OUR STORY
In 2008, Jose Garcia, a small landholder in Copan Honduras, set out for the United States. He traveled by bus, train and walked long stretches of the journey. His intention was to find work in the U.S. to earn money to support his family in Honduras. Several months later, after crossing the border, he was apprehended by authorities in Texas, detained for weeks and then deported to Mexico.
In 2012, an American working in Honduras named John Donaghy began encouraging Jose and other local farmers to form a cooperative and produce specialty coffee that could be exported to the U.S. In 2014, Jose and several other farmers sold their first export crop to a catholic church in Ames, Iowa. It was only about 600 pounds of coffee, but they got paid for it and it motivated them to continue in this endeavor. They named their cooperative (Hacia el Futuro) Towards the Future, in light of their ambition to produce and export enough coffee to support their families far into the future.
In 2018, a small group from Saint Thomas Aquinas Church in Ames Iowa, took the initiative to form a non-profit organization that would coordinate the import and sale of the coop’s coffee. The new organization was named, (Cafe el Zapote) Coffee from Zapote, the village in Copan Honduras where the Hacia el Futuro farmers live and grow coffee.
In 2022, Jose Garcia told us that he no longer wants to go to the U.S. because he gets a fair price for his coffee and is able to support his family. Cafe el Zapote now takes small groups to visit the coffee farmers in Zapote. We've made 5 visits between November 2022 and March 2025. As an important part of our mission Cafe el Zapote intends to organize and lead two group visits per year into the future.
The mission of Cafe el Zapote is to work with coffee farmers in Zapote and others like them to be able to produce high quality specialty coffee and find markets in the U.S. to buy their coffee. Our import quantities are growing. In 2022, CEZ imported 4,000 pounds. In 2023, CEZ imported 4,000 pounds. And in 2024, CEZ imported 20,000 pounds of Zapote coffee and an additional 2,000 pounds of Uganda coffee. What we’ve seen is a dramatic impact on the livelihoods of the community in Zapote. There is a surge in the esteem and pride that stems from the work they do producing really good coffee. Another clear outcome of our work and our visits is growing levels of trust in our relationships with the farmers
OUR mission
The mission of Cafe el Zapote is to collaborate directly with coffee farmers in places like Zapote, Honduras and Kapchorwa, Uganda. Specifically to empower these farmer organizations to produce high quality specialty coffee and find direct links to markets in the United States. We specialize in buying arabica coffee directly from farmer cooperatives. We seek to improve the lives of farmers by eliminating middle men (brokers, coyotes, etc.,) who leverage capital to take profits from the coffee farmers/producers.
We also organize and lead groups of Americans to visit these coffee growing communities and interact with farmer producers. We call these visits, coffee immersion trips. We also organize service learning trips to assist in building primary school structures. Our long term vision is to develop collaborative relationships and friendships with coffee farmers and their cooperatives that last for many years, even decades.
Since our beginning in 2018, we've seen a dramatic impact on the livelihoods of the coffee producers community in Zapote, Honduras. There is a surge in the esteem and pride that stems from the work they do producing really good coffee. In 2021, the coffee cooperative, Hacia el Futuro, constructed their own washing station with capacity to pulp, wash and dry their own coffee. Another clear outcome of our work and our visits is growing levels of trust in our relationships with the farmers.