The portafilter coffee machinebuzzed, the coffee ran and mosaique filled slowly with hungry and curious people. Last sunday the Lüneburg Teikei-Team hosted a brunch that predominantly intended to have breakfast while listening to Chris telling some seaman’s yarn. Chris went from Elsfleth to Teneriffa with the Avontuur, the sailing boat that later crossed the Atlantic in order to transport coffee beans -among others for Teikei – to Europe.
During his three months at sea he experienced true adventures and told about seasick shipmates (luckily he didn’t have any trouble with that), bread baking actions in the galley that caused a fire alarm and climbing actions on the jib boom. Since he is a passionate photographer, too, he took great photos from his trip which he presented as well.
We laughed a lot, muttered astonishedly and sipped coffee while listening to these crazy stories.
But what is the matter with the sailing and the tasty coffee? Teikei-Coffee consists of a team distributed all over Germany, Switzerland and Mexico that develops a concept to make coffee a global product as part of a solidary value chain. The concept is comparable to solidary agriculture – but on a global level. The farmers are part of the community. Thus, harvest risks are carried together and the coffee is pre-financed. The price of the coffee is the result of the question “What do I need?” The coffee bean is grown in Mexico and harvested by hand. The coffee farmers are educated on biodynamic cultivation. Together ith their partners in the Timbercoast roast house Teikei-Coffee aims at “mission zero” as the complete reduction of emissions. The first step is the transport via sailing boat. Noise pollution and dead oil emissions caused by conventional transport via container ships are avoided.
Once the beans arrive in Hamburg, they are transported to the stockhouse via carrier bycicle. Then, they are brought to the roaster who refines them in Seevetal before transporting them to consumer communities.
You missed the brunch, are not yet part of the consumer community but would like to taste the coffee? Just get on your bike and go to Avenir! You can buy Teikei-Coffee in 250g bags there.
If you like the coffee and don’t want to support the dumping prices of the conventional coffee industry, set a sign and become part of the Lüneburg consumer community! They are nice people that got together in a consumer community (VG in german) to get their coffee every three months and pick it up at Rotes Feld. Are you in? Write an e-mail to the Lüneburg team:
By the way: In july, the Avontuur arrives in Hamburg and then coffee will be unloaded again. Last year the unloading action was a lot of fun, accompanied by many volunteers, music and nice food. If you are interested in joining to unload 20 tons of Teikei-Coffee with many motivated people, write us an e-mail to the adress above, too! They are happy to see you there!