Trabocca — Ethical coffee ahead of its time

When Menno Simons founded Trabocca twenty years ago he knew that he had spotted a gap in the market for an ethical coffee importer with good values for all involved. With a focus on Ethiopia and now other countries in Africa and South America, the journey that the company and the coffee industry have gone on in the past two decades is fascinating and complex. Throughout that time, Trabocca has been a world leader.

I sat down with Menno in the office of Bocca Espresso Bar, the café he also set-up in Amsterdam alongside his importing business. Although his focus now is almost entirely on Trabocca, the café represents the exemplification of what his beans can provide. A large and airy site, as you enter you are flanked by both aspects of the business at once. On one side, a long bar with pastries and all manner of coffee machines on show. On the other you’ll find shelves of Trabocca beans, coffee machines, and all manner of coffee products. On site here you can also sign up for courses in everything from espresso making to latte art and Trabocca bring their customers to show them how to use their beans most effectively.

There’s no doubt that the coffee and café industry has changed immeasurably since Menno first entered it twenty years ago. Back then, even fairtrade beans were relatively rare and now you can’t move on the high street for shops and suppliers with all manner of different seals of ‘ethical’ and ‘traceable’ coffee. At Trabocca though, they go above and beyond, and that is why so many of their customers keep coming back year after year.

Generally, Menno visits Ethiopia and the farm there four times a year (that’s more than 80 times in total), and travels all over the world to ensure that proper processes are being respected at all of his farms. In Ethiopia alone, there’s a team of eight people on the ground purely for this purpose and Trabocca itself has transformed into far more than a coffee importer — at this point its a social enterprise project too.

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After several years, Menno calculated just how much of a premium he had been paying to meet fairtrade standards. Despite that total being more than a million euros, very little had changed on the ground in the Ethiopian communities Trabocca was operating in and for him, that wasn’t enough. Straight away, by raising funds from customers and themselves, Trabocca was able to raise enough money and work with the local authorities to sponsor the building of a school. Now, there are two schools, a hospital, and countless other improvements as a result of the importer’s work in the areas in which they operate. Speaking to Menno, it’s clear that this is more important to him than anything.

Alongside community improvement, the founder is driven by the quest to improve the world of coffee, discover new techniques, and adapt the process as a whole. He tells me that he is still learning, each and every day, and has done everything from invest in nitro coffee to fly African farmers to South America, comparing and contrasting methods.

I can’t pretend that as well as thoroughly enjoying that chat with Menno that you can hear on the podcast, it was fantastic to get behind the counter and learn about V90 filter and nitro coffee with some amazing baristas on the team. You can see the intricate process of weighing, grinding, pouring, and more below with an amazingly light and fruity Honduran bean. Somehow, it manages to have both notes of chocolate and fruit — two flavours that usually stay far apart.

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As you can see below, nitro coffee produces an almost beer-like froth on the top. Coffee is brewed the day before and then piped with CO2 to enable a cold, filter-like brew, that, owing to the heat of the process, would simply be impossible f you just added.

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All in all, what Menno has built at both Trabocca and Bocca is quite remarkable. By being years ahead of the curve, the importer has stronger foundations and stricter processes in place to maintain ethical values and great tasting beans than almost anyone else in the industry. In Amsterdam, there’s no better place to experience it than the espresso bar itself where it all began…