Coffee has been in Bolivia for hundreds of years, but now a new generation of coffee farmers dedicated to producing high-quality coffee is taking the stage in Bolivia. For the first time in the country’s history, green coffee production has funding and support from the federal government, fueling the search for knowledge among dedicated young coffee professionals. The epicenter in the rise of Bolivian specialty coffee is in the Los Yungas region. Most farms came after a wave of migration to the area caused by Bolivia’s Agrarian Revolution in the 1950s.

And nearly a century later, this lot emerged from a single small farm belonging to Fausto Machaca and his family, a 4-acre farm near Caranaví in the Irupana municipality. Fausto and his family have been growing coffee in the Yungas region of Bolivia for over 50 years. Fausto carefully harvests the cherry, de-pulps, ferments, washes, and dries the coffee on patios and raised beds.

Since Bolivia is a landlocked coffee-producing country, farmers need help getting their coffee to the international market. Felix Chambi Garcia, through his leadership role at the San Juan cooperative, has become an important figure, helping producers with the logistics of moving coffee to the dry mill, where quality and traceability inspection during the preparation for export.

GLife is one of the newest GCash services. It is a feature that puts Everyday Coffee Roasters within the GCash dashboard, shopping from different single-origin coffees, seasonal blends, brewing equipment, and freshly-baked croissants, all within the GCash app.

How to Order Coffee and Shop Everyday Coffee Roasters with GLife

1. Select GLife from our GCash dashboard

Open GCash and tap the GLife icon. If you can’t find it, tap the “Show More” option to see all the GCash features. Make sure that you have the latest app version.

2. Search Everyday Coffee Roasters from the list of trusted merchants

Now that you’ve accessed GLife, type “Everyday Coffee” and start shopping for our latest offerings of single-origins, blends, AeroPress, and more…

3. Pay using GCash conveniently

Upon checkout, Select GCash as your payment option, Enter your GCash mobile number, and Input the OTP and MPIN to complete your payment.

And you’re done! You will receive an SMS message confirming your order. It’s time to visit our store for pick-up!

Mount Apo, also known locally as Apo Sandawa, is a large solfataric, dormant stratovolcano with three peaks on top of its flat summit plateau Main Peak, Kapatagan, and Kidapawan. This coffee comes from Kapatagan, with an elevation of 1,200 meters above sea level. Its coffee cherries were naturally sundried without the intervention of water or machines to remove any of the fruit.

The Oromia Regional State is Ethiopia’s most significant, including over 110,000 square miles and 35 million people. It touches the borders of both Kenya to the south and South Sudan to the west. It has Ethiopia’s massive capital city, Addis Ababa, along with 65% of Ethiopia coffee growing territory as of 2014. Several famous coffee regions are included in whole or in part in Oromia: Jimma and Illubabor in the west; Harar to the northeast; Arsi, bordering Sidama in the mid-south, which produces many similar terroirs; and the Guji Zone.

The Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (OCFCU) is an umbrella organization established in 1999 by 34 individual cooperatives interested in centralizing resources and gaining leverage in the export market. As of 2020, OCFCU supports more than 400 individual cooperatives–more than 400,000 households, by far the country’s most significant unionization of farmers. Premiums from coffee exports are returned directly to farmers, and the union also funds organic farming programs, mill equipment purchases, and food security programs. OCFCU has established a central cupping lab to support quality control. It is a founding shareholder in its members’ bank, the Cooperative Bank of Oromia. It provides pre-harvest financing and crop insurance, both historically unavailable to rural farmers in Ethiopia. OCFCU has been Fairtrade and Organic certified since 2002 and has been one of the world’s largest suppliers of Fairtrade coffee.

The Nyamasheke district in Rwanda is gifted in terroir. The cool, humid climates of both Lake Kivu and the Nyungwe Forest National Park keep groundwater abundant throughout the uniquely hilly region. Kivu is part of the East African Rift, whose consistent drift creates volcanic seepage from the lake’s bottom and enriches the surrounding soils. Coffees from this region are often jammier and heavier than the rest of the country.

Ngoma Coffee Washing Station is located in the southern part of Nyamasheke district, in a fantastic location right on the shore of Lake Kivu. The station is owned and operated by Baho Coffee Company, a small community-focused processing and exporting group that currently operates six washing stations in 6 different districts in Rwanda and is presently constructing two more. In addition to thoroughly washed lots like this one, Baho produces excellent quality naturals and experiments annually with honey processing and anaerobic fermentation styles. Participating farmers delivering cherry to Baho’s washing stations can count on annual payment premiums and farm-level support, including yearly coffee seedlings, health insurance, fertilizer, and harvest loans.

Despite its diminutive size compared to other East Africa coffee producing countries, Rwanda’s coffee has a significant history and terroir unique to the rest of the continent. The Belgians initially forced coffee into remote communities as a colony-funding cash crop. The Belgians distributed varieties cultivated by the French on Ile de Bourbon (now Reunion Island, near Madagascar) but had so little invested in coffee’s success that they immediately allowed production to decline through a lack of investment in national infrastructure, as well as the farmers who grew it. As a result, the sector suffered near total obscurity in the coffee world from Rwanda’s independence in 1962 until rebuilding following the country’s devastating civil war and astonishingly tragic genocide in 1994.

Rwanda’s former cash crop, however, roared to international buyer attention in the late 2000s thanks to one of East Africa’s most successful coffee interventions, the Partnership for Enhancing Agriculture in Rwanda Through Linkages (PEARL). PEARL was a sweeping infrastructure and education investment targeting large regions of Rwanda whose coffee was mainly processed poorly at home and exported with little traceability. The program, designed and led by the University of Michigan, Texas A&M, and a host of Rwandan organizations, vastly increased processing hygiene by building washing stations. It also organized remote and under-resourced smallholders into cooperative businesses capable of specialty partnerships. Perhaps most significantly for the long term, it took the legacy bourbon genetics buried in abandonment and polished them anew to the amazement of coffee drinkers everywhere. The snappy acidity, stone fruit flavors, and fragrant herbaceousness found in Rwanda’s coffee are still unique to bourbon produced anywhere else in the world. Producer groups like Baho cherish their farmers’ potential and are learning to maximize the quality and variety available from Rwanda’s most promising terroirs.