Coffee & Corporate Social Responsibility
A Fresh Brew: IMPCT Coffee Company recently visited Pivot's Santa Clara showroom to discuss how coffee can improve the workplace and the world!
Company Culture & Coffee Talk
At Pivot, we enjoy a good cup of coffee and our employees usually start their workday at our beloved coffee bar. Serving premium coffee in the workplace is certainly a perk that many employees value, but selecting the right brand requires more than just a taste test. Did you know that the coffee you buy can make a big difference in how it shares its profits with the growers?
Most people don't know that coffee has a shockingly low return for the people that do 90% of the work. For large coffee companies, buying standard commodity-grade coffee only 7% of the retail value of the coffee returns to its origin. Modern, direct-trade coffee companies can return ~15% by working directly with growers and sourcing superior coffee at a better price, but is still not enough to make a big impact on people’s lives, or create real change.
Enter IMPCT Coffee
IMPCT Coffee is a global social enterprise with a simple goal: to maximize the impact that coffee can have on the vulnerable communities who bring it to us. Their impact trade model was built from the ground up to do just this, investing 25% of the revenue from carefully sourced direct trade coffee back to the people that matter most: local women to run poverty-fighting schools. A grand total of 41% of the retail value of their coffee going back to its origin, creating schools and infrastructure to build a brighter future for local families, at the same price as other coffee companies for the consumer.
How to get involved
IMPCT Coffee recently visited us at Pivot Interiors Santa Clara and brought a variety of tasty coffee samples for us to try from regions in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. We were impressed by the high quality of their coffee and blown away by the meaningful mission and message behind IMPCT.
Today, IMPCT Coffee has created a North American home base in the Bay Area and will be providing roasted whole bean coffee for corporate offices and other partners in the area. The company's "bricks" program allows both individuals and organizations to track their impact, and measure real, compelling results, by laying “bricks” to support projects around the world. Organizations will have access to a powerful corporate social responsibility tool that costs nothing more than switching coffee providers to IMPCT.
Making a Difference
Pivot Interiors is always striving to bring our employees together as a company, and reflect our values in an authentic way. We are excited to be joining IMPCT's "bricks" program as part of our corporate social responsibility initiative. It is truly inspiring to see how one company can make a world of difference. To put things into perspective, an office with 500 employees would consume enough coffee to build two schools a year! Since 2015, IMPCT has built seven schools in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and South Africa.
