From Bean to Business: How Café Madre is Brewing Change

Alice King is a Greenwich-based entrepreneur who recently started a business called Café Madre sourcing  specialty-grade coffee that is grown, harvested, and processed by women’s cooperatives. Earlier this year she was awarded a £1300 bursary through a business development programme run in partnership between Greenwich Council, GCDA and Good Food in Greenwich. Alice spoke to GFiG about her exciting journey from bean to business.  

“It was whilst I was travelling that the idea for the business came about,” explains Alice. “I was fortunate enough to be able to take a career break, and as I speak Spanish, I spent a lot of time in Latin America. Whilst I was there, I visited a few coffee plantations and learned a lot about how agriculture works. With coffee you can either join the race to the bottom with poor working conditions and damage to the environment, or you can go for these amazing

community initiatives that bring with them things like adult education, classes for children and healthcare. Women are responsible for 70-80%  percent of agricultural work globally but they only receive about 20% of the profit. Women’s names are very rarely on the land deeds.

Whilst I was travelling a visited a women’s coffee cooperative. It was that initial meeting that got my thinking about my business. One of the most effective things you can do for the betterment of society in a development space is pay women for the work that they do and when you pay women in particular, you see things like girls staying in school for longer and children eating more.”  

Café Madre roughly translates to “Mother Coffee” which neatly sums up Alice’s approach to her business. She sources premium coffee produced by women, who in many coffee-growing regions, are the backbone of both the family and the farm.  

“At the moment I bring in green coffee through personally selected importers and then I work with a roaster to decide what kind of flavour profile I want,” explains Alice. “The hardest part of my job is tasting all the different blends and choosing the ones I think work best! My first two coffees were from Nicaragua and Bolivia. I know every detail right down to the location, the name of the cooperative, and the particular initiatives they’re involved with.  All that detail is included on the label so you can see exactly where the coffee has come from, what variety of bean it is and the altitude it was grown at. You also learn how each sale benefits the women who grow it.”

Alice says that the business bursary and training she received helped her take a vital step in making her dreams into reality.

“I’d had my business idea for a long time but I just kept talking myself out of it. Then back in January I spotted an advert for a food business support grant in the Good Food in Greenwich newsletter.  It was just the nudge I needed. I thought, you know what, I’ll just apply and give it a go! I was thrilled to win £1000 in funding which enabled me to get off the ground. I was able to import my first few kilos of coffee and get my domain name and website hosting sorted. The money also enabled me to pay for my packaging and public liability insurance. I had some fantastic business mentoring from Claire Pritchard, CEO of GCDA (who also teachers GCDA Learning’s Food Business start-up course). She was just so excited by what I was doing, and so supportive of the idea and the ethos of my business. It was really encouraging.”

Member of the El Bombo coffee co-operative in the region of Hila, Columbia

Café Madre launched on April 19th this year at The Village Green Grocers in Charlton, which has twice been awarded Best of Royal Greenwich High Street Retailer of the Year. Alice’s coffee was an immediate hit. She sold 75% of her stock by the end of the first day! Encouraged by the positive response over the last few months, she already has plans to expand her range and find more local stockists. She is also producing mini packs of coffee so that customers can try different blends without spending too much money.

So what next? “Well I’m  not a tea drinker, which I guess is the obvious compliment to coffee,” laughs Alice. “Instead, what I’m really excited about, is creating a lower caffeine coffee. It's actually very hard to find a decaf coffee that’s produced at source in a traceable, reputable, ethical way. I haven’t been able to find anything like it at all from a women’s collective. So I’m now thinking of doing a carefully sourced decaf coffee mixed with my own classic Café Madre range. I’ve also got plans to scale up. I started out by buying just six kilos of coffee. Then I moved onto buying 12. Now I’m going to be buying bigger amounts – like  a 60-70 kilo sack. It’s going to be a bit of a gamble but the reception to Café Madre has been so positive that it’s given me confidence. Scaling up will give me much more consistency. I’m also trying to set up a subscription model so you can just order your coffee to be delivered on a weekly, monthly, fortnightly basis, whatever you'd like - directly from me.”

Alice is signed up to the Good Food in Greenwich charters and is a big supporter of the network.

“I joined Good Food in Greenwich as it’s really helpful to be associated with other businesses that share the same values about community and sustainability. For me it's also linked me in to support from  Greenwich council, and GCDA as well.  It’s like a badge of honour, because you have to meet a range of requirements to join. I’d definitely recommend other local businesses signing up.”

We wish Alice all the best with her business and we can’t wait to see what happens next. To follow Café Madre on their journey, you can find them on instagram. Click here to check out their page.

Written by MJ