This March is B Corp Month! A whole month dedicated to celebrating companies who use their business as a force of good (that’s us!). This month, here on our blog and on our social media channels, we’ll be joining in on the celebrations by sharing all about our B Corp journey and how’re we’re striving to #BBetter!
In order to become a B Corporation, companies must first complete B Corp’s thorough certification process. We wrote a blog post about how we became one of the UK's first coffee roasteries to become B Corp Certified.
In short, this process looks at 5 key areas of business -governance, workers, community, environment and customers. This month, we’re delving a little deeper into each of these impact areas and sharing how we’re using our business practices to drive positive change.
Today, we’re honing in on ‘Community’.The community impact area evaluates a company’s supplier relations, diversity, and involvement in the local community. It also measures practices and policies around community service and charitable giving, including whether a company’s product or service is designed to solve a social issue, such as access to basic services, health, education, economic opportunity and the arts. To find out more about how we’ve been working to positively impact our local community and beyond, grab a brew and have a read!
We work with local creatives
At Dear Green, we’re not only passionate about promoting local cafes and the hospitality sector, we also love supporting Glasgow’s incredible arts scene by working with local creatives where we can. We are so lucky to live in a city that is full to the brim with talented artists and makers. Glasgow’s talent pool is endless and ever evolving, and we’re spoiled for choice when it comes to collaborating with creative types and entrepreneurs. Over the years, we’ve worked with some fantastic photographers such asBrian Sweeney, Susan Castillo, Christina Kernohan andMarilena Vlachopoulou to capture life at the roastery, our products and the spirit of our events. We’ve also worked with a whole host of talented indie businesses and freelancers likeStory Shop andBriony Cullin who’ve supported us in a number of ways from PR activity to digital marketing services and SEO.
We bring Glasgow’s coffee community together
Aside from roasting great coffee, there’s nothing we love more than bringing Scotland’s coffee community together. After launching the Scottish Aeropress Championships in 2014, we founded The Glasgow Coffee Festival - a weekend long event where coffee lovers can come together to celebrate the country’s amazing coffee culture and the baristas, cafes and roasters who make it so special. Since first launching the festival back in 2014, the event has gone from strength to strength, attracting coffee lovers from all over the world. In 2018, with help from the team at Keepcup, we also made Glasgow Coffee Festival the first global coffee event to gosingle use cup free!
Even a global pandemic couldn’t stop us as in 2020, we switched things up, and took Glasgow Coffee Festival to the streets. Over the 10 day long event, weteamed up with 50 of the best coffee shops across the city to host Glasgow’s biggest (socially distanced) coffee party, offering deals and discounts in cafes and indy businesses. As always, we were blown away by the support we received from the city’s coffee community and it was great to see people come together after a tough couple of months in lockdown.
In addition to the Coffee Festival, we’re also proud to have established the UK’s first Coffee Roasting Championship with the help of our friends at Coffee Nexus in 2015 and were also on the working group to set up the Roasters Guild of Europe which has now unified to be the global organisation, the Coffee Roasters Guild.
We collaborate with local brands
At Dear Green, we believe in collaboration over competition. There are so many brilliant Scottish brands out there who are doing great things, and we love coming together with fellow indies on exciting collaboration projects. Since starting out back in 2011, we’ve been lucky enough to collab with some incredible businesses from Glasgow and beyond. This includes a number of beer brands from Overtone Brewing Company (Ethopian IPA) andDrygate (convergence1) toWilliams Bros Brewing Co (Chokka Blokka and Orinoco).
Our coffee also features in a number of tasty treats from Sugar Snap’s artisan chocolates toTwo Birds’ ‘Lifestyle Liquid’. In addition to this, we’ve had the pleasure of creating some tasty, bespoke coffee blends for some brilliant local businesses such as Trakke, Story Shop and Brewdog! Wanna collaborate with us?We’d love to hear from you!
We commit to donating a percentage of our income to charitable causes
Helping to drive positive change by giving back to the community is something that is really important to us here at Dear Green. Each year we commit to giving 2% of our annual revenue to some fantastic charitable causes. Keep on reading to find out more about the ethical organisations we support.
Music Venue Trust
We've recently pledged to donate £1 from each bag sold of our Ballroom Blend to the Music Venue Trust in support of our many local friends and customers who can't open their doors this year. This is a small gesture of support whilst we await attending gigs at the Barrowlands Ballroom, King Tuts, Stereo, Mono and The 78!
Girls Gotta Run
If you have checked out our ‘Environment’ blog post, you’ll know that we’re committed to reducing our surplus waste. This includes selling ourused coffee sacks, in order to raise funds for ‘Girls Gotta Run’. The organisation is the only non-profit group in Ethiopia dedicated to using the national sport of running as an innovative approach to creating safe spaces and expanding access to secondary school for vulnerable girls. The Girls Gotta Run Athletic Scholarship Program integrates education, athletics, life skills, and savings and entrepreneurship to invest in women and girls in Ethiopia. Their vision? To create a world in which every girl is able to design a future of her choosing. To learn more about ‘Girls Gotta Run’ and the work that they do,click right here.
Green Heart Growers
Together with Green City Wholefoods Coop we donate £1 from the sale of all 250g bags of ourDear Green City Blend to support Glasgow’s Green Heart Growers. Located in Glasgow’s East End, the group works with schools and the local community to help connect people with food nature and one another.
Social Bite Blend
Our Social Bite Blend is sourced through an ethical supply chain from diverse coffee growing regions. £1 from each sale of this coffee goes directly towards helping to eradicate homelessness in Scotland and beyond. Social Bite is a major employer of homeless people as well as the largest provider of freshly made free food in the UK to those in need. We're honoured to be able to support their work through this bespoke blend.
World Coffee Research
If you’re reading this blog post, there’s a good chance that you love coffee as much as we do, and would hate to think of the world without it. However, sadly, the livelihoods of the fantastic coffee farmers who produce our favourite beans are urgently under threat from various issues such as climate change, low yields and diseases and pests.To help combat this, we are committed to ensuring a sustainable future for coffee by donating a percentage of our profits to fund ongoing coffee research by World Coffee Research. WCR collaborates with the best minds in coffee and science from around the globe to grow, protect, and enhance supplies of quality coffee while improving the livelihoods of the families who produce it. You can learn more about their work here.
Frontline Fuel
The past year has been a challenging year for all of us - especially those working on the frontline. Using our business as a force for good is something that’s always been close to our heart, so it was an honour to be able to work with our friends at Falcon Coffee to help fuel some of the country's incrediblefrontline workers throughout the lockdown.
Lisa explains, “Lockdown has been hard for everyone and as the restrictions start to ease, we are so glad that with the help of Falcon Speciality we can give back a little something to the NHS heroes who are on the frontline of the COVID-19 crisis. Supplying freshly roasted coffee to NHS workers in Glasgow has been so rewarding and has allowed us to support in the best way we know how!” To the NHS frontline staff who’re working tirelessly in the battle against Covid-19 - we salute you!
The Scottish Circle
Dear Green founder Lisa is also a proud committee member of The Circle. Founded by Annie Lennox in 2008, The Circle is a unique organisation inspired by the notion that when women come together and organise, they can be a powerful force for change. It is a global network of women who realise that we still don’t live in a world where women and girls have equal rights and opportunities, and they’re here to change this. Since 2018, The women in The Circle have supported over 160,000 women and girls in 16 countries, raised over £2.5 million to help drive change and backed a range of campaigns, projects and organisations including the Glasgow and Clyde Rape Crisis Centre, that work on issues from violence against women to economic empowerment and education. You can find out more about The Circle, and their missionright here.
We hope you enjoyed learning about our community impact today. If you'd like to find out more about our B Corp journey you can click right here, and to stock up on some delicious beans from Scotland's first B Corp coffee roastery, click here!