This Side Up 1.0: direct trade done differently.

This Side Up was founded in 2013 on the principles of direct trade between roasters and growers. In Lennart's experience on coffee estates and farms, he witnessed the potential of direct trade: open dialogue between the two most important creators of coffee quality - growers and roasters - could lead to better quality, equal treatment and through increased awareness of each others' worlds, more creative and competitive products. He had seen direct trade relationships blossom in Tanzania, the Dominican Republic and Rwanda, but also identified its most pressing issues: expensive, unscaled transport and lack of knowledge of which farms to trade with. We also made this video that explains our model beautifully (thanks Bas Goossens). 

Later, This Side Up started taking the risk of buying the coffee itself to help roasters finance the coffee, and so in effect became an importing company. Because micro-roasters in Europe and beyond understood that coffee quality and human development go hand in hand, the company's vision caught on and This Side Up expanded to new origins and markets.

2017-2018: Stronger vision, Wider reach.

For four years, This Side Up had expanded as a lone bull, trying to redefine coffee trade as Lennart alone - slowly reaching the limits of what one person can achieve. Partnerships had been proposed left and right, but it wasn't until Sara Morrocchi came along that expanding This Side Up's core team with a quality and development expert seemed in order. Sara's vision and that of Lennart’s are 100% aligned and she's visited more origins and tasted more coffees than most people on this planet.

Sara also introduced Lennart to Franco Tesoro Tess of Aziende Riunite Caffè - perhaps an unlikely partner at first glance, a coffee trading company established in 1856, family owned, Italian. However, like us they too had been looking for a way to answer to the need for change in the coffee industry and were thrilled to hear about our radically different trade model. 

Very soon after we started talking, it became clear that we had a lot to learn from each other. Franco showed us how inefficiently we had been moving coffee up to now, while Lennart and Sara showed ARC how rewarding it is to engage roasters as developmental partners. Moreover, despite our different backgrounds, our values turned out to be very similar. Amidst increasing market consolidation and price pressure on exporting countries, they never sold out to mega-corporations, remained true to their ethical standards and always understood the need to stay dynamic and innovative like a startup. 

2019: From importer to WORLDWIDE coffee community.

After an alliance of 18 months, ARC and This Side Up decided to part ways - not because the cooperation was bad, simply because the synergies between our companies were less beneficial than we hoped. In the meantime, however, two very diverse talents had become closely intertwined with our mission: Maarten (circularity expert) and Jeroen (media expert). Now, with a team of five, and after a hugely successful Producer Crossover where all our growers met each other and an ever expanding network of roasting partners, we see our role as the builder of a true community with common values becoming a reality. It seems our dream of a coffee world based on open exchange and humanity over financial gains wasn’t as far-fetched as we once thought…

2020: Corona as proof of concept.

With the onset of the corona phenomenon in February of 2020, a strange twist of reality happened. For the first time, it wasn’t the farmers but the roasters and cafés who were the weakest links in the chain, as many of our customers’ business was reduced to 5 to 20 percent of pre-corona volumes. By involving the whole chain in finding solutions for this problem, corona allowed us to truly prove the meaning of human-centred value chains. Roasters understood the need to keep continuity from their preferred grower partners, but couldn’t afford to make monetary commitments. By signing direct trade and origin relationship contracts, the farmers were assured that roasters they know would eventually buy their coffee, and agreed to send us their coffees on consignment and share the risk with us. Now, while many importers and exporters seem to be struggling, we see that this solidarity has led to an overall increase of volume from 12 of the origins we work in (all except Nicaragua and Ethiopia). Value chain communities who care about each others’ wellbeing have therefore even proven to be resilient in the face of global crisis.

All the while, the core team (Lennart, Maarten and Mathieu) bonded into a stable triad and welcomed Damian as builder of our customer portal. Our home office turned out to be perfect in times of lockdown and developed into a professional sampling / cupping station. With more stable financing to top it off, we couldn’t be more prepared for the future.

2021-2022: Scaling up and Greening Up.

Every year we fail to predict just how much we’re growing, every year we could not imagine we could grow with a similar factor - that percentage has not been under 60% since 2018. It became time to own this growth and understand that the simplicity and integer nature of our message is its power. In these years we became known outside of specialty coffee and a message of transparency is now growing in the corporate sector, among office workers willing to take a stand against fake greenwashing claims and among larger institutions who cannot find coffee companies willing to simply show everything they do. Perhaps most importantly, through interviews, events and even television features, This Side Up is becoming known among final consumers and some are even starting to ask for coffee sourced by us. This is opening up a world of possibilities…

At the same time, our producer network is evolving rapidly. With stable income, more openness to new ideas and own research is leading many to the concept of regenerative agriculture. We too are avidly and pragmatically becoming knowledgeable about the subject and slowly becoming a hub for sharing, funding and research on more sustainable (should we say “thrivable”) forms of agriculture. Excitingly, our rising authority in this field, partly due to the Producer Crossover Milan - The Regenerative Edition, is opening doors towards how to bring awareness about this topic across to consumers.