FAQs
Roaster Directory
How do you come up with the Sustainability, Innovation, and Equity letter grades?
We review a variety of publicly available data points across a roaster’s mission, roasting, and packaging. We also look at their coffees to assess their traceability, sustainability, uniqueness, and economic equity (mainly via sourcing practices and trade models).
As examples of criteria that impact our grades:
- Certified B-Corp or Public Benefit Corp
- 1% for the Planet membership
- Inclusion of smaller coffee-exporting origins
- Recyclable or biodegradable retail packaging
- Energy efficient roasting equipment
- Highly traceable coffees
- Experimentation with new coffee varieties or processing methods
The Sustainability, Innovation, and Equity grades are derived from data points including the considerations above.
How do you pick roasters to include in the directory?
In order to qualify for our directory, a roaster must 1) roast their own coffee in-house and 2) be able to ship nation-wide.
If these two conditions are met, a roaster will generally qualify. However, we reserve the right to exclude any roaster for any reason.
Single Origin Report
Where do you get the data for this report?
Our data source for the Single Origin Report is a proprietary index of 250 small roasters across the US. We use the same 250 roasters for all quarterly releases of the report. Should a roaster cease operations in between report releases, we will replace it with a randomly-selected roaster.