Tag Archives: Ethiopian Coffee

Featured, Reviews

From the Birthplace of Coffee Cafe Buunni Serves Ethiopian Organic Specialty Coffee

Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff

Published: Friday, May 30th, 2014

New York (TADIAS) — In the enclave of Hudson Heights in Upper Manhattan, close to the highest point on the island, there is a quaint new addition to the neighborhood. Café Buunni serves certified organic, micro-roasted specialty coffee sourced from Ethiopia, the birthplace of the bean. This Washington Heights neighborhood is dotted with Art Deco style residential buildings, a bagel store, a vegan pizza joint and a Mexican restaurant aptly named ‘Refried Beans.’ Past a children’s playground and park, on the corner of 187 and Pinehurst Ave, a 30-year old shoe repair shop has been converted into a sunny, spacious cafe by its new proud owners Elias Gurmu and Sarina Prabasi.

Elias is an Ethiopian native and his wife Sarina is originally from Nepal. “We met in Ethiopia, in Addis,” Sarina tells Tadias Magazine. Sarina worked for a string of non-profit organizations including WaterAid, initially visiting Ethiopia in 1997 and then residing there for seven years. “It’s like a second home,” she says of the capital Addis Ababa. Elias ran several small businesses including a restaurant, a car service and also worked as the Addis Ababa distribution agent for DKT International – a family planning and HIV prevention organization.

“I wasn’t as busy as I am now,” Elias says reflecting on his small business days in Ethiopia. “Back then, I had six staff. I go to work in the morning and I ask my staff “what is the order today?” Then I go visit some customers; I know who the major customers are. That’s it. And then I have like 5-6 hours to just relax, hang out with friends.”

Elias and Sarina moved to New York three years ago in July. “We came to the States because Sarina got a job here,” Elias says. Sarina had visited New York before. When they decided to live here they visited the Hudson Heights neighborhood. “And we liked it. We had a few friends here as well,” Sarina adds. Elias pondered about starting a small business in the city. He wanted it “to be something related to Ethiopia.”

“My original idea was to bring coffee here from Ethiopia, to roast it and to distribute it online. So I started an online business,” Elias shares. He learned how to micro-roast from a friend and opened an online store: buunnicoffee.com. The word buunni is an Amharic term meaning “brown” or “brown-colored.” Bunna, the word for coffee in Amharic, cannot be trademarked so Elias and Sarina chose a descriptor instead. The online store was launched two and a half years ago and the distribution was mainly to individual clients.

“We started really grassroots,” Sarina shares. “Elias was going around to weekend markets, festivals, getting to know people and conversing with them saying “hey I roasted this myself.” He gave out samples of the micro-roasted coffee, and we have a small group of very loyal customers online. At that time we were not thinking about opening a café. We wanted to do wholesale online distribution for reasons such as low overhead.”

A year and half ago Sarina and Elias had traveled to Ethiopia to do some coffee tasting and selections and when they returned they noticed a ‘For Rent’ sign around the corner from where they live. The 30-year old shoe repair shop had closed.

“Should we?” they asked themselves, thinking about it being the right spot for a café. Elias was used to running several small businesses and he knew how difficult it was to operate a restaurant. They had a toddler (two years old at the time) and he knew the business would be a 24/7 operation. So they debated some more and finally decided to just do it. “Because even in this neighborhood there wasn’t a place for us to have coffee. And we thought there could be other people like us who would want to have coffee,” Sarina says. They took over the lease and opened Café Buunni. All of the coffee is certified organic and comes from small cooperative farms in Ethiopia. They roast the beans as ordered to preserve the freshness and quality. Café Buunni offers several Ethiopian coffees including single origin blends called Addis Ababa, a popular light roast named Yirgacheffe and a dark roast called Harar. They also have a Half-Caf Blend from Sidama decaf beans and a special holiday blend that is a combination of Harar and Tanzanian coffee.

As we interview Elias and Sarina, a customer who overhears our conversation says to Elias, “You’re not going to sell are you?”

“No I’m just speaking with journalists,” he assures her.

“This is a great place,” she tells us. “I really enjoy it. It’s better than Starbucks.”

Legend has it that Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee. Ask any Ethioipan how coffee was discovered and they will tell you the story of Kaldi, a 9th century goat herder who noticed the plant after his goats had nibbled on a few beans and started prancing around with excitement. Other versions of the legend point to the origin as a region in Ethiopia called Kaffa. However, the earliest reported coffee drinking was in Mocha, Yemen where Sufis in monasteries drank the strong brew to stay awake for their rituals and studies. According to Wikipedia, coffee was first exported from Ethiopia to Yemen.

The coffee ceremony in Ethiopia is as elaborate and rich in tradition as the Japanese tea ceremony. Most Ethiopians grow up used to seeing green coffee beans being roasted, then ground by hand in a mortar and pestle and then brewed in Jebena. “It’s such a different thing,” Sarina says reflecting on how coffee is consumed and thought of in Ethiopian culture. “It’s not just about having your coffee. It’s about enjoying your drink and having conversations and the community that goes along with it.”

“In Ethiopia we don’t talk about coffee, we talk around a coffee gathering,” Elias adds. “Who taught you to roast coffee? You just watch and do it the way it’s done and you’re not so much concerned with measurements.”

As we wrap up our interview with the owners of Café Buuni, another customer, an Ethiopian woman and her daughter, greet Elias and Sarina. She too says “It’s better than Starbucks.”

“You’re the second customer who just said that,” we tell her.

“Absolutely. I have no doubt in my mind, she says with a smile.


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Learn more about Café Buunni at http://buunnicoffee.com.

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Featured, Interviews

Brewing Change: Maryland’s Blessed Coffee Eyes Retail Market

Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff

Updated: Monday, November 11th, 2013

New York (TADIAS) — If everything goes as planned the husband and wife team of Tebabu Assefa and Sara Mussie, co-founders of Blessed Coffee established three years ago in Silver Spring, Maryland under the state’s Benefit Corporation law, may soon open a new cottage cafe that offers not only premium Ethiopian coffee roasted on site, but also a community space where you can hold meetings, cooking classes, book reading clubs and other activities.

At a dinner last month celebrating the venture’s third anniversary at Addis Ababa restaurant in Silver Spring the couple announced their plans to expand the venture unveiling their “Brewing Change” crowdsourcing campaign for funds to build a prototype facility in Maryland that they hope to duplicate across the country. The gathering was attended by a diverse group of elected officials, business leaders, social entrepreneurs and activists — among them state Senator Jamie B. Raskin who authored Maryland’s Benefit Corporation law.

In an interview with Tadias Magazine Tebabu said that for the past three years they have been introducing their Blessed Coffee brand at coffee shops, farmers markets and festivals around Maryland. “We are now moving to the second phase, from wholesale to opening our own retail shop,” Tebabu added. The “Brewing Change” campaign was conceived in his living room by a group of 16 volunteers from various professions and cultural backgrounds that had met at his home every other week for nearly six months. “They are made up of men, women, young, old, Latinos, Black, White, you name it,” he said. “They are business experts, freelance writers, IT professionals, and community organizers.”

The driving factor behind the operation is neither charity nor profits exclusively, but a combination of both. As Tebabu puts it: “to create wealth while making a difference on both sides of the Atlantic.” He pointed out that coffee is the second most traded commodity next to oil, and that the market share is large enough to go around.

“We call our business model a ‘Virtues Exchange,’ he explained. The idea is to go beyond foreign aid and fair-trade through public-private partnerships that create jobs in America while empowering coffee farmers in Ethiopia as stakeholders in the transaction. In the process, he said, they also aim to educate the U.S market about the Ethiopian traditions of consuming coffee.

“My wife Sara reminded the gathering at Addis Ababa restaurant that in Ethiopia we drink coffee with a social purpose, in a relaxed fashion, with neighbors, friends and family to catch up with the latest news, gossip, and other happenings,” Tebabu told Tadias. “Here in America, on the other hand, people grab a cup to run.”

Tebabu said they plan to present their “grassroots social change model” at a local symposium in Silver Spring tentatively scheduled for January 2014 called “The African Diaspora Business Community Conference,” that they will host. “We are assembling local organizational partners that reflect the shifting paradigm in the Diaspora especially among the young generation,” he said. “We have already enlisted, for example, the dynamic organization, Young Ethiopian Professionals (YEP) and Qmem, a new business started by two Ethiopian American youth who were inspired by their trip to Ethiopia to do the same thing with spices as what we are trying to do with coffee.”

For now Blessed Coffee is enjoying invitations from Ethiopian and other organizations to present their coffee and ceremony at various cultural and religious events. Their latest was in New York when they were invited by the Ethiopian Israeli group Chassida Shmella to take part at last week’s Sigd service at Bnai Jeshurun Synagogue in Manhattan.

“It was magical,” said Tebabu of the ceremony marking the ancient Ethiopian Jewish festival (now a national holiday in Israel). “I was struck by how similar it was to Sigdet in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.”

Below is a video narrated by co-founder Sara Mussie explaining their mission.

Watch:

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You can learn more at www.blessedcoffee.us. Click here to meet the Brewing Change Team. See the Brewing Change Campaign at www.indiegogo.com.

Related:
Blessed Coffee company uses crowdfunding to raise money for Takoma Park cafe (The Gazette)
Brewing Change: Blessed Coffee’s Third Anniversary Celebration (Silver Spring Patch)

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Featured, Profiles

Abyssinian Fund, Coffee, Harlem and Ethiopia Connection (TADIAS Video)

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Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff

Published: Saturday, July 14, 2012

New York (TADIAS) – Reverend Nicholas Richards, President of Abyssinian Fund, is also the Assistant Minster at Abyssinian, the legendary African-American baptist church in Harlem. “Abyssinian Fund came as a result of two things,” Rev. Richards told TADIAS, speaking about the four-year-old organization. “I had a really deep-seated passion to become involved in Africa and African development from my first trip there when I was still in college, and also because of the Abyssinian Baptist church’s history.” He added: “Abyssinian Baptist church is 204 years old and it was founded by Ethiopians and African Americans. So when I got to Abyssinian Church, I wanted to find a way to really bring together my passion for African development and Abyssinian Baptist church’s own history. And that’s really how we started Abyssinian Fund together. And when we decided to work in Africa, Ethiopia was of course the logical place for us because the church has such a really strong and rich history with the nation of Ethiopia.”

Reverend Richards describes Abyssinian Fund as an independent NGO formed by the Abyssinian Baptist church with the goal to reduce poverty in Ethiopia. “We try to do that by partnering with local coffee farming communities to increase their incomes, to provide training and equipment for them, and at the same time encouraging them to reinvest in their communities,” Richards explained. He pointed out that his group is working to create a market in the U.S. for Abyssinian Fund coffee grown in Harar, where buyers and donors would be asked to pay premium price – at least a dollar above market value, and that would be re-invested into the partnering coffee farm co-op in Ethiopia.

“And so this work, if nothing else, I hope that it is able to bridge communities together,” Rev. Richards said.

Watch the following video for the full interview with Reverend Nicholas Richards of the Abyssinian Fund.

Video: Harlem – Ethiopia Connection – President of Abyssinian Fund (TADIAS TV)

Podcast

$12 Cup Joe in New York? Same Coffee Goes for $2.69 in Seattle

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Above: Fonte Coffee Roaster in Seattle sells the drink made
from Ethiopian Nekisse beans for $2.69 a cup. The same cup
drink goes for $12 a cup at the Chelsea spot of Cafe Grumpy.

Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff

Updated: Sunday, June 6, 2010

New York (Tadias) – You may remember the recent amusing news story about $12 cup of Ethiopian coffee at Café Grumpy, a local coffee shop chain here in New York.

In her recent article, Melissa Allison, who “tracks Seattle’s — and the world’s — caffeine addiction” for The Seattle Times, writes the same cup of joe costs much less in America’s coffee capital.

“Trabant Coffee & Chai will soon carry one of the hottest tickets in coffee, a Nekisse micro-lot selection from Ethiopia, which recently sold for $12 a cup in New York and has appeared for considerably less — $2.69 a cup — at Seattle’s Fonte Coffee Roaster,” Allison points out. “Trabant’s roaster, 49th Parallel Coffee in Vancouver, is giving all the proceeds from its Nekisse sales to a non-profit called imagine1day to build classrooms in Ethiopia, said 49th Parallel owner Vince Piccolo.”

But New Yorkers have mixed opinions about Café Grumpy’s price. “There are flavors you would expect in a really nice glass of wine — it’s a cacophony of nuances,” Steve Holt, vice president of Ninety Plus Coffee, the company distributing the beans, told The NY Post. “You detect flavors of apricot, pineapple, bergamot, kiwi and lime. The deeper tones are levels of chocolate, and the finish is super clean.”

And why is it so pricey?

“It is a higher-end coffee, and you have to take a lot of time developing and processing it,” said Holt. “Once the coffee is harvested, it is dried on a raised African drying bed — the actual coffee cherries never sit on the ground.”

“People have had bad reactions to the prices,” Colleen Duhamel, a coffee buyer and barista at the cafe, told The New York Post. “They will think, ‘This place isn’t for me,’ and storm out.” “I’ve spent $12 on a cocktail, but I’d be reticent to pay that much for a cup of coffee,” said Whitney Reuling, 25, after tasting samples provided by the newspaper. “It’s good — but I can’t taste the difference. My palate is not at an advanced level for coffee — a $2.50 cup is fine.”

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