OUR STORY

Pat and Marge started their travels to Guatemala in 2009 going with teams from their church to serve in a small village where their friend, Mark Richards, who lived there, started a non-profit called BeeLine Wheelchairs to build a new design of wheelchair that he had developed. The teams would stay at Mark’s home when in Guatemala getting to know Mark and the people living in the village.

Pat and Marge have a great LOVE for coffee, they even started a small coffee roasting business of their own. As they continued to travel and serve in Guatemala, they made a habit of unwinding at the end of a week of building houses, or helping give away wheel chairs by touring various coffee plantations - a highlight of their stay. It was not only fun, but incredibly educational, helping them in improving their own roasting skills and in giving them an abundance of coffee knowledge to share with other coffee lovers.

Alas, due to pressing life issues, Pat and Marge sadly sold the roasting business but they never lost their love for and interest in coffee. Little did they know that two very different and distant worlds would collide in an unforeseen way!

After a move from South Dakota to California, Pat and Marge got to know David Cicelio, the CEO of a non-profit organization in Stockton, CA called Restore Stockton. He had a vision of a building to be used as a community center that would serve as a vocational training center and an arts collaborative. It would also have a coffee shop with its own COFFEE ROASTING capability. It would be a place of collaboration between businesses and a place of community gathering.

After hearing about this vision, it was quite clear who the coffee roasters would be! Now, three years later, that vision is a reality. The roasting has begun and the building is very close to being open to the community. That alone is it’s own amazing story!

Yet, an even greater story was unfolding. It was the story of the journey of getting to know a coffee farmer and receiving a personal, private tour of her coffee plantation. The story goes like this: In 2019, Mark Richards married a wonderful Guatemalan woman named Esther. She has a heart similar to Mark’s in that she loves to help the people of her country! She helps families so their children can go to school and makes sure they have food to eat. What is even more wonderful is that she owns a coffee farm named El Capuchino located in the rainforest in Coban. What a joy it was to meet her and to be able to visit her farm. A farm that is cared for above and beyond the normal. Her employees are treated exceptionally well and always paid on time.

The best part? Her farm has amazing tasting coffee! It is an award winning coffee that is fine and well-balanced with distinct fresh fruit notes. It was heart breaking to hear that coffee farmers in Guatemala are struggling and many are cutting down their trees to sell for firewood in order to make some money. Huge coffee companies buy the cheap coffee and make blends with only small amounts of the great tasting Guatemalan coffee, resulting in lower demand for the really good coffees thus driving the worldwide coffee market down. Along with a drought, this has devastated the coffee farmers. Esther who has worked 40 years in the coffee sector and caring for her farm for over 25 years, was determined to rise above these hardships.

Here’s where the two worlds wonderfully collide! In California, Pat and Marge are again beginning to roast and the community center is not far from being ready to open. Esther has a great need to sell her crop so she can pay her workers. What perfect timing!

After cupping her coffee in Guatemala, Esther asks Marge if she would buy her coffee crop. The answer was a resounding, “YES!”

And so it begins! Great single origin coffee from Coban, Guatemala. Named Pure Joy Coffee because even before we tasted it, it brought pure joy to Esther, to her employees and their families!

PURE JOY COFFEE
Coffee that feeds the soul.