HOW DO WE SOURCE OUR COFFEES?

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HOW DO WE SOURCE THE COFFEES ON OUR LINE UP?

At Atomic, we take pride in offering coffee drinkers the best beans, consistently and without compromise. Sourcing coffee is more than just finding beans - it's about building relationships, ensuring quality, and making choices that benefit everyone involved, from the farmer to your cup. That's why we choose to source Specialty coffee, both for our blends and our single origin offering.

EXPLAINING SPECIALTY COFFEE

Specialty coffee is the highest grade for coffee. Technically speaking, coffee is graded by qualified tasters called Q-Graders, who analyse and score out of 100 the attributes of coffee, like sweetness, acidity, mouthfeel, balance or clarity. Coffees scoring above 80 out of 100 are considered specialty-grade, and those scoring below 80 are commodity-grade.

Practically, this translates to better tasting coffee, because more care is applied to growing and harvesting methods. The coffee cherries tend to be hand-picked at perfect ripeness, and then processed with extra care via innovative techniques, creating more complexity of flavour. Ultimately, specialty-grade coffee requires more care, skills and investment overall, which explains the higher price-point.

At Atomic, we only source specialty-grade coffee, as we believe in creating unique drinking experiences. We believe in supporting producers in their quest to grow and craft special offerings, which means our range is priced accordingly, at a premium.

Our long-term partnership with trade aid

For over two decades, we've been sourcing 100% of our blend components via Trade Aid, New Zealand’s largest fair-trade organisation and a member of the World Fair Trade Organisation.
Through this collaboration, we've imported more than 2,000 tonnes of green coffee from 11 cooperatives worldwide

While we pay a fair-trade premium of 20 cents USD per pound, we choose not to use the official Fair Trade logo. Instead, we focus on the impact: supporting democratically run cooperatives that invest in their communities. These investments range from education scholarships and agronomy training to infrastructure improvements.

Trade Aid works with small-scale farmers and their cooperatives through direct trading relationships, and commits to purchasing a set quantity of coffee at a minimum but sustainable (and higher than market-rate) price. That creates a stable and sustainable trading relationship, irrespective of how global markets may fluctuate.

Co-op members vote on where the extra revenue goes to, which ensures that our contribution supports initiatives that are truly beneficial to the livelihood farmers, their families, and the larger local community: funding education scholarships, soft loan finance or employing agronomists to train farm members in better production methods.

Sourcing single origins with intention

When it comes to single origin sourcing, our ethos is to explore the world of coffee and offer our customers a range of exciting, tasty, unusual, complex coffees – always with quality in mind.

This means we purchase higher-grade coffees through trading partners who have established direct relationships with producers. These coffees are usually traceable to a specific farm and farmer. Check out our labels – we give each coffee the name of its producer. We get the good, exciting stuff – innovative processing methods, new varieties or emerging origin, or just quality expression of a coffee’s terroir.

Curious to taste the difference? Explore our current line-up to find the roast that's right for you.