We set out to create a coffee company that sees beyond the status quo of the coffee industry. Our promise is to honor, reflect and simply do right by the cultures and communities that produce this cherished fruit that the world loves. At Tinycup, fulfilling this promise necessitates that we engage frequently with critical ideas and harness disciplines like design justice1 and equity-centered community design2 in the development of our brand, our products, and our business practices.
Specifically, this means that we commit to centering people who, and experiences that, are normally marginalized by the coffee industry.
Specifically, it means using collaborative and creative practices to contribute to solving the deepest challenges our industry and our communities face.
Specifically, it means remaining focused on problem solving that is rooted in equity, humility-building, integrating history and healing practices, addressing power dynamics, and co-creating with the those communities made vulnerable by industry, institutions, and systems of inequity.
We make a daily commitment to an ethic of constant revision to better ensure that we are upholding a promise to ourselves and to our customers, to coffee growers and our partners, to other Black- and minority-owned coffee businesses and to the coffee industry writ large.
To support ourselves in fulfilling promise, we developed and adopted principles that will guide our approach to coffee roasting and our growth as a business. We think of these principles holistically, implementing them as interconnected and interdependent parts of our operations.
We hope to contribute to a more just and equitable industry that honors coffee's origins and respects the rights and dignity its communities.