DeRusha Eats: Peace Coffee
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) –It is the accidental coffee company.
Peace Coffee in Minneapolis started as a pilot project of a nonprofit, and has grown into one of the most successful coffee roasters in the upper Midwest.
"We were a little strange when we started," Lee Wallace, CEO and "queen bean" of Peace Coffee, said.
The company formed out of conversations being held by the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. The nonprofit was looking for solutions to help stabilize the income and revenue of farmers, especially in Mexico.
"In 1995 they were talking with coffee farmers from Mexico who said this policy work, this nonprofit work, is nice, but what we really need is markets. And we were born out of that conversation," Wallace said.
Today, Peace Coffee has become the market.
Their mission is providing a fair price for farmers, a mission that started before "fair trade" became a popular marketing concept.
"It's not a ploy," Wallace said.
She pointed out that in 2014 Peace bought more than 682,000 pounds of organic coffee from farmer co-ops around the globe.
"It's about how the coffee is harvested, processed, dried. Then it comes here. We're looking at what we can do to respect all the work that has gone into this product before it comes to us," Wallace said.
While doing good is nice, roasting great coffee is what allows the company to do that good.
"That has been our focus for quite a while," she said. "It is both where the coffee's grown [and] also all the steps the coffee goes through."
Peace has a team of roasters and quality control experts who are constantly trying to keep the quality of their 20+ varieties high.
"They've been playing with that coffee and roast profile, seeking to bring out characteristics. We spent an hour and a half tasting that coffee prepared in different ways," Wallace said.
The Twin Cities Blend is their top selling variety, followed closely by their Birchwood Blend which was originally crafted for Birchwood Café in Minneapolis.
"When I'm looking at these and I'm evaluating a production roast, I'm looking at this in the light of the ideal," Derek De La Paz, Peace's Head Roaster, said.
De La Paz demonstrated the cupping process, where he goes through an intricate tasting routine to check the acidity, the flavor profile and the consistency of the beans.
Some blends, like the Guatemalan Dark, are available every day at retailers around the country. Others are special series, like the new relatively small-batch Alchemy series.
"When the roasters are coming up with really exciting thoughts and ideas to utilize coffee in new exciting ways, we can utilize that," De La Paz said.
When the company first started - they didn't have a delivery van. Even today, half of their beans are delivered to grocery stores and coffee shops by bike.
"It was hard to get that first loan to buy the van. So we adapted to the circumstances and we developed a bike program" Wallace said. "We still deliver by bike 52 weeks a year."
Over the past two years Peace has opened four retail locations, including two coffee shops in downtown Minneapolis. It allows them to get closer to their end users, their customers.
"We love being able to create drinks and talk about what we do to the coffee drinking community," Wallace explained.
In 2015, Peace officially became a "Public Benefit Corporation," a new tax status in Minnesota, which allows a for-profit business to specifically recognize the societal benefit of the company in addition to the goal of returning dividends to shareholders. Public Benefit Corporations don't get a tax benefit, but it allows them to pursue social goals without risking an uprising from shareholders who want to maximize returns.
The relentless focus on doing good and tasting great, makes the future for Peace Coffee look highly caffeinated.
"Ultimately what i want to do is figure out ways to buy more coffee from coffee farmers," said Wallace, which means she has to sell more coffee to consumers.
Peace has two locations in downtown Minneapolis in the Capella Tower, and one on Minnehaha not far from their roasting facility.
