The Metro-Blog

The Ritho Farmers’ Cooperative Society is situated on a steep hillside overlooking the Thiririku River in the town of Gatundu. This lot is from Handege, one of the society’s two washing stations or ‘coffee factories.’ Ritho has been in operation since 1995 and is run by CEO Lucy Maina along with a board of 9 farmer members, each representing a growing region that delivers to...

Tesfaye Bekele, the head of the Suke Quto Farm in the Guji region of Ethiopia, saw an opportunity to start his own farm after a wildfire nearly destroyed a nearby forest. Bekele distributed shade trees and coffee seedlings to roughly 150 locals so as to replant the forest and begin his dream of owning an environmentally friendly coffee farm and providing sustaining income to...

This coffee comes to us from the rolling hills of the Machakos district about 40 miles southwest of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. The coffee in this lot was produced by many smallholder farmers who all belong to the Kasinga Farmers Cooperative Society. The average smallholder farm has about half an acre of farmland planted in coffee, roughly 250 coffee trees. Farmers handpick...

Santa Isabel is situated on 300 acres of high, fertile land in the cool, rainy area of Cobán. The farm is owned and operated by the Valdés family. Luis is the general manager and his son, Luis Jr. (“Wicho”), whose background is in agronomy, acts as the agricultural manager. When the farm was originally planted with Bourbon, Caturra and Catuai varietals, the Cobán region wasn...

Metropolis has been purchasing coffee from the Gomez family every year since 2016. Finca La Argentina is owned and managed by Isuara Martinez, her four grown children, and their families. Each of the siblings and Isuara tend to a plot, live in their own houses around the property, and manage the farm collectively. At 2000 meters above sea level, the 6-hectares of farmland is...

Coffees from Las Lajas have been a staple in our annual single-origin lineup for almost 7 years. Las Lajas is located outside the town of Sabanilla in central Costa Rica. The owners, Francisca and Oscar Chacón, are third generation coffee producers known for their attention to detail in every step of production, most notably, their processing procedures. The 38 hectares of l...