Onyx is a young company owned seeking to convey the values of their coffees through their transparency efforts.ĬR: From a price standpoint, why is it important to communicate what you’re paying growers? We want to keep evolving in the industry and keep pushing ourselves, and this felt like a really great way to do that. We felt like it was the right thing to do. We don’t have partners or shareholders, so we can post what we want our customers to know. It’s time to bring attention to everyone in the supply chain and make sure that credit is going to the people who deserve it.Īlso, we did this just because we can.

Specialty coffee is evolving further and further away from that model.

It’s not rice, it’s not soy beans-we don’t work like those industries do. Specialty coffee is different from commodity agriculture, and we want to show that. It’s a mutual relationship-when we buy a coffee, we turn around and advertise everyone who had a hand in it. It’s not just about price it’s about promoting everyone we work with, what their coffees score, and what we paid. We’ve always had a transparent standpoint and value our relationships with producers, exporters, and importers. Jon Allen and the team at Onyx wanted to connect the work they do to the farm level, using tangible numbers and being transparent with how much they pay for coffee. Publishing the green price, the commodity price, the fair trade price when we bought the coffee, and the cup score gives us a tool through which we can show a real, tangible dollar amount to what we are doing. Growing coffee needs to continue to be a viable business it doesn’t do us any good if we low-ball a great coffee for two years and then the producer isn’t growing coffee anymore. Jon Allen: We have had a continual conversation about what is specialty coffee versus what is commodity coffee, and why paying for green coffee matters-both from an ethical standpoint and from a sustainability standpoint.

Barista Magazine talked to Jon to find out more about Onyx Coffee’s transparency efforts.Ĭhris Ryan: First off, why did you decide to add the transparency information to your website? While roasting companies commonly list stories behind their coffee and details such as the processing method and elevation-which Onyx does as well-this additional step toward price transparency is considerably less common. This spring, Onyx Coffee Lab-the Arkansas-based roasting company founded by husband-and-wife duo Jon and Andrea Allen in 2012-made a substantial change to their website: They added a transparency section to each coffee they offer that describes how they scored and purchased the coffee, how much they paid for it, and what the C-market and fair trade minimum prices were at that time. Jon Allen of Onyx Coffee Lab talks about the new transparency section added for each of the company’s coffee offerings, creating a radically unobscured picture of how Onyx scores and buys coffee.

Onyx coffee roaster