Responsible Coffee Sourcing at Blue Bottle

How data helps drive our sustainable coffee sourcing

Photo credit: Enveritas

Guided by a commitment to sustainable sourcing, Blue Bottle has long offered price premiums to producers based on coffee quality, paid significantly higher than market price, and taken opportunities to support community projects at origin—from agronomy programs to farmworker support initiatives.

In 2020, we sought to protect and deepen this commitment to sustainable coffee sourcing by partnering with Enveritas, a nonprofit that catalogs and evaluates farm practices against environmental, social, and economic sustainability standards.

Enveritas verifies conditions on coffee farms in regions or supply streams where Blue Bottle sources coffee, helping us engage systematically with producers to drive continuous improvement around core sustainability metrics.

To put issues in perspective, Enveritas shares reports with producers to compare farm results to regional trends. Instead of a pass/fail audit like many certification schemes, the data serves as a learning tool and foundation for roasters and producers to understand strengths and opportunities.

In 2023, we achieved Enveritas’s Responsibly Sourced mark for 90 percent of our purchases, with another 9 percent verified or certified as compliant with the Coffee Sustainability Reference Code.

The Enveritas Responsibly Sourced mark means that we not only have a fuller picture of sustainability across our coffee supply but also have invested in projects to remediate risk in each of our sourcing regions.

Together, these marks of responsible sourcing validate Blue Bottle’s commitment to sustainability through traceability and continuous improvement.