The Coffee Cycle
From a flower on an Ethiopian hillside to the cup in your hands. Follow the journey down the page.
The Growing Cycle
One year. Six turns of the wheel.
Coffee isn't manufactured, it's grown, and it grows on a cycle that repeats every season on an Ethiopian hillside. Turn the wheel through the six stages of that year: drag it, tap a stage, or let it turn on its own.
The Coffee Year
One turn, one year
Every stage of this year happens so that 10% of every bag can fund the mission in Ethiopia.
See where it goesAnd then it begins again.
Worth knowing
Drag to explore
Only A Few Days
Coffee flowers bloom in creamy white clusters, and last only two to three days before falling, leaving behind the cherries that become your coffee.
It's Actually A Fruit
Coffee "beans" aren't beans at all, they're the seeds inside a coffee cherry, a real fruit that starts green and ripens to red.
Born In Ethiopia
Every coffee plant on Earth traces its roots back to Ethiopia, home to more coffee plant diversity than anywhere else in the world. Explore the Origins Map →
A Three Year Wait
A coffee tree takes three to four years after planting before it produces its first harvestable cherries. Patience is part of the recipe.
The Top 5 To 10%
Specialty grade coffee, like ours, scores 80 or higher on the SCA Q scale. Only the top 5 to 10 percent of beans grown worldwide qualify.
Discovered By A Goat Herder
Legend says coffee was first discovered by Kaldi, an Ethiopian goat herder whose goats got a little too energetic after eating coffee cherries. Read the full legend →
Ready to taste where the cycle ends?
Shop The CoffeeCoffee, explained
Things worth knowing before your next cup
Coffee has a lot of words attached to it. Here is what the ones on our bag actually mean, and why they change what is in your cup.
Want the whole story of how a cherry becomes your cup? Walk the coffee cycle, or taste it for yourself.