That $15 cup of coffee everybody in the Bay Area is talking about is that expensive because the workers who produce it earn a living wage — and get doctors’ appointments too. Or as coffee guru Akeesh Saini told SFist, “the farmers at Finca Sophia are well compensated, their medical bills and children’s education all paid for.” Finca Sofia is owned by Brooke McDonnell and Helen Russell of Equator Coffee, Willem Boot of Boot Coffee and former Equatorian David Pohl. It’s a gesha coffee — sort of like a single malt in the scotch world — grown on a mountainside in Panama.
Finca Sofia explains the special quality of its workforce on its site, where it says its “loyal workforce is led by its manager, Kelly Hartmann, a second generation coffee farmer whose family pioneered coffee cultivation in this part of Panama back in the 1920s. Six workers and their families, all from the Ngobe Bugle indigenous group in Panama, work with Kelly on the farm.”
Here’s a tour of the farm:
Finca Sophia Panama 2014 from Finca Sophia on Vimeo.
