Good morning Hank, it's Tuesday.

This is the story of three mornings. First, my morning: Wake up, drag myself out of bed, make it to the kitchen, and then with Sarah's help, make the coffee. I used to treat coffee as merely a kind of medicine. The OCD meds I take make me drowsy in the morning and coffee helps that, but now I luxuriate in drinking my delicious ridiculously fresh coffee each morning because I know a little something about how much care and expertise goes into exceptional coffee.

What about a morning somewhere else? So, this is Marta. Every day she wakes up in Colombia on a small farm she owns and operates herself. She also enjoys a morning coffee before heading out to inspect her trees on the rugged hillside. I don't know if I've ever mentioned it before, but our company DFTBA runs the Awesome Coffee Club, and Marta is one of the farmers who has produced the beans that I drink every day. Recently, a couple people from DFTBA headed down to Colombia to learn from Marta and other farmers we work with because Marta is an expert on every aspect of the coffee process that touches her farm from planting the trees to harvesting the beans to wet milling the beans into parchment. And her passion shows in the taste of the coffee.

So, most Colombian coffee is not produced on huge farms run by big companies. In fact, 98% of coffee from the country is produced by small family-owned farms like Marta's with large suppliers then buying their beans. In the past, this structure led to those large buyers short-changing farmers and playing them off each other for the lowest price possible, but with help from sustainable coffee suppliers like Sucafina, farmers like Marta are now changing that relationship so that they know the prevailing prices and can negotiate much more effectively now. Now, Marta and her fellow farmers can share transparently what they're being paid, which has raised prices especially for the best beans, and that's good news for Marta. It's also good news for us. Her being paid fairly is part of why Awesome Coffee is, y'know, know awesome.

But because we've become quite a big coffee company quite quickly, we also work with larger producers provided they're working toward a better shared future. And that brings us to our third morning. Dolores wakes up early in Salgar, Colombia. She works in HR and her breakfast is hurried as she gets her family and herself ready, something most of us can relate to, but at least when she gets to work, there will be coffee. Indeed, there's never not coffee at the Green Coffee Company, one of the larger producers in Colombia focused on the well-being of their farmers and community. The Green Coffee Company runs 36 coffee farms in Salgar, employing hundreds of people who tend to the plants, pick the beans, and process them so that they're ready for roasting. Each of these positions is highly skilled, taking time and training, but it is too often poorly paid work with limited benefits. And that's why Dolores is focused on addressing those with the help of the Green Coffee Company.

Dolores helped start a pilot program for the GCC that sought to provide far more comprehensive support than just pay for workers, and as a result, retention has improved dramatically, as has the quality of farmers' lives.

Dolores [in Spanish]: [The workers] have a different quality of life that they didn't have before. They can enjoy vacations - we have already had the first groups who have been on their vacations. And they tell us: "Wow, I can rest and relax with my family." "You are giving me that time back with them." So, things that they had thought were...part of the sales pitch to convince them to work with us, yes? Now they're realising - now they realise, it's real, it's reality. That it's a reality.

When folks at DFTBA talked with Dolores, she was unshakable in her belief that all workers, including agricultural workers, should be able to share the same benefits, paid time off, sick leave, pensions, and steady pay. So the call for change is coming from inside the house, and as a result, the Green Coffee Company has become the kind of place we want to do business with. And now our beans come from there too and what really strikes me when I drink this coffee is that it-it tastes good, like really really good, and that's the result of a huge sprawling collaboration involving so many people.

Every cup of Awesome Coffee would be impossible without farmers like Marta and labor activists like Dolores and hundreds of other people from Colombia to Missouri, where our coffee is roasted by First Crack to Missoula, Montana, where it is packed and shipped to your home. Too often, corporations mask or minimalize or even invisibilize that work because they don't want you to think about it while you're consuming their products. But at the Awesome Coffee Club, we do want you to think about it. We want you to know that the people who made your coffee are talented and passionate.

Marta is out in her farm every day, working with her plants and planning how to make her farm even better the next year. Dolores goes into work every day and makes sure that all the hands that touch these beans are given the conditions to be passionate about coffee-making. And the fact that we can work with these suppliers who make sure that our coffee is truly awesome is such a gift to us and to every one of the over ten thousand subscribers to the Awesome Coffee Club. And lastly, there's the little fact that we donate 100% of our profit to charity. Between Awesome Coffee, Awesome Socks, and Sun Basin Soap, over the last three years we've been able to donate over five million dollars to fight maternal and infant mortality in Sierra Leone.

Nobody's paying me to say this Hank because I'm an unpaid intern for the Awesome Coffee Club, but it really is the best coffee in the world, and you can feel good about drinking it thanks to the hard work of Marta, Dolores, and so many others.

awesomecoffeeclub.com. Hank, I'll see you on Friday.