A safe, sustainable new school powered by coffee.

In the past two years, Eleva Coffee has grown from a simple subscription service to two full-service coffee shops, and a wholesale presence that has Eleva being served in restaurants and co-working spaces across the country. But our most satisfying accomplishment has been working with our small farming communities. Here’s what we’ve been up to—and what you’ve helped create in Peñas Blancas, Nicaragua, where our Nicaraguan beans are grown.

In 2017, Emilio Baltodano, Eleva’s founder, visited Peñas Blancas, and identified two pressing problems in the local school, which serves 300 students: (1) The bathrooms were dilapidated outhouses, and (2) The pre-school was a wooden shack with dirt floors. Eleva committed to tackling both of them.

First, in 2018, we built new, sanitary bathrooms, complete with a unique ecological bio-degassing system that converts waste into gas to power a new school kitchen. Today, not only do the students and teachers have access to cleaner, more hygienic bathrooms, but the gas line to the kitchen also enables students to participate in a free school lunch program for the first time.

Next, in 2019, Eleva partnered with Seeds for Progress, Mercon Coffee and Project Alianza to build a much safer, more modern building to house the pre-school, so that Peñas Blancas’s youngest students can start their education off comfortably and safely.

A GAME-CHANGING CURRICULUM

Construction on the Peñas Blancas preschool finished in January 2020. Now, having upgraded the physical structure of the school, Eleva is currently focused on improving the educational curriculum taking place within it. We’re partnering with Project Alianza, an educational NGO, to implement a tested curriculum that will ensure all 300 children receive a challenging, and comprehensive education, bridging the education gap which currently exists between small rural schools and larger, urban ones. 

With a focus on literacy, sustainability and environmental awareness, health and hygiene, and gender equality, it’s a curriculum that is offering Peñas Blancas students a whole new outlook. The project will be entirely funded by Eleva subscribers and customers who subscribe to our Care Package program. Ten percent of each subscription goes to fund the educational initiative; a single six-month subscription will support one student’s participation in the program for an entire year. 

On behalf of the students of Peñas Blancas and all of us at Eleva, thank you for making the future brighter for 300 children already, and for continuing to support the community. There’s never been a better time to show you care.

“Freshwashing” and Other Stories People Tell to Sell Coffee

No doubt about it, freshness is one of the most important factors that affects the quality of your coffee. Coffee will loose freshness with time, for sure, making it taste stale and flat. That being said, if coffee (green or roasted) is packed, and stored properly, it can take months before even the most refined palates can detect a difference. 
 
But that’s the science of coffee. Then there’s the marketing. Some publicity-savvy brands have turned coffee freshness into the beverage equivalent of an 8-Minute-Ab routine, where the next big idea is: 7-Minutes Abs.
 
I hate to ruin a good story, but to me that’s more hype than honesty. Here is what I think you need to know about coffee freshness. 
 
Before coffee is roasted it is called “green coffee.” This is basically the dried and cleaned coffee seed. There are brands that tout the fact that they airfreight green coffee from the producing country, so as to avoid the customary 20 to 30-day voyage it takes to ship by sea. This way, they say, they ensure you get the freshest possible coffee.
 
That’s a nice idea, but totally unnecessary. If packed correctly, and stored in the proper conditions, green coffee stays fresh for months. In fact, some would argue it’s a good thing to let green coffee age for a few months in order to get a mellower flavor. IMHO, all that fancy flight is doing is increasing the company’s carbon footprint by consuming tons of jet fuel—and also upping the cost to consumer.
 
The truth is, the clock really starts ticking on freshness the moment you roast coffee. Unlike green coffee, roasted coffee starts loosing freshness rather quickly, especially when it comes into contact with oxygen. 
 
So, rule number one is: Once coffee has been roasted, it should either be consumed or packed in a sealed bag, ideally within a day or two of roasting. 
 
Which leads to my second pet peeve; many coffee concepts, particularly subscriptions, tell you that your coffee will ship hours after roasting. Again, this is nice, but is it necessary? What matters more is whether or not the coffee was properly bagged after roasting. If it was, that coffee can ship weeks or even months after roasting and taste 99% as good as if you’d sipped the fresh-roasted coffee on the spot at the roaster. In other words, whether you open that bag the next day or in 2 months, you’ll be hard pressed to tell the difference in taste.
 
Which brings me to rule number two: As soon as you open a sealed bag of coffee, do yourself a favor, and store the unused portion in an airtight container. Even the best coffees will begin to loose their brightness in just one night if don’t store them properly—no matter how quickly the coffee got from the roaster to your house.
 
Finally, my own personal rule number three: If you want the freshest possible taste, buy whole beans, and grind them immediately before brewing. It’s a simple fact that ground coffee will get stale faster than whole bean, whether it’s in a sealed bag, open bag, airtight container, or even on that fancy jet. 
 
I’m all about reducing our carbon footprints. But personally, the main issue I have with these unnecessary “hyperfresh” marketing ploys is that they often bring a higher price tag. In certain cases, I’ve seen 30 to 50% mark-ups. For some people, this can be worth it. Personally, I’d rather save consumers money, and get them the same delicious coffee, while still doing what matters most—helping the small farming communities. In other words, support coffee growers, not coffee gimmicks.

Making Friends & Making An Impact

When you read the news as you drink your morning coffee, it can seem like there’s so much wrong with the world that it’s impossible to help or effect positive change.

My way of fighting that powerless feeling is to focus on Eleva’s goal of doing a lot of good in a few specific places—namely, the three small farming communities that grow our coffee in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Ethiopia. Eleva’s mission is to connect the people who grow the coffee with the people who drink it, so we can learn from each other and improve each others’ lives.

I got to see the interaction first hand last month when 12 students from McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas in Austin came to Santa Palencia to spend a week refurbishing the schools that the community’s children attend, a trip organized by Eleva, McCombs, Building Bridges Worldwide, and Mercon Coffee, and funded through the efforts of the students.

The schools are much improved—walls were painted, the roof repaired, and the foundation strengthened. But what impressed me most was seeing the people of Santa Palencia and the McCombs students grow to know each other as they shared meals, worked together, and played soccer at night.  Every day, the volunteers, farmers, and people from the community ate delicious meals prepared by Doña Lucia, who also happens to be the town representative. The students slept in the local coffee mill of Don Gregorio, as did his son, who acted as their guide. Before the students arrived, Don Gregorio insisted on building a wall so that women could sleep on one side, men on the other, in privacy, and installed an outdoor shower where everyone could rinse off before hitting the air mattresses on the floor.

It was the first time the people of Santa Palencia had a group of foreigners living with them and sharing their day-to-day activities. For the coffee farmers, it was also the first time they met someone who had drank their product. This was a major source of pride for them. And for me.

The MBA students loved seeing the results of their work, eating lots of rice and beans, and playing baseball with the kids, but they told me their favorite part of the week was the Q and A session with the coffee farmers, where they were able to learn what it takes to produce coffee, and what it’s like to live in rural Guatemala, where high school isn’t an option for most children, as local public schools end at 8th grade, and the most affordable private schools start at $30 a month—too much to spare for the family of a coffee farmer earning $100 a month. The MBA students learned about the difficulties the farmers face, but also their joy and pride in their work and their community, and their hopes for future generations.

My hope for the future is that Eleva will continue to drive these interactions between coffee farmers and coffee drinkers, whether that’s through social action trips with university students or other volunteers, or just by inspiring coffee lovers to take a trip to visit the people who start their mornings off right, making the wide world feel a little smaller.

I’m confident that neither the children of Santa Palencia nor the students of UT Austin will ever forget this week. And that makes me feel that if anything has the ability to change our world, it’s the power of connecting with each other.