 Augusto & Jason trying to look good for the camera. |
Visiting his grandfather's coffee farm as a child, Augusto Carvalho Dias Carneiro '01 would hide under the dinner table after the evening meal. As soon as the adults finished their espresso and left the room, Carneiro and his cousins would dump sugar into the leftover coffee and slurp it down. "My parents couldn't figure out why we were so wired at night," he jokes.
Now 28, Carneiro hasn't lost his taste for coffee. This spring he recruited his pal, marketing whiz Jason Lesh '01, to launch Nossa Familia Coffee ("our family's coffee" in Portuguese). Their Portland business sells beans imported from Carneiro's fifth-generation family farm in the highlands west of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A mechanical engineer by training, Carneiro is focusing on the coffee business full time; Lesh is juggling the demainds of the java trade with his day job as an advertising account executive.
Eventually they'd like to lead eco-tours of the coffee farm. But for now, they spend their lunch hours, nights, and weekend discussing coffee - how to import it, market it and sell it (on an informative Web site, www.familyroast.com). "It's always in the back of our minds," Carneiro says about the business. "Sometimes I wake up at 4:30 in the morning and start thinking about it."
Carneiro's family is well known for its beans (it won the top prize in the prestigious Brazilian "Cup of Excellence" competition last year) and its sustainable farming practices. Farm workers live rent-free in a village with a school, a church and - this being Pele's home country - a soccer field. Cafe Nossa Familia will continue the family's tradition of giving back to the community. For every pound of coffee sold, the business donates $1 to non-profit and social service organizations, includingthe University's Office of Volunteer Services. Say's Carneiro: "We want to be a company that helps make this a better world."
- Kelly Stewart '00