The Gwandu Coffee Company
Gwandu offers a unique coffee and a one-to-one relationship between you, the consumer, and Paskali Gwandu, a coffee farmer in a remote Tanzanian agricultural village.
Gwandu Coffee was established in 2011 by Paskali Gwandu and the farmers and families of the Irakw tribe in the fabled Mount Kilimanjaro/ Ngorongoro crater region of northern Tanzania. This region is renowned for its high altitudes and rich volcanic soils – perfect for growing the world’s finest coffees. The Irakw practice an intensive form of self-contained agriculture that results in an almost romantic relationship with their crops, and especially with their coffee, the Tanzanian peaberry, one of the most aromatic and deeply satisfying coffees on the planet.
Gwandu coffee is exemplary: it is cultivated by hand on small plots (resulting in very limited quantities), and grown, roasted, and shipped directly from the farm to the United States. It is Tanzania’s finest coffee in its purest form – a rare find.
Why Gwandu Tastes Great
We believe that you have never tasted coffee as distinct, bold, and fresh as Gwandu!
Most African and Tanzania coffee exhaust their flavor during transport and storage. The coffee degrades as it is manhandled in various bags, trucks and shipping containers on its way to port; the coffee is slowly “steamed” in transit out of the country by heat and excess humidity in shipping holds; the coffee exhausts in warehouses at both the shipping and receiving ports; and the coffee is roasted in bulk and languishes in inventory in the United States while waiting for orders to arrive. Pesticides are often used.
By contrast, Gwandu coffee is harvested by hand and stored in cool, underground containers. Nothing artificial or harmful is applied to the beans. When a Gwandu customer places an order, the order is transmitted directly to the farm and the coffee is often roasted, packaged and sent to the customer that same day – directly or through the US shipping center in Dallas, Texas. Either way, the customer receives pure, wholesome beans direct from the source.
Why Direct Sales? From Farm to YOU!
Typically, the Irakw farmers don't make much money on their coffee because their farms are remote and they don't have easy access to markets. Rather, they rely on middlemen who buy up their coffee at low prices and then re-sell it through local auctions where it is intermingled with beans from industrial farms. When farmers can use the power of the Internet to sell their coffee directly to coffee drinkers, and avoid the chain of middlemen, the farmers can make four to five times more money from their coffee. They can also be sure that customers receive only the coffee that comes from their own farms and families.
Gwandu charges a small mark-up to maintain its US sales presence. There is never any mark-up on actual shipping costs. The delivered cost to your door is about $25.00 per pound (including all air shipment costs) – unparalleled for a pure, deep taste found nowhere else in the world and with life-changing benefits for the remote farmers of the Irakw. Importantly, because of the limited number of families and coffee trees, the Gwandu coffee harvest is small, producing less than 3,000 pounds per year. This is truly rare, small estate coffee, untouched by modern trade.