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Friends of Metric: Bow & Hammer

Feb 17, 2020 Posted by: Connor Smith Content Manager bow & hammer,  chicago,  Chicago Coffee,  coffee,  coffee and music,  collaboration,  connecting,  custom coffee,  Elizabeth Newkirk,  Fulton Market Collective,  Joseph Gruenthal,  Kathryn Satoh,  Local business,  Made by Humans,  Metric,  Metric Blog,  metric coffee,  Metric West Fulton,  music and coffee,  Partnerships,  small business,  small businesses
Bow & Hammer is one of those partnerships we love. A unique chamber duo specializing in playing and modernizing early 20th-century pieces of chamber music. [We're all about merging classical tools with the contemporary, i.e. our restoration of Black Diamond (our vintage ProBat roaster) that we roast all our small batches on]. With Bow & Hammer, we developed a custom blend of coffee that perfectly pairs with [& fuels] their style. A style that photographer Joseph Gruenthal recently captured for us in the photoblog below; enjoy!

The La Comunión Project

Nov 14, 2019 Posted by: Connor Smith Content Manager Cherry,  Coffee Cherry,  collaboration,  connecting,  Direct Trade,  Green Coffee,  honduras,  Made by Humans,  Partnerships,  Relationship coffee,  Sourcing,  specialty coffee,  Washed Process,  Xavier

One of our most recent releases is a radiant single-origin, Honduras La Comunión. In addition to being a delicious cup full of dried fruit and lemon-lime acidity, there's a beautiful story of collaboration and humanity behind it. Check out Xavier's (Metric Coffee Co.'s Co-Owner & Sourcer) side of developing this new offering in tow with our producing partners of Honduras. Enjoy!

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"La Comunión was born out of a visit to one of our favorite producing groups in Colombia, Azahar. Their pickers project (Los Recolectores) is lead with a simple mission: to pay smallholders microlot pricing for a single-origin, community blend. This program incentivizes smallholders to take a % of their profits to pay higher daily rates to their pickers (in this case, usually each other's neighbors). In addition to offering more support to one another, paying pickers adequately for their hard work helps maintain and build a high level of quality. After several years of bearing witness of the direct impact this program had in this community, it became clear to me the importance that we can make by replicating this program at other origins.

With that in mind, I connected with our good friend, Benjamin Paz, whom we've had a great relationship since 2015 harvest! He helped us create a Santa Barbara community blender project with a group of producers already in our fold. The result: La Comunión, a new project focusing our efforts with 3 of our current producing partners (Alma Pineda, Dionisio Rivera & Cecilio Aguilar) and giving us the ability to purchase their crops in their entirety while also ensuring a minimum price paid to the producer of $4.00 F.O.B.

For Metric, the goal of La Comunión is multi-faceted. Bulking coffees from smallholders allows us to purchase entire crops; this guarantees higher premiums with the understanding that the increase in pay will result in better payment to the picker. On the flavor-side, this project allows us to craft a regional blend based on variety and processing, resulting in a profile with uniqueness and quality of a single origin at the consistency of a blender for what will be a surefire crowd favorite"

-Xavier