During her 18-year-long background in international development, Winter Wall witnessed first-hand women advocating for their independence through creating their own businesses in East Africa and South Asia.
Empowering these women, small business owners would soon become the core component of Winter’s Denver-based company Kebon Coffee. She founded Kebon Coffee in 2020 during her career’s travel lull because of the pandemic, all to offer the highest quality, single-origin coffee from women-owned producers around the world and support entire communities in the process.
To Winter, access and dignity are a major part of worldwide poverty alleviation. When Winter started Kebon Coffee—and thus talking to women business owners and friends in Uganda and Guatemala where she’d done much of her international development work and lived for some time—most shared that access to capital and larger markets is their main impediment.
Kebon currently sources beans from Uganda, Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica. Winter started partnering with coffee growers in Uganda, like Gloria. Gloria started her company Endiro Coffee in 2011 and hires from within her community, where she offers a training program for vulnerable young women and men.
“There’s so much data to support that, when women are successful financially, they invest in all the avenues that create sustainable livelihoods,” Winter says. “Investing in women is investing in communities. When I see women starting businesses, it’s not just about that single business.”
Winter says that the women business owners she’s partnered with around the world tend to focus on creating occupational and educational opportunities, pouring money into their community’s schools and churches, or financing healthy and accessible food options for impoverished families.
While a lot of funding options help minority small business owners to get off the ground, “support mechanisms and guardrails drop off for scaling and growing women-owned businesses,” Winter says.
There aren’t as many foundations or corporations looking to help sustain these companies once they’ve been established. Kebon provides its partners with resources, expertise and support from a network of other women who own coffee businesses.
“The most effective way to promote economic stability and sustainable livelihoods in emerging markets is to invest in women,” Winter says.
As a part of the 49 billion dollar annual market for coffee in the United States, Kebon Coffee currently mostly sells direct-to-consumer online through individual purchases or the company’s subscription model. As companies start thinking more and more about fair-trade sourcing and supporting sustainable supply chain practices, Kebon Coffee is expanding into retail and corporate clients too, selling subscription models and larger quantity coffee bags to businesses.
Winter says it’s an intimate honor to be invited into people’s homes every morning for their habitual routine, especially during the pandemic when an action as small as brewing a few cups of coffee throughout the work-from-home day is all that keeps some sane during such an otherwise monotonous time.
Coffee From Around the World
Though Endiro Coffee in Uganda produces a deliciously aromatic bean with cherry notes, Winter wanted to expand her single-origin coffee offerings while also supporting growers elsewhere in the world.
Many smaller coffee producers are often a part of a larger growing cooperative so they can provide a higher volume, Winter partners with individual farms within these co-ops to offer consistent quality from specific growers.
Mother-daughter team Ellen and Ashley Prentice work on and manage Gento farm in Guatemala, which produces coffee with tasting notes of chocolate and citrus.
Kathia is Kebon’s partner who runs Cloza Farms in Costa Rica, which grows beans with warm honey and caramel notes. Kathia’s Cloza Farms received the Women Care Certification for Kathia’s commitment to empowering women in the coffee industry.
Kebon’s coffee from La Hondureña in Honduras comes from producers Socorro Reyes and Norma Lara, who work hard to disrupt the specialty coffee industry by fighting for fair pay for farmers and funneling that money back into their community. Grown in the La Labor region of Honduras, these beans come with hints of green apple and caramel.
Winter is in early conversations to partner with co-ops in Indonesia, as well as a woman-owned co-op in Mexico and growers in Columbia, where coffee growing is an incredibly male-dominated field.
Winter has also created a coffee community centered around women online through Kebon Coffee’s blog, where she posts a few pieces a month about storage tips, how to use coffee ground leftovers, their partners, and how to make espresso without an espresso maker.