With this year's edition, we're showcasing the ways we lead the specialty coffee industry in quality, sustainability, and education.
Environmental, social, and fiscal sustainability are at the heart of everything we do. From value chain partnerships to manufacturing practices, we use transparency as a way to make our business model sustainable for all parties involved.
Counter Culture Coffee created the first coffee transparency report in 2009; we've released a report every year since. The annual report is a means to improve our company and its impact, using transparency as a lens to view our progress.
Highlights from the 2022 Transparency Report
People
- Employed 106 people
- Paid out $101,840.51 in CSA, Pushing Potential, Green Fund, and Preventative Care benefits
- Introduced a new Mental Health support program to all employees and their dependents
Planet
- Had a carbon footprint of 935.25 tonnes CO2e
- Diverted over 20,000 pounds of LDPE plastic from landfills
- Donated 2,212 lbs of coffee
- Installed 393 clean cookstoves in rural Honduran households through our partnership with Trees, Water, and People to offset our carbon footprint
Product: Coffee
Graphic: Carbon Footprint
- Purchased 5,600,137 lbs of green coffee, 85% was bought from partners we’ve worked with for 5+ years
- Forward contracted 94.73% of our coffee
- Maintained an average coffee score of 86.3
- Awarded $74,000 through our Seeds program
*FOB or Free on Board refers to the contracted price of a coffee at the time of export from a country or area of origin.
Product: Tech + Education
- Took 1,527 tech service calls
- Performed 821 preventative maintenance visits
- Completed 127 equipment Installations
- Educators spent 4,128 hours training students
- Training Centers raised $18,338.98 through Shift Drink events
Things we're most proud of from 2022:
- Introduction of mental health benefits through Spring Health
- Leverage of Great Game of Business to strengthen internal transparency and financial literacy
- Rearrangement of our Durham warehouse and investing in new production equipment
- Increased our company-wide food safety score from 94.12% to 96.03%
- Addition of Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a recognized and paid holiday
- Increase in our dependence on renewable energy sources
- Maintenance of an average coffee quality score of 86.3 points, despite changing market conditions, supply chain issues, and a challenging coffee production environment
- Purchase of 85% of our coffee from suppliers we’ve worked with for 5+ years
- Return of visits to producer partners
- Launch of Shift Drink, which raised $18,338.98 for local non-profit organizations
- Decrease of expedited parts orders within our tech program for Wholesale partners
2022 Priorities for Improvement
- Report on our company demographics in a holistic and inclusive way
- Raise our retention rate
- Update our new employee orientation program and employee handbook
- Roll out a supervisor training program
- Improve our Durham production capabilities with a Cablevey conveyance system and indoor silo storage
- Obtain B Corp recertification and increase our score
- Find packaging that excels in quality and sustainability
- Return to a Counter Culture-created coffee curriculum
- Implement a plan to achieve 2%+ profit before tax
READ THE FULL REPORT
This Transparency Report delivers metrics and highlights from January 1 to December 31, 2022. The coffee purchase cycle spans the northern and southern hemisphere’s coffee harvest between October 1, 2021 and September 30, 2022.
This report was created by a team of transparency-driven individuals at Counter Culture Coffee. We strive for balance and impartiality, while acknowledging the internal preparation lends an inherent bias to the information.
