Interview with Digveer Singh, Co-Founder at Kooky Koffee
If you had three words to describe Kooky, what three words would you pick?
Non-traditional, purpose-driven, and quirky! We wanted the brand to embody a non-traditional quirkiness. Because my co-founders and I are new to the coffee industry, we’re learning as we go. A lot of what we do isn’t traditional, so we figured the word “Kooky” embodies that.
How did you get into coffee; what is your coffee origin story?
What initially got me into the rabbit hole of specialty coffee was my first taste of an Ethiopian coffee. I just couldn’t believe that some water and beans could produce such complex flavours. The moment I decided I wanted to start a coffee business was when I read a statistic in an article that said 80% of the world's coffee is produced by 25 million smallholder coffee farmers, and nearly 50% of these farmers live under the line of poverty. . This just didn’t make sense to me, and from that moment it was clear that there are inequalities in the coffee supply chain that need to change, and it was a problem I wanted to take on. Eventually, my business partners and I decided to start Kooky Koffee while chatting on a road trip to Banff this summer, and here we are!
How would you describe Kooky’s sourcing philosophy?
There are two key factors to our sourcing philosophy here at Kooky: We must know where exactly the coffee is coming from, and the farmers that we source from must be fairly compensated. Since my co-founders are Kenyan, it gives us the opportunity to visit a variety of farms in Kenya and create more personable direct relationships with the farmers we source from. We also upkeep our sourcing philosophy by not only paying farmers fairly for their coffee, but by furthering their profit through our revenue sharing model.
Can you tell us more about your revenue sharing model?
When the three of us decided to start a coffee company, we wanted the business to solve problems back home in Kenya. So, we decided to implement a revenue share model, which means we pay the farmers twice: once when we initially purchase the green beans, and another 5% for every bag of coffee we sell. This ensures they are fairly compensated for their work, and that when we grow, they do as well. It is in this way that we hope to solve the problem of poverty among coffee farmers in Kenya, the country Cris and Sahil call home.
Karen Duong
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