By Anne Marie Distefano
 Brazilian-born Portlander Augusto Dias hopes to differentiate Nossa Familia coffee from others by being able to tell consumers exactly where and how the beans were harvested. |
Usually, distributors of gourmet coffee search all over the world for the finest coffee beans. Not Augusto Dias.
He looks no farther than his family’s farm.
Dias came to Oregon as a teen, to study engineering at the University of Portland, but he grew up in Brazil, where his family has been growing coffee on the same farm since the 1890s.
Now Dias and partner Jason Lesh (who grew up in Lake Oswego and met Dias in college) are running a small coffee distribution company in Portland called Nossa Familia. The name means “our family” in Portuguese, because, Dias jokes, his family name of Carvalho Dias Carneiro is just too complicated for people to remember.
Sitting outside People’s Food Co-op with Lesh on a recent sunny morning, Dias explains how he got involved in the family business. After college he worked briefly in engineering, but, he says, “I wanted to do something more hands-on.”
Around that time, he went home to visit his family, and returned to Portland with a 70-pound box of coffee. He sold half and gave half away.
“Everyone was just raving about the coffee,” he says, and that was enough encouragement to get the ball rolling.
For a hundred years, Dias’ family sold the coffee they grew to exporters, who sold it to importers, who sold it to roasters. The roaster would then distribute the coffee under its own brand name.
In the 1990s, one of Dias’ second cousins, Gabriel Dias, decided to get in to the high-end coffee market. The cousin began attending international specialty coffee trade shows and entering competitions. The coffee was well-received; their product was the only one from Brazil to place in the top 10 in the prestigious Cup of Excellence competition, several years in a row. The family product was establishing itself as a brand.
Fair is fair
Superior quality is the main factor that allows some coffee growers to charge more for their beans. However, coffee consumers don’t just care about flavor. Many are aware that exploitation of human and natural resources is a big problem in the coffee trade, and will willingly pay more for coffee labeled “sustainable” or “organic.” Coffee lovers are also becoming familiar with Fairtrade certification, a seal of approval from the nonprofit Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (www.fairtrade.net) that ensures farmers are paid a fair price for their labor.
Dias’ family grows sustainable rather than organic coffee, but he also imports organic beans from nearby Brazilian farms to sell under the Nossa Familia label. Nossa Familia coffee is certified by an organization called Utz Kapeh. The words mean “good coffee” in a Mayan language. Utz Kapeh looks at the big picture, Dias explains. It doesn’t require coffee to be organic, but it does audit farms to make sure that the use of pesticides is minimized. It looks at a range of environmental issues and asks questions such as: Are the workers safe? Are they well-paid?
Dias prefers this approach to the more price-oriented one of Fairtrade.
“Instead of dictating a market price,” he says of Utz Kapeh, “they certify that this farm is a responsible farm both environmentally and socially, and so then it enables the farmer to ask for a higher price.”
The workers who pick and process Nossa Familia coffee live in 50 homes on the farm. There’s a health clinic and a school for the younger children, as well as a bus to take the older kids to a secondary school, 12 miles away. They don’t have to pay for electricity because a water turbine provides nearly all the power needed to run the farm. And perhaps more important to the residents, the farm has its own soccer field.
Coffee for a cause
Cousin Gabriel now has international contacts, and coffee buyers from places as far-flung as Japan, Europe and South Africa come to visit. Last year, Dias brought a group of 10 friends from Portland to the farm to see how it worked – and also to go mountain biking.
“It was eye-opening,” partner Lesh says.
Despite what he already knew about the farm, Lesh says he was impressed with quality of life of those who worked there. Sadly, Dias says, “it’s not the norm.”
When they put together a business plan, Lesh and Dias decided that they wanted to do the right thing here in Portland as well as in Brazil. Part of their coffee sales are donated to causes, including Habitat for Humanity, Engineers Without Borders and the Oregon Dental Foundation.
For each pound of coffee sold online(at www.familyroast.com), they donate a dollar to a cause buyers can choose from a pull-down menu – which makes for a great gift. And when the pair negotiate a deal with a store or cafe, part of the discussion is over what charity will receive the 50 cents per pound that they pledge for wholesale accounts.
These days, they’re adding accounts at a rapid clip. At the beginning of June, Nossa Familia was available in two local stores. By the end of July, the number was 15.
In addition to People’s, you can purchase locally roasted Nossa Familia coffee at Market of Choice, Wizer’s Lake Grove Market, Strohecker’s, Lamb’s Thriftway, Food Front, Global Exchange and Kruger’s Farm Market – or try a cup at the new Coffee Crutch (1023 S.W. Yamhill St., 503-227-0487).
Nossa Familia Coffee, 503-887-3686, www.familyroast.com