Blog

We have been working with small Colombian coffee producers for 10 years now.

When Olympia Coffee collaborates with coffee farmers to solve economic or systematic issues, we both win. We get a chance to offer really delicious, high quality coffees to our customers while our producing partner’ lives are improved dramatically.

“Modern coffee is still in its experimental phase, and so many otherwise talented roasters are, as one industry notable pointed out recently, still chasing the next big thing, rather than consistency.” “So, at the end of a very long few months of sampling coffee at multiple shops every day, coming back to the Pacific Northwest, to the world of Olympia Coffee, felt something like the caffeinated equivalent of a warm hug, a safe harbor.” “In every right-on-the-money sip, from obscure micro-lot coffees to the organic and obsessed-over house espresso, you can taste knowledge, experience, and passion for detail.” “Co-owners Oliver...

Olympia Coffee is now a Certified B Corporation®.

We spent the entirety of the last year going through a rigorous audit of policy and operations that has ultimately helped us improve the company.

We arrived in Ethiopia in February with hopes of strengthening our bond with the amazing characters here that we buy coffees from. Ethiopia is, despite its minute distance from Kenya, of a completely different nature than its southern neighbor. People are warm, and cultural roots run deep in this unconquered African nation of over 80 different ethnic groups. But this diversity also means many ancient tensions are at play, resistant to uniting the Ethiopian peoples under one cultural identity. It’s a complicated nation where cultural barriers are persistent; however, the effect coffee has on the entire population is very much...

Like most trips to Africa, our first trip to Kenya and Ethiopia this year started out with almost two days’ worth of flights. Once you land, waves of exotic smells –diesel among them– fuel you past the airport into a large city clearly divided by wealth. Kenya, one of our most difficult origins to manage sustainably, hosts the capital [Nairobi] which sits on a highland plateau starting at around 1,500 masl, or nearly 5,000 feet. This, coupled with the bright red-orange soil inhabited by a myriad of life that seems to coexist with the community (incredible fertility in densely populated...