Cafe Imports goes 100% employee owned. Plus, the SCA and UC Davis fund a new coffee research fellowship, two notable union wins, and wildfires threaten Colombian coffee farms.
✉️ Coffee News Club: curated reflection on recent industry headlines.
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‘Cafe Imports Is Now 100% Employee Owned’ – via Sprudge
With many green coffee traders struggling, entering bankruptcy, or being acquired by larger companies, Cafe Imports is planning for an independent future. On September 21, the Minneapolis-based specialty coffee importer announced that it has transitioned to 100% employee ownership via an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP).
Cafe Imports founder Andrew Miller said the move aimed to ensure the independence of the company he founded 33 years ago. “Employee ownership allows us to preserve that independence, support the long-term future of the company, and continue investing in the people and relationships that have shaped who we are,” he said in the announcement.
The most widely-used form of employee ownership in the U.S., an ESOP is an employer-sponsored benefit plan that holds company shares for employees. The longer someone works there, the more shares they accrue, and they receive the payout when they leave or retire.
Cafe Imports currently has 68 employees based across four offices in the U.S., Germany, Australia, and Costa Rica. According to the company’s most recent progress report, more than half of the 68 have worked at Cafe Imports for over five years, and 25% have been there more than 10 years. “I am incredibly proud to hand the keys over to the folks who helped build this company and will carry it forward,” Miller said.
Market volatility in recent years has seen a number of coffee traders struggle, with several going bankrupt or being acquired. Mercon Coffee Group entered bankruptcy protection in 2023, and StoneX bought its specialty arm in 2024. The Brazilian traders Atlantica and Cafebras followed with their own bankruptcy filings in 2025. Sucafina also bought specialty importer Rehm & Co. in July after Rehm’s parent company, Benecke Coffee, entered insolvency in February owing more than $150 million to cooperatives in Honduras and Peru.
Read more on Cafe Imports’ ownership evolution here.
‘SCA, UC Davis Invest in the Future of Coffee’ – via Global Coffee Report
The Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) has donated $1 million to the University of California, Davis to create an endowment that will fund ongoing graduate-level coffee research.
The Specialty Coffee Association Endowed Fellowship in Coffee Science will be based at the UC Davis Coffee Center, the latest in a series of collaborations between the two organizations. Under the agreement, UC Davis will invest the donation as an endowment, with approximately 4%—currently about $40,000—to be distributed annually to support an SCA Fellow’s graduate research. Remaining earnings from the fund will be reinvested.
“One of the longstanding missions of the UC Davis Coffee Center has been to establish and nurture a strong academic talent pipeline in support of the coffee industry,” William Ristenpart, founding director of the UC Davis Coffee Center, said in a press release. “This new endowed fellowship dramatically advances that mission by directly supporting graduate students and bringing perspectives and experience from around the world into coffee research at UC Davis.”
According to the SCA and UC Davis, the donation reflects a long-term investment in coffee research and in training the next generation of researchers in the field. The UC Davis Coffee Center was founded in 2014 and has worked with the SCA on a number of projects, including the center’s first major project in 2017 which explored the fundamentals of coffee brewing. More recently, scientists from the Coffee Center spent several years working to update the classic Coffee Brewing Control Chart, with financial support from the SCA.
“Through our longstanding partnership with UC Davis, we’ve seen what’s possible when education, research, and industry come together,” said SCA CEO Yannis Apostolopoulos. “This fellowship will support the next generation of coffee scientists, and we hope it will open doors especially for talented students from coffee-producing regions, whose perspectives and leadership are essential to our sector’s sustainability and resilience.”
Read the full story on the coffee research investment here.
More News
‘Sustainable Coffee Challenge Sets Out Common Ground for Coffee Resilience’ – via Conservation International
‘Colombia Fully Resumes Coffee Export Operations Through Pacific Ports’ – via StoneX
‘Starbucks to Shutter 250 Stores in North America This Week in 2nd Wave of Closings’ – via the Associated Press
‘Showing Riverside Resilience, High Five Coffee Makes Another Comeback’ – via Citizen Times
‘Starbucks Settles Florida Lawsuit Claiming Diversity Policies Were Illegal’ – via Reuters
The Week in Coffee Unionizing
Last week, two high-profile coffee union campaigns scored significant victories. Workers at Verve Coffee Roasters and Blue Bottle Coffee both secured tentative contract agreements with their respective companies after years of organizing and bargaining.
Workers at five Blue Bottle cafes in Boston first unionized in 2024 to form the Blue Bottle Independent Union (BBIU). Four locations in California’s Bay Area followed suit a year later. Negotiations over a first contract were drawn out, with BBIU accusing the company of union-busting and firing union workers.
Earlier this year, Blue Bottle’s owner, Nestlé, sold the company to the Chinese private equity firm Centurium Capital. On September 18, BBIU announced the contract agreement on Instagram. According to the post, the contract will include a 7% wage increase as well as fair scheduling and job protections.
In the Bay Area, organizers at Verve had been bargaining with the company for almost 10 months, having unionized with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5 in September 2025. Last week, they announced a tentative contract agreement that includes guaranteed hours as well as increased wages and sick pay. As Lily Belli reports for Lookout Santa Cruz, the proposed contract would cover around 60 workers at six locations.
Jim Araby from UFCW Local 5 told Belli that the tentative agreement includes an industry-first provision of an additional $5 per hour for those taking sick leave to compensate for lost tips. “A lot of these workers forgo taking a sick day and come to work sick because they’re losing about a third of their income,” Araby said. Workers will vote on the contract next month.
Coffee and the Climate Crisis
A series of wildfires has devastated coffee-growing regions in Colombia, fueled by extreme heat that scientists have linked to an intensifying El Niño. Authorities are monitoring nearly 20 wildfires across multiple departments.
Rio Times reports that in Tolima, Colombia’s third-largest coffee-producing region, more than 50,000 hectares have been destroyed, including about 28,000 hectares of farmland. Abelardo de la Espriella, the president of Colombia, declared a public calamity and Adriana Magali Matiz, Tolima’s governor, said there are “serious indications” of arson behind some of the fires.
The blazes come at a time when Colombia’s coffee sector continues to rebuild following the deadly earthquake in August. The Pacific Coast port of Buenaventura has finally completely reopened after the quake damaged key roads and caused a backlog of trucks trying to deliver goods, including coffee.
The Colombian Coffee Growers Federation (FNC) is working with the government to help the more than 8,000 farmers in the disaster zone who reported damage to their homes or processing facilities. The FNC’s CEO, Germán Bahamón, told Reuters that a strengthening El Niño was worrying farmers. “Production will very likely be affected by the El Niño phenomenon,” he said.
Climate scientists predict this year’s El Niño will be especially strong. El Niño—a Pacific Ocean climate pattern that can cause drought, flooding, and erratic weather—could, in an especially strong ‘super’ form, affect coffee production worldwide. Scientists have linked the prolonged heat and dry weather in Colombia and extreme weather elsewhere to the impacts of El Niño, and expect increased temperatures to extend well into next year.
Beyond the Headlines
‘How an Assam Tea Estate Produced India’s First Homegrown Matcha’ by Sohel Sarkar
‘Did We Get It Wrong on Robusta? Clarifying the ‘Resilience’ Narrative’ by Chloé Skye Weiser
