Coffee Connects | Coffee Moments Create A Global Coffee Community
By Aliisa Oake
The sweet aroma of coffee has a special way of putting smiles on faces around the world, tying our senses to moments in time. Morning coffee moments are simple daily rituals that fuel many days, but with every cup poured a ripple effect unfolds. Coffee connects the world in immense ways, creating connections between farmers and families, friends and strangers, and even communities across continents – tying flavors to emotions, traditions, and more.
Over the years, a deeper sense of connection has been linked to coffee and an evolved purpose has come to light. Whether coffee holds cultural significance, a symbol of identity, or consumed daily for alertness, its complex flavors and deep rooted history reveal something more than just a beverage. The places from which it originates are being highlighted by roasters and distributors, creating connections between roasted coffee beans and their consumers. Around the world, coffee connects people’s traditions with a unique coffee culture – meaning the consumption of coffee and related social or cultural practices, rituals, or behaviors that surround it – but we’ll get into more details about this later on.
Green coffee cherries ripening in early stages
The bigger picture here is that through many stages of its lifecycle, a global coffee community has been built. Within different communities, coffee acts as a social catalyst, as it provides a central point for gatherings, enables conversations, and promotes shared experiences, whether in coffee shops or in homes. Coffee is creating connections economically and globally as producers, buyers, businesses, and consumers are linked by their common desires for this product, bringing forth many commodity market transactions. Within a coffee community, warm, collective moments are shared between producers and their families as they join together for the excitement of harvest season. For coffee growing communities, coffee and their cultivation practices serve as a secure link to generations of traditions and cultural heritage – also representing their livelihood and identity.
Coffee Moments from Bean to Cup Around the World
From the hands of coffee producers located across high-altitude regions, harvesting ripe coffee cherries on Guatemala’s mineral-rich, volcanic soils, to the quiet kitchens of homes and bustling cafes where every cup of coffee is savored around the world, coffee moments carry levels of significance. To some, coffee is a simple beverage, savored just for a moment before a busy day. For others, coffee connects people by serving as an excuse for conversation, allowing a chance to catch up with friends and family over freshly brewed coffee and delicious pastries, or becoming an essential part of daily meetings held with colleagues as they discuss the latest happenings in the office. Within its early product lifecycle stages, coffee provides an essential income used to fuel economies and feed families, but also binds connections to family owned land and generations of knowledge.
Coffee has profoundly influenced humankind: shaping cultural practices, fulfilling daily rituals, and driving innovation. To uncover its true impact and the ways it is still creating connections, let’s go back to its origins – to the moment the first coffee plant was discovered and the beginning of what is now a global coffee community. Legend has it that back in the 9th Century in Ethiopia, a goat herder named Kaldi noticed his goats becoming more energetic after eating red berries from a specific tree that was unknown at the time. After his discovery, Kaldi shared what he experienced with the head of a local monastery, who made a drink with the cherries and found that it kept him alert. His discovery was quickly shared with other monks at a monastery, and from there, knowledge of these energizing berries began to spread eastward.
Coffee Community of La Suiza — cooperative member sorting ripe coffee cherries
Over the years, coffee’s popularity grew throughout the world through consumption and production, spreading from Africa to Europe and to the Americas. As it spread, lengthy trial and error processes occurred. Farmers experimented with cultivating delicate saplings in unfamiliar climates and soils, each attempt shaping the plant’s path and the creation of a global map of coffee producing regions, now known as the “Bean Belt”. The history of coffee has left a deep imprint on the world, from colonial trade routes and global commerce to the evolution of globalization. A singular bean of coffee connects parts of the world to each other, carrying with it the stories of coffee producers, the ambitions of entrepreneurs, and the preferences of millions who savor it daily.
By the late 1800s, coffee had become a worldwide commodity, giving rise to its desire in everyday life, inspiring coffee moments shared across continents. Nations and communities began embracing coffee as each region developed a love for it and even created somewhat of a ritual – showcasing values and coffee moments turned into rhythms of everyday life. Individual societies were suddenly connected through coffee, but based on customs, such as Turkish customs of reading fortunes in coffee grounds or the quick pause for an espresso break in Italy.
Brewed coffee being shared with members of the Women Caficultora Network; shared coffee moments
Shared traditions traveled and transformed as coffee moved across regions. Out of this grew unique coffee cultures, each shaped by diverse local customs, tastes, and social behaviors. Around the world, coffee culture has become a bridge for people across the supply chain. Coffee culture is defined as the traditions and behaviors depending heavily on the consumption of coffee, particularly as fulfilling the role as a social facilitator in societies. This phrase is also used to refer to the spread, acceptance, and adaptation of coffee as people of different regions developed their own distinct ways of preparing, serving, and enjoying this far-traveled beverage. In other words, coffee culture is a reflection of tradition and consumerism trends.
From producers sharing and expanding upon ancestral knowledge in coffee cultivation, harvest, and processing methods, to baristas experimenting with brewing methods, and consumers gathering in cafes or searching shelves for the best roasted coffee to fuel their mornings, each interaction fuses a global web – creating connections surrounded by coffee. Coffee moments have led to the emergence of an expansive coffee community that thrives on exchanges of ideas, techniques, and traditions. They link producers with roasters, and buyers with drinkers, in commerce and beyond.
Guatemala’s Coffee Community
Coffee has become a common language around the world, as it opens the door for relationships and creates a sense of belonging across continents. Beyond what meets our senses are coffee producing communities working hard to bring this beverage to life. The residents and producers of these regions have a connection to coffee that runs much deeper. Coffee connects with people through heritage and serves as a symbol of their livelihood, identity, and community pride. In Guatemala, coffee is a living tradition passed down through generations of coffee producers who balance their ancestral cultivating practices with demands of markets around the world. As producers continue to innovate with new techniques and technologies and obtain knowledge spread from other coffee growing regions, they are on a path of exploration. With the discovery of specialty coffee markets, they have begun to receive higher equity for taking the intricate steps involved in producing high quality coffee. Coffee continues to be a pathway to new opportunities and a link to the past – all while reflecting their personal stories to coffee lovers around the world through a globally consumed beverage.
Coffee being roasted on a comal (round griddle), on a plancha (wood-fired stove)
The daily lives of coffee producers in Guatemala are filled with many community focused coffee moments, especially during times of harvest season, or la cosecha. Of course, many of their early mornings begin with a warm cup of coffee, sometimes with the beans they have cultivated and roasted themselves, though due to financial limitations, many families consume instant coffee. This small act underscores the complex realities of the production side of coffee, where the final product is often exported, rather than consumed within their own homes. Traditional coffee brewing methods are also still used, where coffee is prepared on a wood-fired stove, or plancha, bringing coffee moments of warm conversation between community members, turning the act of brewing into a social ritual.
Within the fields of coffee trees, harvest days are long and labor-intensive, yet rich with connection. Friends, neighbors, and extended family members gather together among rows of coffee trees, working side by side to pick ripened, bright red coffee cherries. This shared labor becomes a moment of unity, devotion, and a sense of collective achievement. Around mid-day, families carry on traditions that bring even more joy into their fields as they prepare large lunches together, sitting on blankets in the shade beneath surrounding trees and coffee plants, sharing food, stories, and laughter. These moments of togetherness strengthen the bonds within their community and bring forth their own cultural thread that coffee connects, along with new memories of these joyful moments in their busy days. Each coffee community in Guatemala showcases an interconnected history of traditions, collective effort, and a connection to the land and each other – all contributing to the unique characteristics and high quality of Guatemalan specialty coffee.
How Coffee Connects Through De La Gente
De La Gente’s coffee community is outstretched mindfully – creating connections in every step of our work through transparency, relationship-building, and storytelling. This is all brought together by coffee and our organization’s mission and vision.
Through established cooperatives, we strengthen connections between coffee producers, as they come together and collaborate, laying strong foundations for progress within fields and in markets. Cooperatives are incredibly valuable as members are part of a supportive community that allows them to share knowledge and resources as they collectively improve the quality of their coffee. Through training sessions and meetings, experienced coffee producers pass on techniques to younger generations, while innovations in cultivation, processing, and sustainability are exchanged. The ways in which coffee connects cooperative members builds a sense of solidarity, mutual strength, and promise of success is shared by entire communities.
At De La Gente, we strive to connect people with each other from the start of the coffee cultivation process to its end, inviting people from all over the world to visit us and experience the hard work involved in coffee production, all the way up to the very end of the supply chain – when online purchases of freshly roasted coffee gets delivered to doorsteps. We bridge gaps in the coffee industry in Guatemala, breaking barriers by connecting producers directly with coffee buyers, whether they are green coffee buyers, roasters, coffee shop owners, or individual consumers. Through our relationship-based trade model, coffee connects consumers and buyers through personal relationships, storytelling, and full transparency in every step of the process.
Beyond the beverage, our Community Tourism and Immersion Programs are creating connections globally, as we open the doors into the coffee world of our partner coffee growing community of San Miguel Escobar, within the Antigua coffee growing region of Guatemala. Visitors get a firsthand experience of Guatemala’s traditions as they are invited into the daily lives of coffee producers where meals are shared and incredible stories are told within the fields of their very own coffee trees. These trips create valuable coffee moments for visitors based on a profound new understanding of the coffee industry through a meaningful connection, where memories remain and are shared across continents.
Equally important is creating connections between Guatemala’s coffee heritage and securing a sustainable future. Generations of coffee producers have carried traditions and techniques, preserving cultural practices tied to coffee – coffee moments tied to identity. The balance of tradition and innovative progress ensures that coffee production remains viable and inspiring. Coffee producers are at the heart of an industry that creates a global community of coffee lovers, and the next generation is where the future of its success lies as they expand upon the opportunities built by their families.
Coffee is relevant in more ways than one, carrying significance to people and regions depending on coffee moments, coffee culture, and creating connections influenced by coffee. Through a broader lens, coffee can be viewed as a means of connecting people across cultures, strengthening community ties, and ensuring every cup supports heritage and opportunity from the location that it's grown to the places it ends up. We hope that De La Gente’s coffee community is able to enjoy their warm mugs of coffee every morning while also being able to connect it to moments in time, as well as seeing a relevance in this beloved beverage – whether it’s knowing that they are supporting a greater cause, or they are creating coffee moments of their own. From the plants that produce, to the cups we create, the connections that coffee creates are unlike any other – and it’s a beautiful thing to be a part of it all.
