Our Mission
Change the conversation and relationship between the consumption and production sides of the economy. With the coffee industry as a foundation, empower consumers to personally apply torque to the coffee supply chain to affect positive change. Make Proportional Pricing a force with enough torque to change the way coffees are recognized and rewarded.
Build a resilient, collaborative community of coffee supply chain members that can harass their collective superpower to bring coffee into equilibrium.
We Aim To Change The Equation
Unbroken Supply Chain
The coffee supply chain is long, complex and unbroken. It is also exploitative, unbalanced and supply driven. Our mission is to break the coffee supply chain. To break it and remake it in equilibrium. Instead of fixing the supply chain, we aim to fix the ends. Link them together to make them stronger and close the loop with a Triangle Chain.
All of us in Specialty Coffee agree that coffee producers are valuable, but we haven’t agreed on how to assign that value, who assigns it, or how to convey it through the supply chain. Because we haven’t decided how to tie the value to the consumer to the value to the producer, the determination of coffee value is made by the manipulatable commodities market.
We believe that the way forward is to reverse engineer the coffee value equation & go from value received to price paid. Proportional Pricing means simply that the value of a coffee is relative to the value it generates for the roaster. Based on that premise, we apply a Proportional Pricing equation in which the producers receive a pre-determined fixed percent of the retail value of every bag of roasted coffee.
We call it Proportional Pricing© because it automatically adjusts to the price the bag of coffee is sold at. Proportional Pricing changes the value equation of the coffee supply chain. Instead of the commodity market deciding what a coffee farmer’s coffee is worth, you the customer decide its value. Proportional Pricing means that a preset percentage of that value is due the coffee producer. You know the exact impact your purchase has on the coffee producer. No complex math, no 50 page reports, no long explanations, sob stories or strings attached. It’s just the Producer’s Portion.
We are not trying to imply that this model will automatically pay more than anyone else, or that other coffee companies pay too little. It’s our belief that reversing the value determination to begin at the retail price and applying a preset percentage is the cleanest, simplest, least imperialistic way to bring equilibrium to coffee.
We believe that all contributors are due their portion of value. By reverse engineering the coffee supply chain and tying the producer’s value directly to the full value of the coffee, together we can change the equation. The exact percentage can vary, it is the direct action of valuing a producer’s coffee based on a preset value equation that brings the coffee supply chain a little closer to equilibrium.
Proportional Pricing
Our Proportional Pricing formula is ridiculously simple. Proportional Pricing simply pays producers based on the value of the coffee, not the vagaries of the market. It’s a straight value equation: Pay Coffee producers based on the value of the roasted coffee.
Proportional Pricing formula is: (Retail Price x XX%) = Producer Price Paid.
Proportional pricing directly drives value to producers. The higher the value to you, the higher the price paid to the producer. This direct value linking equation delivers pricing equilibrium. Everyone knows the exact impact a coffee purchase has on the coffee producer. Just hard data and positive proof of impact.
We call it Proportional Pricing© because it automatically adjusts to the price the bag of coffee is sold at. Proportional Pricing changes the value equation of the coffee supply chain. Instead of the commodity market deciding what a coffee farmer’s coffee is worth, you the customer decide its value. Proportional Pricing means that a preset percentage of that value is due the coffee producer. You know the exact impact your purchase has on the coffee producer. No complex math, no 50 page reports, no long explanations, sob stories or strings attached. It’s just the Producer’s Portion.
A Rising Tide
Our vision is that all craft coffee roasters will embrace Proportional Pricing© so that we can harness our collective super power to bring coffee into equilibrium. Whether it’s 20%, 18%, 10% or any other number, the impact is the clarity & transparency it delivers. The exact percentage is not crucial, it is the direct action of valuing a producer’s coffee based on a preset value equation that brings the coffee supply chain a little closer to equilibrium.
So ask other roasters you know what percent of their own retail coffee prices they pay their coffee producers. We would love to talk with them and share how we make it work and how it changed our entire approach to coffee buying. This kind of radical approach is not for everyone, but it works for us and it works for the coffee producers. We think it can work for others as well.
They can contact us here: