Written in red ink.
The story behind the name — and the reason we exist.
Red Ink Coffee began as a publishing dream — and ran a bookstore with a specialty café.
Today, it’s something else: the educational arm of The Place, and the virtual home of The Better Coffee.
We teach, write, organize, and disrupt.
And of course — we blog.
We share courses, amplify the new Standard, and help reimagine how coffee is traded, taught, and valued — all as part of The Better Coffee Endeavour.
Red Ink is where ideas take form — and then take off.
The name comes from a speech delivered by Slavoj Žižek during Occupy Wall Street in 2011.
He described “red ink” as what’s missing from our world:
the language to speak truthfully about injustice — and the courage to say it out loud.
“We have all the freedoms we want.
But what we are missing is red ink — the language to articulate our non-freedom.”
— Žižek, Occupy Wall Street
That’s why we kept the name.
Red Ink Coffee is not a brand. It’s a signal — that change is not only possible, but already underway.
If you're reading this, you’re part of it.
