Thoughts of Ivan Ore (our roast master and a founder of Cafetoria)

At the end of each Christmas season, my wife Mia and me have taken the tradition of visiting Peru and our friends, the coffee producers of Gran Palomar. I need to confess that the trip is also an excellent excuse to scape every year from the dark and cold Finnish winter too!
Back in 2001, when we started this project of Cafetoria by bringing Gran Palomar raw coffee beans, we sincerely did not have any idea about how far this project was going to. What we saw at that time was the motivation of its people to restart their normal life after the disgraceful terrorism activities of Shining Path in the region. They did have only a single raw material to work with, the coffee, but things were not so easy because the coffee prices at that time was the lowest in 30 years.  Under this circunstances we decided, encouraged by the producer’s passion, to take one step of faith and do something about it.
During these 15 years many things have changed in the village. Once there was a time where the village’s activity ended very early in the day since there was no electricity, only a single fixed telephone line for all the village and lack of infraestructure to process efficiently the green coffee beans. Today every producer has its mobile phone and they enjoy basic services such as electricity and water. They also have built a big processing plant  that is in complaince with the EU organic regulations
On behalf of Cafetoria we want to thanks so much for your support and valoration to this coffee. Although nowadays we offer coffees from more than 16 countries Gran Palomar occupies a special place in our heart and we are delighted to know that it is also in a special place in the heart of many of our customers and final consumers!