In the world of specialty coffee, the term direct trade is often mentioned as the absolute ideal. Although direct contact with growers is key, the reality of global trade is more complex. For many small farmers who grow the most interesting microlots, working with a quality distributor is the path to survival and growth.
Here are a few reasons why this model is actually more beneficial for farmers.
Most truly small farmers are primarily agricultural experts. They devote all their time to caring for coffee plants, harvesting, and processing cherries. They often lack the personnel or technical capacity for:
In this relationship, the distributor takes on the role of the administrative and sales department, freeing the farmer's hands to do what they do best – growing exceptional coffee.
Logistics is one of the biggest nightmares of small-scale production. If a farmer grows a few bags of top-quality coffee, they cannot fill an entire shipping container with them. Sending a few bags separately across the ocean is uneconomical and extremely expensive, which would ultimately disproportionately increase the price of coffee for the end customer or reduce the farmer's profit.
Distributors act as consolidators. They gather coffee from multiple smallholders in a single area, fill a container, and ensure safe transit. This allows even the tiniest farms to reach the global market at competitive prices.
Quality distributors are not just "box movers". In many growing areas, they have their own stations and operations where they literally live with the farmers. Their contribution is invaluable:
A personal perspective of a farmer right from the field is brought by Marián Takáč, who runs the Zanya coffee station in Vietnam. Marián has experience with both approaches and emphasizes that direct trade carries a huge bureaucratic burden – for the farmer, the administration associated with export is the same whether they send five bags or a full container. In addition, he points out the financial demands, where in direct trade a farmer can wait for payment up to nine months from the start of the harvest. Cooperation with a quality importer thus represents important financial security and a logistical background for a small producer, allowing them to focus on what is essential – the quality of the grown coffee.
Working with a distributor doesn't mean we just sit at the roastery clicking through green coffee webshops. We believe in a hybrid model. Once a year, we aim to visit coffee farms around the world – whether that means trips to Kenya, Sumatra, Vietnam, or Colombia.
We build personal relationships, get to know the farmers and their families, and see with our own eyes the conditions in which the coffee grows. The distributor is then a strategic partner for us, who ensures that this specific bean from a person we know gets safely and legally all the way to our roasting machine.
The foundation of Goriffee is a personal partnership with farmers. We travel directly to the places of origin, know the people who grow our coffees, and cooperate with them long-term. Thanks to this, their unique microlots return to our offer every year. We care about fairness, transparency, and reward for quality work – exactly as it should look in the modern coffee world.
Erik from Goriffee
Is direct trade always better than buying through a distributor? Not necessarily. Direct trade sounds romantic, but for a small farmer it can represent an enormous risk if a roastery cancels an order mid-season. A distributor provides stability and infrastructure that an individual often cannot manage alone.
Doesn't a distributor unnecessarily drive up the coffee's price? A distributor takes a margin for services that either the farmer or the roaster would have to pay for anyway – shipping, warehousing, insurance, and quality control. Thanks to shared logistics, purchasing via a distributor is often more cost-effective than individual importing.
How do you know the farmer got a fair price if there's a middleman? Transparency is the cornerstone of the specialty coffee market. Modern distributors publish farm gate prices that clearly show how much money ended up directly in the grower's hands.
Why do you travel to farms despite working with distributors? Quality control and building trust cannot be done solely via email. In-person visits allow us to understand the unique terroir and select the finest lots for our roastery, which the distributor then handles logistically.
