Kandace with The Coffee Collective’s Klaus Thomsen and Callum Hale at the La Marzocco Cafe and Showroom in Seattle, where Coffee Collective is currently the roaster in residence. Needmore Designs photo.
In this week’s episode of Unpacking Coffee, Kandace and Ray take a trip from Portland to Seattle to meet a Dane and an Aussie to discuss the latest goings-on with Copenhagen-based The Coffee Collective.
Launched in 2007, the roasting company has grown to include five distinct cafes, while remaining a pioneering force in pricing transparency as it relates to economic sustainability for coffee producers.
Needmore Designs photo.
“We had all been working in coffee for a number of years before we started this company, and kind of felt like there was something wrong with the whole coffee industry — this paradox of coffee being priced really high on the high streets of Europe, and at the same time farmers getting a really shitty price for their product,” 2006 World Barista Champion and Coffee Collective Co-Founder Klaus Thomsen told K-Ray. “We started our company on the back end of what was called the coffee crisis. Now, 11 years after, we have another crisis on our hands… At the same time there’s all this money floating around in coffee. Big conglomerates are buying coffee shop chains, and so on. Too little of that value is getting to the farmers.”
Watch here as Thomsen and CC’s Callum Hare talk more about the company’s transparency ambitions, its unique logo and packaging design with a transparent bottom, and its creative experimentations with other specialty items such as cheese and kombucha:
Unpacking Coffee is a show discovering new coffee roasters one episode at a time led by Kandace and Ray of the Portland-based studio Needmore Designs, which specializes in coffee, wine and lifestyle brands.
Nick Brown
Nick Brown is the editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine.
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