In a week, we will be increasing our retail coffee prices by $1 per 12oz bag, so that we can continue to support a high standard of living for our farmers, suppliers, employees, and give back to causes that inspire us.
Dear friends and customers,
If you’ve been to our Espresso Bar and Roastery in Portland, it won’t surprise you that we strive to reach a high standard of transparency in everything we do. When you walk into the Espresso Bar, immediately to your left is a large window into our roasting facility. Through it, you can see all of our bags of green coffee, our Production team hard at work packing bags, and our Loring Roaster roasting pound after pound of coffee.
It’s in this interest of transparency that we want you to be the first to know that it is time to raise our coffee prices. On February 15, all of our bagged coffee prices will be raised by $1. These changes will not affect our wholesale prices or the price for a cup of brewed coffee.
There are several reasons why we need to raise prices. The most notable factors are that we have added new coffees from new farms and new countries, we've invested heavily in our employees, and we've increased our donations by 120% since the last time we raised prices in 2014. We continue to source high-quality coffee, invest in long-term relationships with the farmers we work with, and select farms to source from based on those types of relationships. We want to ensure that we purchase from these farmers for the long-term, working with them throughout harvest cycles, down years, or any other difficulties; we pay farmers what ensures they can not only survive year-to-year, but enough to assist in helping them grow and support their families.
In the past two years, we are proud to have added more jobs and several benefits for our employees to improve their quality of life as well. Between 2014 and today, we have added healthcare, Volunteer Time Off, increased PTO allowances, added to our employee bonus incentive plan, created alternative commuting incentives, and held an annual company retreat. Becoming a Certified B Corp has helped hold ourselves to a high standard of employee practices and strive toward continuous improvement. These additions played no small part in helping us make the list of the 100 Best Companies to Work for in Oregon for the first time.
We are also giving back and donating more to causes that inspire us. In 2016 alone we donated over $35,000 in cash and product to local organizations, nonprofits and coffee farms. We expanded our Full Cycle donation program that supports the Street Trust (formerly Bicycle Transportation Alliance) and Community Cycling Center. We are sponsoring more charitable events and environmentally-focused conferences and causes, and we encourage our employees to participate in volunteering personally and in organized opportunities.
We want to thank you for choosing Nossa Familia when purchasing your coffee. Your purchase has literally (no, literally--there's no exaggeration here) improved the lives of our employees and, more drastically, our farmers and their families. We thank you for making this possible, and we are humbled that you choose to support Nossa Familia Coffee and the work that we do every day to support our farmers, employees, customers, and community.
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