Copy Cup Offers New Brand Of Coffee
Author: mt43news staff reporter
MT43 News Reporter
You can always count on a good cup of coffee at the Copy Cup on Front Street. Owner Dawn Thompson had decided to make a change in her coffee bean buying when, one day last year, a coffee bean salesperson walked in the shop.
Estela Londono came in promoting direct source Colombian coffee beans. This vivacious, dark-haired lady, who was born in Colombia, came from a family of coffee bean growers in the Medellin area, which is 40 minutes by plane from Bogota, the capital city of Colombia. She and her husband Bob, a Montana native, bought into a coffee bean farm near her parents in Medellin 16 years ago and began importing coffee to the United States. She explained the green coffee beans they import are “third wave” or a higher quality bean because of the source where the trees grow. Colombian coffee beans are grown on trees that grow in the middle of the Andes Mountains at an elevation of 6,000 feet. There is a lot of clean water and the weather is perfect for growing them. The farmers use no insecticide spraying, so the flowers are pollinated by natural pollinators, which gives the coffee its organic flavor,” she explained.
Her sales pitch is a good one in that the history of where her family lives and grows coffee beans is an interesting one: Medellin is notoriously known as the cocaine capital of the world. “The downside of where we come from is the cocaine cartels ran the area for many years. Cocoa Bean growers faced violence constantly. Finally, the Colombian government began a program to offer subsidies for cocoa bean farmers to switch to coffee bean trees. As a result, we coffee importers pay the farmers a premium. Although some farmers have gone back to growing cocoa trees, many farmers have now switched to coffee bean trees. It is working,” she said.
Her company, Montana Coffee Importers, is now part of a cooperative of Colombian coffee importers who only buy specialty coffee beans. They continue to produce and buy bean varieties that only exist in that area of Colombia.
Asked if the new 10 percent import tax has affected her business, Londono said, “We looked hard at how to meet that setback. Since we buy directly from the farmer and sell directly to our customers here in Montana, we have cut out any middlemen. That has helped maintain a lower price. Also, my husband and I decided to build a temperature-controlled warehouse in Helena to stock up on the beans we need for the near future, until we figure out what to do next. We may consider shipping the beans via the East Coast rather than through Seattle,” she said.
Copy Cup owner continues to offer this specialty coffee in all the coffee drinks she sells, both hot and cold. She also sells a coffee energy drink, Fizzi, touted as “better for you,” which has 15 calories, 100 milligrams of caffeine and Stevia as the sugar source. The juice originates from the coffee cherry (very ripe coffee bean) and is all natural.
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PhotoCredit: Nancy Marks, MT43 News Photographer and photo provided
Image 1 Caption: Copy Cup owner Dawn Thompson (left) and Montana Coffee Importers owner, Estela Londono, display the direct coffee variety Eternal Spring, aptly named because it grows on the equator in Colombia.
Nancy Marks, MT43 News Photographer
Image 2 Caption: Coffee bean farmer Javier Florez on the La Loma Farm in Medellin, Colombia.
Photo Provided
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