Idle Hands Roasting Company respectfully acknowledges the traditional land owners; the Ute Indian Tribe, Pauite Tribe, Goshute Indian Tribe and the Skull Valley Band of the Goshute, Eastern Shoshone Tribe, Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation, and Shoshone-Bannock Tribes. These stolen ancestral lands are colonially known as the Salt Lake Valley.
LEAVE COFFEE BETTER
THAN YOU FOUND IT.
We firmly believe in the principle of collaboration, mutual growth and equity throughout the value chain.
Throughout our time in coffee, we have been fortunate enough to build relationships with producers, growers, farmers, mill operators, co-ops, and local exporters in coffee-growing countries. These valuable partnerships have shaped our approach to sourcing and we are committed to supporting them year after year.
To us, being a responsible roaster means that there is a moral responsibility to every person these coffees interact with from crop to cup; not just sourcing coffees strictly for their intrinsic qualities. We make very conscious decisions to step away from traditional attitudes and conventional methods of buying and selling coffee and we are sure to not replace them with elitist ones.
SOURCING
A thoughtful, multi-pronged approach to sourcing specialty coffee.
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Direct Partnerships
Straight from the source.
A little over 70% of our contracted volume comes directly from producers and exporters local to producing countries or from vertically integrated channels (meaning the producer has the capability to import their coffee into North America.) These partnerships are a valuable cornerstone to Idle Hands Roasting Co.
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via Auction Platforms & COE
Higher prices for competition winning lots.
We are a big supporter of the Cup of Excellence competition and have seen the success of it shining the spotlight on producing countries, producing regions and the producers in them that have otherwise missed out on the same successes as other popular producing nations.
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Green Traders
From countries we need help navigating.
We don’t know it all. Approx 20% of our total volume coming from Sucafina as part of their Korongo Project with COTACOF in Tanzania. We buy a small amount <10% of SPOT coffees from our friends at Red Fox Coffee Merchants, Onyx Coffee Importers and Sucafina NA.
Sustainability Efforts
Sustainability also means ensuring our partners in producing countries have a livable and profitable income. We trade directly where possible allowing producers to set prices and increasing the total value kept at the point of origin.
Over 90% of our coffee is roasted on a Loring S35 Kestrel meaning we currently save approximately 50,000 pounds of CO2 each year compared to using a traditional drum roaster.
We are a data donor for the Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide annual reports. SCTG collects data from donors across the world and creates yearly reports on buying and trading practices.
We publish a price breakdown on for each coffee we buy and all available information is published and made available for each coffee on the product page; what we know, we make available for you to know. We collect this data to publish a yearly overview of our available information; purchases, contract types, bags purchased, FOB, farmgate prices, and how to interpret these reports each harvest year. You can view our 2022/2023 Purchase Report here.
The bags that green coffee arrives in, the hessian and jute, GrainPro and EcoTact are given a second life at Sage Mountain Animal Sanctuary in Park City, UT. These bags are available for nurseries, park clean ups or BLM/public lands clean ups.
Idle Hands Roasting Company makes an ongoing monthly donation to the Ute Land Trust. We inhabit their traditional lands and it is important for us to acknowledge this and give back to the land we occupy.
Our retail packaging is fully recyclable (LDPE 4) and our labels are made from recycled paper.
We are aiming to always do better and improve the sustainability of the value chain we work within as Idle Hands continues to grow.
Cup of Excellence
We’ve been Cup of Excellence’s biggest fans since we first heard of ‘em. CoE is a non-profit organization run by Alliance for Coffee Excellence that can make a huge impact to a producers livelihood as well as neighboring growers and communities. Fetching prices 10-100x the C price we talked about above, the Cup of Excellence program guarantees winning farms and producers receive the premiums they’ve worked so hard for.
Collectively, we’ve been on a handful of international juries and even held a rare place on a national jury. These unique experiences have gained us a tremendous appreciation for the program, producers and the diversity that comes along with it. From simply experiencing world class coffees, to cupping and grading those coffees with people with from all over the world who can share different palates and tasting experiences different to ours.
This gratitude for the CoE program and our close relationship with those in it has lead us to the unique opportunity to partner with Alliance for Coffee Excellence and Cup of Excellence as their roasting partner for all Sensory & Education Training courses and special coffee releases.
