We meet: Blue Bear Coffee Co.

You know those ‘but first coffee’ memes. Anyone else relate? As coffee is literally what powers us from the edge of the duvet to an almost functional state for that 9am Zoom, we were very excited to sit down with Bryn, the founder of Blue Bear Coffee Co. Think single-origin, speciality coffees – chocolatey, earthy flavours, hints of red currant, clove, guava. Dream. The story of this brand starts with a ‘but first’ moment.

“I encountered a girl on one of our cases,” Bryn explains. He was volunteering with an NGO in the Dominican Republic, after a career in the police. “She didn’t have a dad. She had an uncle who had abused her and a grandfather that had abused her, and had lived a life of abuse. And now her mum was trying to profit from it commercially so was selling her daughter.”

The story hits you. After noticing attention starting to go to her little sister, just seven years old, the girl boldly told her teacher and they were rescued to a place of safety. When asked if there was anything she wanted from home, the girl answered her bear.

“It barely resembled a teddy in all honesty,” Bryn recounts. “It was a bag of string really. But it just broke my heart that this was the only item of value this girl had and it probably came from a parent responsible for her abuse.”

This was a moment that resonated. “I wanted to respond and had no idea how to fix this hurt,” he recalls. “But I thought let’s buy some really nice teddy bears so the next child we encounter doesn’t have to cuddle up to something that came from a place of abuse but something that’s new, and fluffy and clean, and comes from a place of love.”

Raising a couple of thousand pounds, they did just that. They bought teddies but the money went so far that it provided after-care – for educational needs, healthcare needs – for the victims. “And it went such a long way that I thought what if I could come up with a business that could sustainably provide this sort of support for great, great causes”.

Bean to brew

And therein started the brand. Donating 100% of their profits to Justice and Care, Unseen and International Justice Mission, Blue Bear is an organisation made to support anti-trafficking through coffee. And what a coffee.

“I’ve always loved it,” Bryn laughs. But since starting the brand, his mind’s been blown as to the varieties of coffee. “You start to distinguish trends in flavour whether they’re more chocolatey and earthy, and some of them have flavour notes that are like wines. Some are so fragrant they are like juices.”

The brand’s roasts are artisan and rare, with tasting notes penned like a love letter to flavour. The blend from Rocosa Montaña farm, for example, in Panama has a fruity undercurrent of passionfruit and blackberry – so different from your usual flat white. The coffee from Ricardo Lima’s farm in El Salvador has hints of tangerine, milk chocolate and golden syrup.  

Transparent and ethical, “there are so many links to the chain that gets a coffee bean from Ethiopia to your coffee table in Clapham. We want to try and reduce these,” Bryn explains. By working directly with the farmer, through their roaster, last year they paid the farmers on average over 150% higher than the fair-trade price of coffee. The premium they pay on top goes to social projects. Their coffee from Werka Sakaro in Ethiopia, for example, goes towards expanding their school. A coffee they stocked earlier in the year from the Yerwa tribe in the north of Columbia helped give opportunities to the women to develop their land.

Make the move

Having built Blue Bear in just two years, Bryn’s advice? “Go for it. Don’t lose too much time planning before you move into action.”

And it’s the same take action message he’d say for these issues. He loves the quote from William Wilberforce: ‘you can choose to look away but you can never say you didn’t know’. Slavery isn’t always seen as a 21st century issue but we have to recognise that it’s here and it’s so prevalent. Bryn’s passion is infectious: “now we have so much information. What are you going to do about it?”

“We do have influence.

We do have capacity to move the needle.”

From looking at where we buy our chocolate to our clothes, to Netflix documentaries, to engaging with the next-level charities Blue Bear supports, “you immediately have an opportunity with your choices to influence this topic.”

The dream for Blue Bear is to be on the cutting edge of ethical business but also to develop a Foundation – providing really loving homes, like a family, for children like the girl in the Dominican Republic. It’s a brand beyond a brand; a community to engage the community. Think exceptional coffee, doing exceptional things. We like to think it’s ‘but first coffee’ but actually? It is and should always be ‘but first people’.

Shop Blue Bear Coffee Co. online, follow them on Instagram and listen to their podcast, The Justice & Coffee Podcast.