How we source, who we work with, and what we do with what's left over.
To us, it’s the way we source, the partners we choose, the fair prices we pay. Real relationships, honestly run — that’s the standards we hold ourselves to.
Our relationships with Thai coffee farmers are built on visits, fair pricing, and genuine reinvestment. We visit the farms to understand what’s needed and invest in ways that matter.
From the highlands of Om Koi, Chiang Mai
26 years ago, a small Karen community in the highlands of Om Koi made a decision that most of their neighbours questioned. They stopped farming tomatoes and planted trees instead. You cannot eat a macadamia tree, and the first real harvest is years away. For families living season to season, that kind of patience is a lot to ask.
But they asked it of themselves anyway.
Where it startet
The land around Mae Tom village had worked hard. Tomatoes, chillies, cabbage — crops that paid something in a good week but stripped the soil, demanded heavy chemical inputs, and left families exposed to a single bad market. Many were trapped in a cycle of debt and exhausted land, season after season with nothing to show for it.
The shift to permanent trees didn't happen overnight, and it wasn't imposed from outside. The villagers were sceptical at first. It was only when a neighbouring farm reached steady, profitable yields while the tomato plots stayed in debt that families began to change their minds, one by one, at their own pace, following the evidence in front of them. The cold highland climate is the real edge. It produces large, plump, sweet macadamia kernels that lower, hotter farms simply cannot match. That is how real change happens.
Satum Farm, Thong Pha Phoom, Kanchanaburi
A direct trade model with community impact built in from the start. Purchases from our Kanchanaburi single-origin coffee link directly to farm development — above-market pricing that funds equipment, tree planting, and improved living standards for farmers’ families.
Soil, Water, Heart, Worker
We've been working with Pakphoom at Rai Satum since 2024 — buying around 10 tonnes of green coffee a year, direct from the farm, which covers essentially all of our Thai Fine Robusta. Beyond purchasing, we work together on post-harvest processing, refining how the coffee is handled so quality and price keep improving on both sides.
The farm runs on four pillars Pakphoom calls Soil, Water, Heart, and Worker. Shade-grown coffee within a multi-layer forest structure, organic inputs, circular composting, and integrated crops like avocado and durian that spread risk and provide year-round income. More of the value stays at origin, with the farm processing its own produce on-site. But the part we're proudest of is simpler than any of that: stable, direct purchasing means the people who work this land don't have to leave their families and move to the city to make a living.
Active tree planting initiative in Chiang Mai, extended to our wholesale hotel partners. A direct way to bring sustainability beyond our own operations and into the broader hospitality network.
Big impact comes from our daily decisions — what we roast with, what we serve in, and what we do with what's left over.
