support a farmer like Javier who has been so giving to his community and cares so diligently for the land he works with. During our visit with Javier, we met other farmers that he’s been sharing skills with, saw him composting his coffee fruit to make fertilizer, and admired the lush ecosystem he’s cultivated on his farm, a stark contrast to the monoculture farming that plagues commodity coffee.
Malawi, Sable Farms
$4.15/lb FOB
Sable Farms is providing jobs, healthcare, and education to individuals in a country where those things are hard to come by. While the FOB is low comparatively, there are two factors at play here. One is the economic differences between Malawi and the rest of the world. The other is that Sable Farms is the farmer and exporter of the coffee, so this is FOB price is pretty close to a Farmgate price.
Nicaragua, Cooperativa Multifunctional Heroes y Martires de Cantagallo RL
$2.54/lb FOB
This is from one of Nicaragua’s oldest co-ops, and they are Fair Trade certified. This is pretty consistent with other specialty prices that we’ve seen in Nicaragua.
India, Ashok Patre, Ratnagiri Estate
$6.59/lb FOB
While we did not receive FOB pricing for this coffee, Ashok has a thriving business with multiple farms. He’s a rising star in the coffee world and buying this coffee for the holidays was an honor. This was another situation where we’d been trying coffee from India for a while. His coffee knocked our socks off! We paid a premium for the green and are fairly confident a farmer of this caliber would not have sold without making an amount he was happy with.
Conclusion
We’re proud of the work that we’ve done to make ethical and sustainable purchases, but compiling the data in one place like this certainly holds us to a higher level of accountability. When you decide to make exceptions once, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. But, while we’re proud that 75% of our coffees were transparent, that means that still leaves room to improve in the coming year. Transparency doesn’t solve every problem — particularly when it comes to FOB pricing, but it’s a start. We’re committed to continuing to share our process and our purchasing decision with you all, warts and all, and we will strive to do better with each passing year.