This Side Up is a proven blueprint of how to make it from today’s coffee world to that of tomorrow.
In all four corners of the value chain (farmers, facilitators, roasters and consumers), we provide working examples of how coffee trade can turn from today’s exploitative system to a fully transparent, equal and cooperative endeavour. We are not a trading company. Coffee traders, by definition, exist because they make money from an information imbalance between coffee farmers and coffee buyers. This Side Up was created to dissolve this imbalance and return power to the creators of your coffee. Along the way, we realised that we are building a community of likeminded coffee professionals everywhere along the value chain: people who understand that coffee trade can be an open endeavour, based on sharing instead of competition, based on humanity instead of simply making money.
The influence of This Side Up
Farmers
become independent agro-entrepreneurs, capable of exporting and marketing, co-creating and diversifying their offer in cooperation with their customers.
Roasters
work together to tell the full and verifiable story of their coffees, create the best roast profiles, share roasting space, equipment and experience.
Facilitators
create vertical and horizontal links between roasters and farmers and provide full transparency. The goal is to create a coffee trade system based on trust instead of greed.
ConsumerS
become a conscious community of coffee drinkers who demand ever more transparency and guide the industry forward through better purchases and choices.