STiR coffee and tea magazine

22 STiR coffee and tea | 2024 Issue 3 (June / July) Coffee blossoms on the Gichangi Family Estate. Sustainable Agriculture is notoriously tricky to define. Family-run businesses like Gichangi Estate in Kirinyaga, Kenya, face massive challenges on a constant basis. keting by launching campaigns which aren't backing up what their brand says with what their brand does. Purpose-led brand communications is not just a matter of 'make them cry, make them buy'. It's about action in the world," he said. It is widely accepted that Gen Z is known as the "most pur- pose-driven generation," and seeks to back brands which align with personal ethical identities. Coffee businesses are tailor- made for this fit, but trouble does arise when the same terminol- ogy is used by "real" or "DNA-level" social impact firms and by those utilizing the concepts to expand their market cap. We can observe the fallout of a company being caught in misalignment by watching the recent case of the NCL (National Consumers League) filing suit against Starbucks for false claims and mis- leading marketing in its coffee and tea products. Sustainable Unsustainability? Recent conversations led by Sucafina through the vehicle of its recently-acquired subsidiary, Sustainable Harvest, at the SCA (Specialty Coffee Association) Expo in Chicago were centered around the concept of "unsustainable coffee," asking questions on what makes a brand sustainable, how purpose-driven coffee businesses can succeed when by the nature of their structure they take on much of the risk in the supply chain, and what the future of farmer-focused green coffee looks like. Acknowledged is the dissonance that the reason this conversation is happening is that Sustainable Harvest itself, an undeniably powerful posi- tive impact for more than two decades around the world, had reached a point of unsustainability in 2023. Other brands fo- cused on supply chain sustainability have recently closed, been acquired, or gone bankrupt. Unilever itself, after showing remarkable growth for years while it led the corporate world in sustainability and social im- pact strategy through its 2010 Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP), has faltered recently on its earnings and has divested some of its verticals where this sustainability focus was most felt, such as its tea business, ekaterra—which included Lipton's, PG Tips, and Tazo Tea (the buyer of which, as reported on page 26, is also divesting many of its properties along with their pesky human rights claims)—in 2022. As referenced earlier in this ar- ticle, the position where an observer stands greatly influences the conclusions they draw from these developments. Time Frames and Markers of Success Assessing the success of a social impact business is extremely difficult to do, because success is more nuanced than simply demonstrating continual growth on quarterly earnings reports and keeping a high net promoter score with customers. While the formation of the business dictates what these metrics might be, success for a social impact business certainly requires the impact projects it embarks upon to achieve success and for con- tinual reporting and adjustment to take place. Time horizons can be tricky here: success this year in rais- ing profit margins by 2% might sacrifice the 5-year achieve- ment of diversifying the supply chain to 100% EUDR-com- pliant growers. Investors and shareholders may have different expectations around business growth while idealistic founders or business managers may prefer to focus on the business's environmental impact. The difficulty of measuring, marketing, and analyzing the intersection of growth and impact, along with the trend for solely impact-focused businesses to fold dramatically (or just as dramatically be acquired by greater interests which may or may not share their goals) only brings us back around to the ultimate burning question: is Good Growth possible within the coffee and tea industries? Answering this question remains in itself a good task, as does sitting with the mess and sprawl of the data and its related realities. If Good Growth is possible, we shall achieve it, and if it is not, we shall be better for the attempt.

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