How to Improve Corporate Social Responsibility with Coffee

Over the past decade, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become an increasingly important issue, affecting both customer acquisition and recruitment. 

Whilst most businesses today want to operate in an ethical, sustainable and environmentally responsible way, it can be difficult to compile, communicate and maintain a clear CSR strategy. 

A great place to start with transforming the corporate social responsibility of your organisation is with the refreshments and beverages you provide to your team, customers and visitors. By sourcing coffee, tea and other refreshments responsibly, you can help contribute to making real economic, social and environmental change, both in the UK and around the world.

Ethically Sourced Coffee

Until recently, arabica coffee was traded on the stock market in New York. However, when Vietnam experienced a coffee boom in the eighties the coffee market became flooded and subsequently, the value of coffee plummeted far below the amount it was costing farmers to produce. Many farmers in Central America in particular were forced to abandon their land and beg on the streets, with instances of suicide common. 

Today, certification schemes have played a vital role in creating a market of more ethically conscious consumers to ensure the communities and habitats that play such a vital role in coffee production are protected. 

By choosing Fairtrade, Soil Association Organic, UTZ and Rainforest Alliance certified coffee beans for your business, you are helping communities thrive and reducing the impact coffee production has on the environment – both backbones of a good corporate social responsibility strategy.

Below are some of the certifications you should look for when responsibly sourcing coffee for your business:

Fairtrade Coffee

Fairtrade supports farmers by ensuring fair pay, decent working conditions, local sustainability and fair terms of trade. It’s all about supporting farmers to secure sustainable livelihoods and protecting the communities and environment in which they work. 

In the UK, Fairtrade coffee now accounts for about 25% of all coffee sales, with the demand for ethically sourced coffee only growing.

Social Association Organic

Organic is a system of food production that works with nature instead of against it. Organic farmers produce high-quality coffee using methods that benefit the food, the people who produce and consume it and the planet. These include using fewer pesticides, no manufactured herbicides or artificial fertilisers

Rainforest Alliance

Through pragmatic collaboration with farmers and forest communities, the Rainforest Alliance aim to rebalance the planet by preventing deforestation and encouraging responsible farming techniques.

UTZ

UTZ combines elements of each of the above programmes to grow coffee that is produced in an environmentally friendly manner, traded at a fair price and helps farmers, workers and their families to fulfil their ambitions and contribute to safeguarding the world’s resources.

Our Sustainably Sourced Favourites

With so many different options to choose from, our coffee experts have selected their three favourite ethically and sustainably sourced coffee beans for you to enjoy.

Change Please

Change Please is an innovative non-profit organisation that helps people out of homelessness in the UK by retraining them as baristas and providing them with employment. 

We have partnered with Change Please to help them in their mission to eliminate homelessness in the UK, by offering their delicious Paloma Coffee Beans, exclusively to Liquidline customers. 

Change Please Paloma Coffee is a multiple origin, medium-dark roast that’s well balanced and full-bodied, with notes of sweet caramel and cocoa. 

Café Bonté Triple Certified

A 100% Arabica blend from Honduras, Sumatra and Columbia that’s Fairtrade, Organic and Rainforest Alliance certified. 

Café Bonté Triple Certified Coffee Beans provide a strong, bold and smooth cup of coffee with fruity acidity and notes of caramel and almond.

Communicating to Stakeholders

Undoubtedly the main reason businesses should be committed to corporate social responsibility is because acting morally, ethically and sustainably responsible is the right thing to do. However, your CSR efforts should also go a long way in boosting the reputation of your business amongst internal (employees) and external (customers) stakeholders. It is therefore important that you actively promote the efforts of your corporate social responsibility strategy.

Branded Commercial Coffee Machine

Improve engagement and get buy-in from your team and customers with branded coffee equipment and accessories that promote the great initiatives your choice of coffee supports. 

This could be as simple as having the universally recognisable Fairtrade or Rainforest Alliance logos displayed on the side of your cups, or you may choose to have a fully branded machine such as the Change Please Club, CT8 and Soul featured below.

If you believe that business should be a force for good in the world and are looking to responsibly source your commercial coffee needs, please get in touch with our knowledgeable team today to find out more.