A Slightly Late Edition
This month’s Unfiltered is running a little behind and, in true behind-the-scenes fashion, here’s why.
As some of you know, our sister business, Omwani Coffee, supplies a good portion of our African coffees. In late June, one of the Omwani team needed to take unplanned leave, and I stepped in to cover their role. That meant the Green Coffee Collective schedule went sideways.
For two weeks, Saskia almost single-handedly ran GCC, keeping everything moving while I was unavailable. She did an incredible job - but the the unfiltered updates slipped down the list. And honestly, that’s the reality I want to share here: Unfiltered is the real version of running this business
Bringing in Commercial Coffees with Sucafina
We’ve recently started listing coffees from Sucafina and while they’re not our usual type of partner, there’s a clear reason for it.
Normally, we work with regionally focused or impact-driven sourcing partners, people with deep connections in a producing region, who’ve built trust over years and are actively working to improve livelihoods there. They share our frustrations about how inaccessible coffee buying can be for small roasters.
Sucafina is different. They’re a large, global trader. Their transparency is closer to traditional trading than the direct, relationship-driven approach we’re used to. That means we can only share the information they can provide, and it’s less in-depth than our usual.
So why are we doing it?
Because Sucafina allows us to offer a category of lower-priced, commercial-grade specialty coffees that our existing partners generally don’t keep in spot volumes. They’re also warehoused practically next door to us, meaning delivery costs drop - savings we can pass directly to you.
For a startup roaster, that might be the difference between starting with a commercial coffee or not starting at all. For others, it’s a way to hit a price point for blends or wholesale contracts without compromising too far on quality.
You can see what’s landed so far here: Commercial Coffee Collection.
Catch-ups at World of Coffee, Geneva
In late June, I went to World of Coffee in Geneva. I’d planned to walk the halls and meet a few new potential sourcing partners - instead, it turned into two days of catch-ups with our existing partners: Jiame from Caldera, Max from Ensambles, Christian from Indochina, Jonny from Mi Café, and Andre from Makicuna.
It’s rare to have so many of them in the same place at once. We talked about their upcoming harvests, how they’ve been growing, and where we could work together more closely.
I also finally met Al from Raw Material in person. For the observant among you, you might have already spotted their logo on our Our Story page - they’ve now officially joined us as a partner.
Raw Material works where the need is highest, helping historically marginalised communities build the systems to produce high-quality coffee and connect it to a stable marketplace. It’s impact-first, coffee-second, which is exactly why we’re excited to have them on board.
They’re not chasing “the best” coffee - they’re building opportunities where coffee can be a long-term solution. In Timor-Leste, for example, they set a national record for quality within a year and sold over 90% of production at 2–3 times the national average price.
We’ve launched with three Raw Material lots in the EU and plan to bring more to the UK soon, including a decaf I’m particularly excited about.
It's always great to bring on a new partner especially when they are making a positive impact in the coffee world. We're now on the look out for more EU-based sourcing partners to help as we continue to expand into the European market - so if you know anyone worth speaking to please email hello@greencoffeecollective.com!
Fixing Our Inventory Frustrations
If you’ve ever been told, “Sorry, we’ve just run out of that coffee you ordered,” you know exactly why this has been keeping me up at night.
Until now, our inventory system worked like this: we’d receive, say, a 60kg bag of coffee, enter it into the system, and it would calculate all the possible variant combinations - 0.5kg, 1kg, 2kg, 5kg, etc. When an order came in, the system would recalculate automatically to update what was left.
In theory, it was great - we could offer maximum flexibility and let customers buy coffee in whatever size suited them. In practice? About 2-3 times a week, orders overlapped in just the wrong way and we’d have to tell someone we were already sold out.
That’s not just a stock issue - it’s a customer experience issue. You’ve picked your coffee, placed your order, and then we email to say “actually, no.” It chips away at trust. Added to that, it creates additional work for our team, both from a customer support aspect and the warehouse team get's extra workload having to wait to find out what the resolution is.
The problem came from our “just-in-time” packing model. We’d only weigh and bag coffee after the order came in. It kept things flexible but left our warehouse team in a constant reactive mode.
The fix: we’re moving to pre-packing units as soon as coffee arrives.
- We’ll still offer 0.5kg, 1kg, and 5kg (plus multiples of 5kg).
- The 2kg option is going, it made up less than 1% of sales, and our planned improvements to the bundle builder will give the same saving.
- Stock on the site will reflect actual physical units in the warehouse - no recalculations, no guesswork.
It means if you see it in stock, it’s genuinely there. It means fewer “sorry” emails. And it means our warehouse can focus on fulfilment instead of constant stock updates.
Making Equipment More Accessible with Humm Finance
One of the most common questions we get, especially from newer roasters looking to get some decent equipment - is whether we can offer finance.
The challenge is that UK consumer finance options are limited, and recent FCA changes made it even harder to find a partner who could handle larger purchases. We wanted something that worked for everything from a small piece of kit to an Aillio Bullet R2 Pro (£4,250) — but getting there meant registering with the FCA and ICO, passing background checks, completing compliance training, and paying a fairly significant fee in setup costs.
It’s taken months, but we’ve finally completed it.
If you’re ready to upgrade your roasting setup, you shouldn’t have to wait months to save the full amount. Now, you can spread the cost - for example, a Kaffelogic Nano 7 can be yours for £46.08/month over 24 months. That means you can start roasting on a machine that gives you full control and understand every variable, so you can experiment, learn, and refine your craft - instead of being stuck with a roaster that only lets you adjust heat and time.
We know finance isn’t for everyone but for the right person, at the right moment, it can make all the difference between waiting another year and getting started now.
I feel it's also worth addressing...We know finance can get a bad rap - hidden fees, unclear terms, and nasty surprises. That’s not our style. We’ve gone with the most transparent option we could find, where you can see exactly what you’ll pay before you commit, with no extra charges lurking in the small print. Right now, it’s only available for UK customers, but we’re already looking at ways to bring the same option to our roasters in Europe.
Looking Ahead
August is about getting the new inventory system live, expanding the Decaf range in the UK, and seeing how roasters respond to the new commercial range as well as a few planned website improvements.
As always, Unfiltered is a two-way thing - if you’ve got thoughts, ideas, or feedback, just email hello@greencoffeecollective.com.
