In the past few years and despite the pandemic, we’ve seen a consistent growth of the specialty coffee global market. One element driving this, is the progessive shift of specialty coffee from being an elitist product to becoming more approachable.

And as it’s becoming more approachable, end consumers are also becoming more “sustainable-conscious”, and are demanding that their coffee suppliers become more transparent about their sustainability efforts and certainty of being part of a fair and inclusive value chain.

However, coffee is still primarily bought and sold as a commodity crop, meaning its sale value is tied to international futures markets like the NYSE, and is not reflective of the widely varying levels of quality and differentiation among beans.

The bond between the price of coffee and the commodity market has been extremely detrimental to producers who have been subject to its volatility and speculation for years, keeping them trapped in poverty, and often forcing them to sell their crops below production costs and with little chance of access to a fair market that values quality.

In order to improve this situation, direct trade was born as a spectacular manner to stand in strong contrast to the model of acquiring coffee as a commodity, in which larger transnational corporations buy untraceable coffee through brokers at the lowest price the market can dictate. However, relying fully on direct-trade for sourcing coffee is way too often an option that is almost exclusively available to big roasters, and is frequently constrained by logistics and traveling options in these post-pandemic times.

Fantine was born to help coffee producers access international markets, link them to roasters and enable them to transact in a more direct, reliable and transparent way.

Through Fantine’s digital marketplace, buyers get to know all the information about the coffee and the farm including sustainable practices not limited to certifications. Buyers can access very specific types of coffee, such as processes that are not widely available because farmers don’t produce them for the mass market.

Fantine solves the issues of doing direct trade, while keeping its values.

Buying green coffee is somewhat complicated. The coffee has to be shipped around half the world and most coffee roasters as well as coffee producers are not experts in international trading and its regulations.

We know this and that’s why we created Fantine.

Fantine makes direct trade easy.

Through Fantine, roasters can easily do on-demand coffee trading in a transparent and convenient way.

We believe in transparency and in mutually valuable and respectful relationships between roasters and farmers. We share with our partners and clients all the relevant information about every step of the trade – including who receives how much along the way. This means that we communicate exactly how much money is paid to the producers for their coffee.

The main motivation behind Fantine is to help each roaster find the right supplier for its business.

We want roasters to be able to choose the right producers to work with, those growers that are aligned with the roasters’ core business values, whether for reasons of excellent quality, contribution to poverty reduction or social development, or because they share the same values in protecting the environment.

There are truly knowledgeable and experienced producers in Colombia and all around the world, that are able to craft incredible coffees. The problem for roasters is that it is sometimes very difficult to find and connect to them.

In turbulent times such as those we live in today, too often characterized by a world with an increasing amount of challenges and dangers, it is any coffee value chain player’s responsibility to act fairly and to be aware of risks or not doing so.

Certifications are not enough. In reality, we reckon that the value chain still relies too heavily on certification labels that often leave out small producers, or those producers who are doing a spectacular job but simply do not see the economic value in paying for the certifications.

Through Fantine, roasters and coffee growers with small farms or large estates share a common goal: smooth direct trade with sales on demand at a fair price.

Fantine is an independent company not backed by large coffee corporations which has been working since 2019 in the R&D of technology for the digitization and transparency of the coffee value chain. This marketplace is just one part of the company’s mission to digitize the entire coffee value chain through the application of Artificial Intelligence and blockchain technology. Fantine currently has personnel in Colombia, Europe and the UK. Behind Fantine there’s a team of coffee lovers, software developers and engineers, with more than 15 years of experience in coffee production, quality, processing and logistics.

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The First ever social-impact Coffee NFT for the Future of Coffee

One of the most significant threats for the availability of coffee in the future is that younger generations are not attracted to stay in agriculture because they do not consider coffee production as a stable source of income and see that the effort and hard work of their parents or grandparents is seldom financially rewarded.

The first-ever NFT for the future of coffee is the by-product of the drawings of tens of kids in Nariño, that took part in an initiative on the future of coffee, nature and sustainability, organized by Fundación Germinar as part of the program “Coffee for Peace” in the department of Nariño, Colombia.

The objective of Fantine, through this NFT, is to support the coffee school for kids of Fundación Germinar that includes barista and coffee taster trainings.

By engaging kids since an early age in coffee related trainings, workshops and activities, they become interested in coffee production and its quality, which allows them to see the opportunity that specialty coffee represents as an important source of income for their families. This prevents young people from abandoning agriculture as a livelihood option. The average age of coffee growers is over 55 years old, and fewer and fewer young people continue to grow coffee due to low margins and the mounting challenges of the industry.

Why an NFT for the present of coffee?

One of the most significant threats for the availability of coffee in the future is that younger generations are not attracted to stay in agriculture because they don’t consider coffee production as a stable source of income. They see that the effort and hard work of their parents or grandparents is seldom financially rewarded.

Coffee producers too aren’t exactly encouraging their children to get their hands dirty in coffee’s arduous work. On the contrary, they wish to provide a very good education for their children so that they can take up positions that allow them a stable and well-paid life, often far away from their parents’ fields and coffee plantations.

Fortunately, this is not the case for all kids and young adults in coffee producing areas. Some of them have been inspired by what they experienced when their family decided to switch to producing specialty coffee.

That’s the case of Maria Fernanda, a 9-year-old girl from Tablón de Gómez, Nariño, who has been a regular assistant of the events for kids organized by the Germinar Foundation. According to Maria Fernanda’s own words: “I want to have a beautiful farm with a big central de beneficio“. In these coffee gatherings, kids share their feelings, dreams and objectives for their future, and play educational games to increase their awareness on topics such as environmental protection and personal health.

This NFT is the by-product of the drawings of tens of kids in Nariño, who were invited by Fundación Germinar as part of the program “Coffee for Peace”. The objective of Fantine, through this NFT, is to support the coffee school for young adults of Fundación Germinar that includes barista and coffee taster trainings.