A Conversation with Karen Cebreros, President of
Elan Organic Coffees with Jenice Gharib

Introduction

Say the word optimism and I immediately think of Karen Cebreros. For two years I had the opportunity to work with Cebreros as the manager of her former organic coffee roasting company. Cebreros began as an unknown in the industry with little knowledge of organics or coffee. Twelve years later, she is a key member of the Sustainability Committee and the FairTrade Task Force of the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA). She is also the current president of the San Diego chapter of Women in Business.

Cebreros’s company, Elan Organic Coffees, buys unroasted, green coffee from throughout the coffee growing world–including such countries as Peru, Mexico, Sumatra and Guatemala– and sells it to coffee roasters and brokers. Coffee, still one of the most highly sprayed food crops in the world and one of the most highly consumed beverages, remains her passion and her arena for making a difference in the world. We recently sat down over coffee and discussed why she was in Washington, DC on September 11, the organic coffee industry, the way she does business, and what keeps her going.

Jenice Gharib: Why were you in Washington on September 11th?

Karen Cebreros: Women in Business was taking their annual trip to Washington, DC where we always have a grand experience and have an audience with various politicians in the capitol. This particular year 22 of us elected to go. Our ultimate objective is doing white papers on Capitol Hill. I had a double agenda actually. Not only was I doing a white paper this year, I was also extending invitations to the five Congresswomen we’d be seeing on September 11th to attend what was going to be noted as the first Coffee Congress in the United States where the coffee industry would meet with Congress in an attempt to share some of the concerns that are going on in the industry world-wide. I was presenting five personalized invitations to people like Maxine Waters and Susan Davis.

The morning of September 11th we were to be in the Capitol building at nine o’clock for our first presentation which actually was a remarkable experience because the lady was a very prominent cancer researcher and she actually was so beside herself giving us statistics. For the first time she was giving a speech where she could say progress has been made and statistics are not under control but actually going down as it related to cervical cancer, breast cancer. She concluded at ten. The next speaker came on. She was literally in the midst of her introduction when the door flew open and Mary Getz, the niece of Pauline Getz, one of our members, flew in the room as she lives in DC, and said, ‘You have to leave. We’ve been attacked.’

Everybody was somewhat stunned, speechless and no one moved. She said, ‘The World Trade Center has been hit and so has the Pentagon.’ That seemed to move people. Right at that moment Maxine Waters’s aide came in as well saying that everyone had to evacuate the building right now. We left the Capitol with thousands of people evacuating the city as the military was cordoning it off. You never saw so much activity so fast in your life. I mean, within seconds the entire city was sealed off with thousands of people marching out very peacefully. Then there was an enormous explosion. We could see the Pentagon burning, the smoke and the fire was going up in the air. We could hear planes. The explosion, we were told immediately, was a car bomb. They were towing cars as fast as, faster than we were walking. Just moving every single thing out from the Capitol. Every corner had FBI, guys in fatigues.

[Karen and the other women were taken to Mary Getz’s home where they waited for four hours. Eventually, the women made it back to their hotel. Only one out of 21 women got home on their scheduled flight. Karen and another women traveled by Greyhound bus for 60 hours in order to return home to San Diego.]

The Coffee Congress got canceled. It got canceled because it was due for the 13th. I haven’t heard a word about rescheduling unfortunately. I’d like to know. It’s a big deal. There’s been a huge mistake made with the way World Bank and USAID have funded origin products. There’s a tremendous amount of money that has been allocated to Vietnam which caused an overabundance along with an oversupply in the world in general–Brazil has too much. Vietnam flooded the market and their robustas are trading at around 17 cents a pound, which does no good for anyone at any level. That was one issue. Would USAID and Congress please entertain some feedback from the industry so we can suggest what it is we want to buy, what it is they ought to do with the money, where they ought to put it, and how they ought to manage it to a certain extent? In any event, there were four key bullet points and sustainability of the planet was actually on there. This would be the first time the coffee industry was ever asked to actually go face-to-face with Congress. It will come back again, I’m sure, in 2002.

JG: What’s happening in the organic coffee industry?

KC: After having been 12 years in the organic industry finally we’ve gone from being, you know, somewhat of a nut, to a trend, to the pioneer, to business as usual. Now organic has gone mainstream. It’s growing five percent a year in the specialty [coffee] niche and crossing over into the mass markets. We’re actually seeing organic coffees in supermarkets now, like Safeway and Ralphs. Having tried everything from roasting to cafes to coffee carts at Elan, we’ve refocused and now we’re putting a lot more emphasis on development. We’re marketing ourselves as origin developers, to build relationships and bridges between buyers and suppliers.

There’s a tremendous need for coffee to be looked at, and how to keep it special in a 45-cent commodity market. People are not motivated to take very good care of their coffee, or to even plant coffee, or to even continue in the industry. So, what do we do? We have to go down and we have to try to pay fair prices. Our licensing with TransFair has proven to be a very good. Timing-wise, it’s a very controversial issue in the US. The specialty industry feels assaulted and attacked by having been threatened with pickets at Peet’s, Diedrichs, Starbucks, and so they’ve licensed with TransFair–but against their better judgment. They feel they were blacklisted. It has caused an image control problem. In fact, I’m particularly focused on fair trade coffee, shade-grown coffee, organic coffees, but I’ve asked for an audience with Paul Rice [director of TransFair]. I’ve asked for at least five brokers who do care about the movement, for all the right reasons, to have an audience with him try to see if we can’t readdress the image, the ideas, the contracts, the pricing structure, the lack of a quality component. We’ve been granted the audience with Paul January 22nd in San Francisco.

We will be able to say that 80 percent of our business this year [2001] was fair trade organic. The rest was organic. We did no conventional coffee. It allowed us to spike, I don’t know the numbers yet, probably 30 or 40 percent, because big, specialty houses did move forward and everybody is starting to follow. The same idea of Starbucks. What they started in the 80s created a playing field for the specialty coffee arena. Now Starbucks making a move on the sustainable issues has caused everybody to start taking a step forward.

We are fortunate to be in the right place at the right time and supply, instead of one or two brokers, at least ten brokers. Our focus will be on developing unique projects that hit all buttons. I’d like to be able to say that at the end of 2002, 80% of our coffees are triple certified–with shade, organic and TransFair licenses. And to allow the roasters who are completely interested in marketing, brand their projects and products with our farmers exactly like wine. That’s what’s happening.

Our lead customer, Green Mountain, is taking the extra effort and taking their entire coffee team, if you will, to visit the Voice of Christ from the Desert. In February, they’re taking their marketing people, their coffee people, their buyers, their sales managers to see it, get it, believe it, understand it, put it in their catalogs. It is no longer coffee from Guatemala. It’s no longer organic coffee. It’s no longer stewardship coffee. It is certified organic, shade-grown, fair trade coffee from Lake Atitlan from the Voice of Christ from the Desert. That’s the future. That’s the only way that the suppliers and everybody else are going to be able to survive and to differentiate themselves from the multinationals.
The SCAA has actually embraced the Environment Committee and has actually allowed us to evolve into what’s now known as the Sustainabililty Committee and we have many of the coffee icons on it, participating very aggressively so that it’s a component of business, not a fringe, leftist, activist, earthy-crunchy group. FairTrade actually has a task force within the SCAA now, the only outside organization to actually have a task force by its own trade name. I have just been asked to join that. I am participating on sustainability and fair trade to the best of my ability.

JG: How would you describe the way you do business?

KC: Essentially, what we do is we try to do business in a fashion that makes a difference not just make a living. And the only way we can make a difference is if consumers make a choice to vote with their dollars. That’s to go buy products that are socially and environmentally responsible. All I can do is keep offering different choices, different options, and encouraging people to educate themselves and vote with their dollars since we are a consumer culture. Create the demand and the need for doing things in a much more mindful, conscious way.

One aspect of Elan that I’m kind of happy about is that we’ve been consistent. We have the same mission statement we’ve had since day one. It’s been modified and improved upon but the same concept. ‘Elan will supply the finest certified organic coffees in the world supporting equitable partnerships between consumers, farmers and the environment while maintaining a profitable company.’

JG: What keeps you going, keeps you optimistic?

KC: I would say that I’m a firm believer in you are what you think, that thoughts are things. That is a practice that you have to have consciousness of all the time. You have to discipline yourself to think positive thoughts. Probably the most important piece is to surround yourself with positive people and positive energy and like-minded individuals. We don’t have to be right but we do have to do things in a different fashion. We have to be smart.

Now that we’re in a new world order and there’s tragedy, there’s also triumph. Everything has to be far more mindful and we all just have to be very conscious of how we spend our time, our energy, and how we think. Everything’s a choice in life. Even in the midst of tragedy we can still choose how we want to react and act. Right or wrong, good or bad, all the mistakes we’ve made, I feel that you have to continue to take a risk, step out of the box, pull the trigger. Don’t stay stuck and don’t wallow in things. A philosophy I’ve always had is make a decision even if it’s wrong. Just learn from it and try to make new mistakes. I’ve been fortunate. I keep meeting the right people, the wonderful people. No matter how things look somebody gives you the support you need to move on.