We speak to Micah Sherer, the founder of nonprofit Skylark Coffee, on his start in coffee and his “light bulb moment“ regarding inequity in the coffee world.
BY EMILY JOY MENESES
BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE
Photos courtesy of Skylark Coffee
Micah Sherer has spent two decades working in the coffee field, and the inequities he observed within the industry led him to the work he does today. Now, as the founder of Brighton, U.K.’s Skylark Coffee, one of the world’s few nonprofit coffee companies, Micah is on a mission to make a difference. Today, we’re sitting down with him as he shares the pivotal moments that shaped his journey, his vision for ethical coffee production, and his hopes for a better coffee world.
Barista Magazine Online: Can you share with us how you got your start in coffee, and a little bit about your journey from then to now?
Micah Sherer: I got my start in coffee at Coffee and Crema, which was the only specialty shop within 150 miles of where I lived in the mid-2000s. After that I helped start a few roasteries and cafés before ending up in the importing business at Ally Coffee. I was one of the first employees in their specialty department, so it was a pretty unique opportunity to grow with a young company and learn about import/export. I did a lot of different jobs for Ally, including living in Ethiopia as their East African buyer. It was through this experience that I became cognizant of the unequal power that coffee buyers had over producers, and I left Ally to do post-grad research at the Institute of Development Studies looking into poverty in coffee supply chains. We laid the groundwork for opening Skylark while I was in the middle of finishing my dissertation at IDS.
What inspired you to start Skylark Coffee? How does it feel, being the first coffee nonprofit organization?
My “light bulb moment“ was in a producer forum in Brazil with farmers from all over South/Central America. The presenter mentioned the average retail sales price for a 12 oz. bag of specialty coffee in the U.S. was $12. It felt like the air left the room as the farmers did the math and realized their coffee was being marked up by roasters from $3 to $16/lb while they struggled to get by.
I knew Ally did well to make a 20% margin on average. Therefore the fundamental problem isn’t “middle men,“ as the direct trade story says. The problem is an extractive system that keeps profits and power in Global North countries (with roasters) rather than sharing them fairly with producing countries. I should say, there are plenty of great charities and NGOs working in the coffee space. But as far as I know we’re the first with our particular model, where we’re working in the main profit-center of the industry (roasting) and focusing on redistributing power and money to others with open source finances.
Tell us a little bit about how Skylark operates—how you source/roast your coffee, and how, as a nonprofit, you operate differently from a for-profit coffee business.
We legally and practically don’t exist to make money, but the fundamentals of Skylark are similar to any other medium-sized, ethical specialty roaster. We buy coffee from long-term partnerships with farmers, use importers to ship the coffee to us, and then roast and sell it to cafés and consumers. The main difference is we give away all of our proceeds rather than paying an “owner“ or a corporation. These profits go to farmer sustainable livelihood projects, nature preservation, and jobs training at our sister charity Pro Baristas for disadvantaged people in our home city of Brighton (many of whom have complex needs or are refugees).
How do you think operating as a nonprofit organization affects the way that you and your team approach things? Why do you think this different approach is important?
Being a nonprofit has some key benefits such as removing the risks of shareholder greed, venture capital investment pressure, or corporate consolidation from the equation. Skylark cannot legally be bought, so that increases trust and buy-in from all of our stakeholders including our employees. Everyone on the team knows they aren’t working to make me rich; they’re working to make the world a better place.
We are also free to make every single decision based on what is most ethical instead of what is most profitable. For example, we try to start our buying with the relational question of “how much do you need to make per kilo?“ instead of targeting the best value green we can find for the money. Quality is crucial to specialty coffee, but I think perhaps we need to be less concerned with increasing farmers’ cup scores and more concerned with increasing farmers’ paychecks. If better coffee leads to better outcomes for farmers and their communities, great! Unfortunately that’s not always the case, and we can’t care more about flavor than we care about justice.
Ultimately, what are your goals with Skylark Coffee? How do you think other coffee companies/coffee professionals can keep Skylark Coffee’s sentiments in mind when approaching their work?
I think kindness and real transparency are the keys here. We want to bring other roasters along with us rather than trying to take over the market share ourselves—that’s part of why we publish our finances and even our margin calculator, so hopefully we democratize whatever knowledge we might gain and others can replicate the model. Nonprofit is certainly a framework I believe in, but you can be a for-profit roastery and still make radical changes to the ethical paradigm. My friends at Paso Paso for instance have another interesting model: a roastery that has multiple coffee farmers as part owners, so the roastery inevitably works in the farmers’ best interest. I think many different corporate structures could be effective, and what matters more is your intention and praxis. Is your business actively trying to shift power and profit away from yourself and towards the less privileged?
Anything else you’d like to share?
We don’t have it all figured out, and I always welcome suggestions and collaboration. I love when someone points out something Skylark could be doing better. Inequality in the coffee supply chain isn’t a simple problem, and there isn’t a simple solution. … The global coffee value chain is set up for exploitation, and we all have to do our best to ensure that everyone in our global coffee community has the capability to live a life they have reason to value.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Emily Joy Meneses (she/they) is a writer and musician based in Los Angeles. Her hobbies include foraging, cortados, vintage synths, and connecting with her Filipino roots through music, art, food, and beverage.
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