“What is your passion as an individual and business owner, and how is that passion reflected in your business?”
It was the final essay question given to us for the FedEx Small Business Grant Contest, for which my company is a finalist in, and I spent several days wrapping my head around the question trying to find an answer.
This is what I came up with.
Coffee is not the passion, it only reveals it.
Coffee is a truly amazing thing, no matter what form it comes in or reason for consuming it. A sweet black, highly caffeinated, always social, excellently listening friend. It never judges, it always enjoys the company of others, and it has fueled the intense passion for people that burns inside of me.
I am addicted, and so are millions of Americans and billions of people around the world. Not just physically; but spiritually, linguistically, emotionally, and communally.
Coffee is important historically:
In Ethiopia’s Oromia region coffee found its start in the very same birthplace as modern man. That same region later became the first Kingdom to formally accept Christianity as its religion, while simultaneously developing the “Wine of Islam” in the first brewed cups that spread through the Middle East. Millions of Africans were forced into South America as slaves of vast coffee plantations in a corrupt industry. Our own United States of America was born after a group of men tossed away the popular British drink tea in favor of coffee.
Coffee is important culturally:
In Africa today they still hold the Jabana coffee ceremony, where whole neighborhoods join together to drink coffee together for hours, helping each other through difficulties and celebrating achievements. Barriers of language and differences in cultures have been dissolved over cups of coffee. Arguing parties from two opposing forces have found ways to reconcile in local coffee houses. People moving from one home to another, even to another country, find solace and abode in communities surrounding the black drink.
A Jabana (clay pot) is used to brew coffee in the Ethiopian and Eritrean ceremony.
Coffee is important globally:
The coffee industry today is often leading the way towards ending human trafficking, slavery, deforestation, and unsustainable practices in struggling communities around the world. Coffee is not an American beverage, but a global beverage that begins in the hardest struggling third-world countries and ends in a high-dollar paper cup that gets thrown away and added to the waste. It is the industry leaders that are pushing the hardest to reduce waste and increase cultural awareness amongst all Americans.
Coffee is important personally:
I met two of my best friends in two different coffee houses. The father of the woman I love bought me my very first cup of craft coffee. I’ve done business in coffee shops around the country, and my very first mobile app I built was focused completely around coffee in 2009. I’ve moved 29 times in my short life, and always I have found people and made new friends through the communication tool that is coffee.
I am passionate and my team is passionate. Not just for coffee, but for the history, cultures, people, and relationships that have sprung up out of coffee. “Guddina” literally translates from the Oromo language as “to grow” and “to achieve”. We push forward so that our true passion, people, are able to do those two things. Coffee helps us do that; as it always has, and as it always will.
Coffee helps us do that; as it always has, and as it always will.
No comments :
Post a Comment