Guatemala Trip #1 – Overview

When we agreed to accompany our friends from Zion Coffee on a trip to Guatemala, we honestly didn’t know what to expect . Rachel and I knew that we wanted to learn much more about the coffee farming process to broaden our own appreciation for the countless cups we serve in our shop. We wanted to see exactly how coffee beans are picked, processed, and shipped, but we ended up coming home with something much more important.

We returned with a much greater appreciation for the people involved in every step of the process and the value of relationships between everyone in the supply chain. We learned that an enormous amount of work has been poured into every cup of coffee you drink from a lot of very dedicated people.

In this post we want to give you an overview of our time in Guatemala, where we went, and the organizations and people that we interacted with. In future posts, we’ll dive into the details of specialty coffee farming, processing, and our takeaways from the trip. New posts will be published each Tuesday so be sure to follow along and subscribe to our newsletter if you haven’t already!

The People

Zion Coffee has a direct trade relationship with an organization called De la Gente in Guatemala, which translates to “From the People”. It’s a farmer-focused non-profit cooperative comprising five regional co-ops around Guatemala. We had the privilege to meet and work alongside two of the five co-ops during our stay. The DLG office is based in San Miguel Escobar and is ultimately where all of the beans come before they’re exported to America and us! If you’d like to learn more about the work they do in each specific region, check out their website and social media!

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In next week’s post, we’ll dive into the coffee harvesting process. We’ll take a close look at what coffee trees and their fruit look like as well as the labor-intensive steps involved in harvesting some of Guatemala’s best coffee.