Behind the Cup: Looking Beyond the Bean

The Due Diligence Behind Every Coffee We Purchase

Once a coffee passes our initial tasting and evaluation, we take the next step: learning more about it.

At Jim’s Organic Coffee, we believe quality involves more than what happens in the cup. We want to understand where our coffee comes from, how it is grown, and the people involved in producing it. That means doing our due diligence before we make a purchasing decision.

We look beyond the country of origin to understand where a coffee was grown and how it was produced. We consider organic and regenerative farming practices, what crops are grown on the farm, how the soil is cared for, what is used for mulch, what animals are present, and how farmers and farm workers are compensated. We also look at the growing environment, including the shade tree species are that coffee is grown beneath.

These details matter because they give us a better understanding of the coffee we are purchasing and the quality and integrity behind it.

We ask questions about the farm and the people behind the coffee. What resources or benefits are available to farmers and farm workers? How is the land being cared for? What does the growing environment look like? And does the coffee meet the standards and values we expect from anything that carries the Jim’s Organic Coffee name?

Only after a coffee meets our expectations for both quality and sourcing do we move forward with purchasing it.

And that process does not end there.

Coffee is an agricultural product, which means it can change from one crop to the next. A coffee we have evaluated before may come from a new harvest, and that new crop needs to be evaluated on its own merits. We do not assume that because we enjoyed a coffee last year, this year’s crop will perform exactly the same way.

Whenever possible, we seek out fresh crops and obtain fresh samples as part of our purchasing process.

Because every crop is a new agricultural product. And every coffee deserves to be evaluated accordingly.

For us, this is an important part of quality control: understanding what we are buying, where it comes from, and how it was produced before it ever enters our facility.