Is your coffee Fair Trade or Organic Certified?

While Fair Trade, Organic certification and other certification programs have been undeniably important to the development of the specialty coffee movement, we do not prioritize certified coffees on our menu for a variety of reasons. With respect to Fair Trade, Passenger has always paid considerably higher prices than the Fair Trade minimum, and we prefer to pursue ongoing fixed price contracts for as many of our coffees as possible, as opposed to investing in certification or quality-based premiums that are built on the fluctuating C Market index. With respect to Organic Certification, while many of the coffees that Passenger buys are produced organically, the cost of organic certification is untenable for many coffee producers and fully organic coffee production is extremely risky, if not impossible, in many coffee producing regions. Rather than requiring this seal of certification, we at Passenger believe in working with producers over time to identify viable strategies to lessen negative environmental impact and improve sustainability. We have found that World Coffee Research aligns more with our ideals while still providing a level of accountability. Passenger has been a donor member since 2024.

With this in mind, our Heza producer partners at the Long Miles Coffee Project are actively developing an organic compost program with the goal of pursuing improved soil/plant health, increased coffee yields, etc.

Our partners at Daterra, also, are actively investing in ambitious research in plant breeding with the goal of developing new coffee varieties that are more disease resistant (therefore requiring less chemicals to survive/produce).