Coffee has a difficult tellurian trail from plantation to cup. Oakland’s Red Bay Coffee aims to denounce that trail and make coffee a car for connection, amicable justice, and economic empowerment.
With a credentials as an artist and activist, Bay Area internal Keba Konte co-founded Guerilla Café in North Berkeley in 2005, sourcing coffee from Blue Bottle and furnish from internal farms, while building a immature and different workforce. In 2012, he stretched that judgment to San Francisco, starting Chasing Lions Café on a CCSF campus.
Next, Keba motionless to request his knowledge as a barista, maker, and businessman to building a roastery in Oakland, with a concentration on amicable probity and formulating good jobs for Oakland residents. He took classes, watched YouTube videos, and built a coffee lab in his garage, where he honed his skills roasting tiny batches of beans to perfection. With a assistance of a crowdfunding campaign, he launched Red Bay Coffee in 2014. The association is now 17 employees strong, with a roastery-warehouse in Fruitvale, a shipping enclosure café in Uptown Oakland, and flourishing sell distribution.
Most recently, Red Bay combined Jack London Square Farmers Market to their register of locations. We talked with Keba about Red Bay’s prophesy for creation expertly roasted coffee equitable, sustainable, and tasty for all.
What led we to found Red Bay Coffee?
I launched Red Bay with a goal to move pleasing coffee to a people. What we meant by that is that we unequivocally wanted to open adult a specialty coffee attention to folks who have barriers to entry. we wanted to move some-more farrago and inclusion to a attention like we did with Guerilla Café and Chasing Lions. Red Bay Coffee is a perfection of that work. Even as an artist, we was a village organizer and activist, so amicable probity has always been something that was critical to me and to my family. we also wanted to make coffee a lot some-more permitted to a open and emanate welcoming spaces for people who don’t know anything about specialty coffee.
People don’t always consider about where coffee comes from, and how it gets from a plantation to a cup. In terms of amicable justice, how are we meditative about that tellurian distribution chain?
Coffee is a tellurian commodity, and there are a lot of people involved. A singular crater of coffee has left by so many hands and processes, so when we get a decent cup, it’s a phenomenon—so many things unequivocally had to go right. we would also contend that coffee is an attention that has been scandalous for exploitation. A lot of people have been exploited around a universe for line such as coffee and sugarine for centuries—slavery, utterly frankly. Now that coffee has reached this epicurean turn of fetish, and people are profitable a unequivocally high cost for it, we consider about a people who are unequivocally violation their backs flourishing their coffee. That’s something we unequivocally care about.
The specialty coffee attention has grown some innovative practices to move some-more value or equity to a farmers. For example, we use direct trade at Red Bay, that puts some-more income in a farmers’ pockets. But when we demeanour during where coffee is grown, in Africa, Central America, South America, and Southeast Asia, a people who are flourishing coffee and a descendants of those farmers are feeble represented in a rest of a specialty coffee industry. After it leaves a plantation from trade to import to grocers to coffee shops to a apparatus makers to vendors, it’s a outrageous multibillion-dollar industry. The transformation to emanate some-more inclusion and farrago bridges the gap.
How does inclusion fit into Red Bay’s business indication and employee practices?
The doubt we had to ask myself is, “What are we doing as an attention to move some-more equity to a baristas and other workers on this side of a industry, no matter what tone they are?” For example, by companywide profit-sharing incentives, a employees share 10% of a increase we make, that is about equity here in a Bay Area, where gentrification is unequivocally rampant. As an entrepreneur, one purpose we can play is assisting people stay, and a approach we can do it is by perplexing to yield bearable wage jobs.
Also, there are folks who have been sealed out of a lot of industries and are honourable of a second chance. We’ve intentionally hired many before jailed employees, who have served as baristas and coffee roasters, from government turn to prolongation workers. We also work with encourage girl and aged-out encourage youth, who are now partial of a Red Bay family.
Specialty coffee can be intimidating. How does your work during Red Bay assistance to make it some-more receptive and inclusive?
We are unequivocally conscious in training a frontline staff to keep it light and fun, and not take ourselves too seriously. We also do giveaway open cuppings and tours during a warehouse. We have a lot people who are first-time coffee drinkers. We’ve converted people who were not meddlesome in coffee since of a enlightenment around it. And even people who splash unchanging coffee, who don’t know that there is a disproportion between coffees, they start tasting a single-origin Sumatra as against to a blend, perplexing them side by side and seeing how thespian a flavors and profiles can be.
What are your go-to Red Bay coffees that we suggest to people?
Ethiopia is a hearth of coffee. It has a many accumulation of coffee than any other start on a planet. We have a medium-roast Ethiopian coffee we call King’s Prize that competence be my go-to. Also, East Fourteenth, that is a darker roast. Those are a integrate winners that will always make people happy.
Can we tell us about a artwork compared with each coffee?
The design is travel art from a countries where a coffee is from, such as Rwanda, Colombia, Tanzania. That’s a lot of fun to see. It broadens people’s perspectives about that start nation and provides context. we consider it’s critical to take people off a plantation and into the communities.
What’s subsequent for Red Bay?
We’re opening a café inside of a domicile in Fruitvale this summer. We’re also building a pleasing aquaponic garden opposite a street, where people can take their drinks and lay subsequent to a sight tracks. we have an aquaponic garden in my yard, and we unequivocally suffer introducing it to people. When they see it for a initial time and they get a concept, it’s such a mind blow. In this time of H2O scarcity, it’s an critical doctrine in a cyclical inlet of the universe.
People speak about a stream specialty coffee transformation as a “third wave.” What’s your prophesy for a fourth wave?
I consider that a fourth call of coffee is not only about what we do, though it’s about how we do it, who we do it with, and a impact on a village and a environment. What’s function during a roastery and café turn is kind of tapped out in terms of innovation. I’d contend a subsequent transformation in coffee on a technical turn is going to occur on a farm, where there are some unequivocally engaging things function that are going to have a biggest impact on a crater of coffee. But in a altogether industry, we consider fourth call is about us entrance together and regulating this multibillion-dollar height to lift a communities adult and share more.
EVENT: DARK ROAST – May 13, 12pm-4pm
Celebrate Community with a coffee-rubbed Whole Lamb BBQ Day Party with Oakland’s Red Bay Coffee, People’s Kitchen Collective, Reem’s California Proof, Oakland’s Bottle Shop. Red Bay Coffee HQ, 3098 E. 10th Street, Oakland. FREE ADMISSION
Find Red Bay Coffee offered creatively brewed cups and coffee beans during Jack London Square Farmers Market on Sundays.