Our mission hasn’t always been this way. Over the years, our mission has evolved because we’ve never stopped learning new things about the complex world of coffee and adapting our business along the way. We’re incredibly proud of how we’ve embraced change and learned from our experiences and new knowledge. This journey has deepened our love for coffee and strengthened our commitment to doing things right: sustainably, inclusively, and transparently.
Early Days (2014-2016)
We (Anu and Suyog) started Driftaway Coffee in 2013 because we wanted to create something we would be proud of. After graduating from engineering school, we found ourselves working in marketing consulting and feeling unfulfilled with corporate life. Making coffee at home was something we had fallen in love with around the same time. So, we decided to start a coffee company combining these two passions. We began learning to roast coffee at home, designed our own packaging, and started Driftaway from our tiny one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn.
As we learned about how coffee traveled through many different hands, this realization inspired the name “Driftaway” . We wanted the name to acknowledge the journey coffee takes, hence Driftaway. We were intentional about putting the coffee producers at the center of the story behind the coffees, and we designed our labels to look like vintage baggage tags, a nod to the coffee’s journey to us.
The first few years were spent getting off the ground without any outside investment (which we still don’t have, to this day!). We concentrated on roasting commercially, figuring out our sourcing, growing our customer base, and hiring our first employees. This hard work paid off, and we proudly became profitable in 2016. In order to gather coffee skills, we utilized resources from:
- Advanced Roasting Techniques, Boot Coffee, 2014
- Classes, events and cuppings at Counter Culture Coffee
- Roasting training, Pulley Collective
Focus on Sustainability and Farmer Prosperity (2017-2019)
As we learned more about coffee, we became increasingly aware of the inequities in the coffee value chain. In 2017, we visited farms at origin (Costa Rica and Guatemala) for the first time with our importing partners, Cafe Imports. Producers asked us what we thought of their coffee, which made us realize how they never hear from consumers directly. This led to the creation of the Farmer Feedback Program where we send customer feedback directly to farmers.
Hearing first-hand from producers about how their biggest issue was the uncertainty around coffee growing – drought, pests, and diseases – kicked off the Bean for Bean project, where we started donating 5 cents to the World Coffee Research (WCR) for every pound of coffee we roast.
During this time, we also looked at the ecological impacts of our business. We vowed to remove plastic from our packaging by switching to compostable bags and aimed to become carbon neutral (by 2019). Additionally, we signed the price transparency pledge by Transparency.coffee committed to complete transparency in our coffee sourcing, along with several other specialty coffee companies. With this, sustainability and farmer prosperity became core parts of Driftaway’s mission.
Making Coffee Accessible & Fun (2020-2022)
The years 2020 to 2022 brought an additional focus for Driftaway Coffee – making coffee accessible and fun. As the world adjusted to new ways of connecting during the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw an opportunity to bring the coffee tasting experience into people’s homes. We launched virtual tastings to help our customers learn more about coffee in an easy, non-intimidating way. Our goal was to make coffee accessible and enjoyable for everyone, breaking down barriers and inviting more people into the world of coffee.
These virtual tastings allowed us to engage with our community in a whole new way. We could share stories about the origins of our coffee, the different flavors to look for, and how to taste coffee like a pro. It was a chance to bring our mission of making specialty coffee accessible, creating a deeper connection between our customers and the coffee they love.
We believe that creating equity in the broader specialty coffee industry hinges on consumers asking for the things they care about, which is why we are committed to remaining an accessible and fun resource for all types of coffee drinkers.
Equity & Inclusive Sourcing (2023 Onwards)
In 2023, we were looking to start an origin-focused parallel entity in coffee that was a non-profit. To learn more, we dove deeper into the challenges faced at origin and work on projects that could help solve them. However, we realized we didn’t know enough about these issues. To bridge this gap, we attended the Let’s Talk Coffee conference organized by Sustainable Harvest in Copan Ruinas, Honduras. This conference was life-changing for us. It was a small, intimate gathering with around 350 attendees, 70% of whom were producers.
The conference included lectures and discussions about myriad challenges faced by coffee producers, including gender inequity, economic instability, and environmental threats. Hearing directly from the producers about their struggles and needs gave us invaluable insights and a renewed sense of purpose. Instead of starting a new entity, we decided to build our learnings into the evolved mission and culture of Driftaway.
We learned how women and minority farmers don’t get as much support or as many resources. Women coffee farmers make up 70% of the workforce in coffee production yet systematically have lower access to resources like land, credit and just plain information. This realization led us to completely upend how we source coffee. Our current mission is to build an equitable value chain by prioritizing women and minority producers and making coffee accessible and fun for coffee consumers. We now purchase 50% of the coffees we roast from women farmers, and specifically seek out coffees from minority producers like Black Brazilian farmers and indigenous farmers, and work with exporters owned and operated by people from the country of origin, so that more of the value from the supply chain can be maintained in the origin country. 
Coffee producer, Doña Rosa Aura, whose coffee we sourced from feminist non-profit, Bean Voyage
