The Better Coffee: Building a New Paradigm for the Coffee Industry

The Better Coffee is a bold call to transform the coffee industry through justice, dignity, sustainability, and a shared commitment to a new, people-first paradigm.

What Is The Better Coffee?

The Better Coffee is a method, a tool, a system, a concept, an idea, an ideology, a hypothesis and an antithesis, a provocation, insurance. It is a warning, an outstretched hand, a rejection of exploitation, a voice for people who work with coffee. It is brotherly concern, sisterly love, it is defending the weak against the strong, it is justice for the powerful, it is dignity for the weak. It is mutual respect, it is mutual aid. It is an awakening, it is setting goals, it is a mirror in which we can see ourselves. The Better Coffee is a path – a broad path that we can (but don't have to) follow towards a new paradigm for coffee.

Do we need a new paradigm for coffee? Maybe not, and many people like the one we have, benefit from it, or simply accept it as a lesser evil. But it's not up to us, the people of coffee. A new paradigm will come uninvited, under cover of night or with the fanfare of crisis and war.

We collectively ignore unpleasant information and the fruitless results of our actions. Where poverty, social injustice, and economic exploitation scream out.

The current coffee market model is falling apart. This is not the only change—the whole world is changing in ways we cannot predict. We need to pay attention to what this means for us.

Wake up! It's time to stop living out a dream that has turned into a nightmare! 

Red Ink Coffee website is the first of The Places series – a place where we not only talk about the flaws of the current paradigm, but also work towards a new one. It is a good place and time to present the principles of The Better Coffee to you. For those who have not yet read our The Better Coffee White Paper, we recommend reading it – it is 40 pages on the subject and contains a wealth of specific advice, processes, rules, and the core of the standard. It is not just a description of the concept. If you are pressed for time, we suggest reading this shorter introduction.

Some people say, “Let's make better coffee,” but they forget that it won't get better with money, but because of people.

Do We Need a New Coffee Paradigm?

As we mentioned in the article “The paradigm is collapsing,” paradigms have an inevitable characteristic: they collapse. A bit like towers, sooner or later they fall into ruin, are knocked down by an earthquake, reduced to ashes by fire, or fall apart like a house of cards. 

For quite some time now, we have been living in a kind of mutation of the capitalist world. At times it is more monarchical and bourgeois, at other times more democratic and liberal, but ultimately it is all about accumulating capital. A large part of the world even respects human rights, and some are even trying to take a forward-looking approach to financing climate change mitigation, which has its advantages and disadvantages. Whether we like it or not, we accept this paradigm as it is. Some look for anomalies, others simply feel them unintentionally, unaware that they exist. We look for anomalies that are incompatible with the accepted paradigm, then we replace it with a new one and wholeheartedly believe in it as if it had always been with us.

In various areas of life and industries, we have our own small paradigms based on this central one. This is where anomalies are most quickly visible, but also where ideas evolve. We also have one in the coffee industry. I call it the specialty coffee paradigm, pointing out that capital flow is determined specifically, albeit unreliably, by the described quality of the raw material and the product. Other determinants are subordinated to this, with dichotomies in place. Coffee is supposed to be tasty and of satisfactory quality. This is now clear, and you can deepen your understanding by reading the White Paper or searching for publications on the current paradigm. Believe me, curiosity pays off, and you will develop yourself. 

The Mission and Vision Behind The Better Coffee

I usually just call The Better Coffee a “system,” although I also use the term “endeavour.”

Both capture its multidimensional nature quite well. You could also call The Better Coffee a “paradigm,” but I would be cautious and refrain from doing so myself—it is very wishful thinking that the world would look like it does in The Better Coffee's mission and vision.

Let's keep sorting until we wake up in a world without illusions.

It is highly unlikely (although I do not rule it out) that the world will look like this on its own, and that humanity will choose the more fatalistic scenarios from the dozens of possible futures described by David Christian in “Future Stories: What's Next” (2022, Little, Brown Spark). I am not an optimist. Nor am I a dreamer. 

The Better Coffee Mission 

Manifest coffee that will be better than what we have known so far. Make coffee survive the current conditions and thrive by respecting the planet's biodiversity for the benefit of future generations. To make societies appreciate its value to the planet's ecosystems and have access to it, also to support people's health. To make coffee enjoyable for people. Also to make each person working with it has their needs fulfilled and have satisfaction from their profession. We intend to seek and promote a new paradigm for coffee, to exemplify the intellectual, scientific and technological development of humanity, by working in the coffee chain, using new ways of acting and collaborating, conducting scientific research and popularizing discoveries.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? You can sign it, and I invite everyone to collaborate, create your own The Places, and implement the standard.

Before we get to that, remember that The Better Coffee is a system that works across the entire coffee chain – from seedling to cup. The difference is that it ultimately aims to make this chain independent of the flow of capital from one end to the other. That's why, when you visit the Red Ink Coffee homepage, I ask you to imagine a world where you no longer have to pay to drink better coffee. And I want you to imagine a world without coffee, which is just as likely, if not more so, because that's the direction we're heading in under the current paradigm. 

But we know that this is not feasible right now – capital flows and must continue to flow until the paradigm ends, or until it flows into the next one. That's okay, we don't all have to throw away our wallets, close our bank accounts, and give away our money, I'm not suggesting that. This does not change the fact that, within the current paradigm, we can move swiftly towards – not just any new paradigm, but a new paradigm that we like, one that will eliminate the main problems we are struggling with. 

We may drink freshly roasted specialty coffee. But are the people who make it have their needs met?

We describe it in our The Better Coffee vision of a society that works with coffee and drinks coffee, but it's quite a long story, it's part of the White Paper, and we hope you'll add your own chapter.

The Better Coffee System: What It Offers

From a practical point of view, The Better Coffee introduces The Places structure. It is a distributed network of various... places. These include coffee plantations, coffee processing stations, warehouses, cafés (bars), roasting houses, and three types of places related to education and science. Each has its own definition and rules. The White Paper defines all of this, and we will soon be presenting eight more comprehensive documents that you can use here and now—under the assumptions of the current specialty coffee paradigm—to survive. 

Yes, because self-defense is one of the parts of The Better Coffee system that you can (and even should) use here and now. No one will defend you, no exaggerated non-governmental organization, no company. You can do it yourself, and we only suggest one of the possible ways, in the form of a ready-made solution with instructions and educational resources, including free ones. 

We won't bore you with details about how we conduct our own case studies to implement The Better Coffee in practice, so this isn't just some theoretical concept. We write about some of them on the Red Ink Coffee website in the Campaigns tab, about others on our blog, and we also do a lot behind the scenes. 

We also remember, in the coffee quality is of paramount importance and it is essential to deliver coffee to the “right” consumers (not necessarily those who pay more). We offer in The Better Coffee system a multi-stage ranking method for assessing the sensory quality of coffee.

We look like a happy industry of cheerful people behind a café counter and among coffee trees. Let's take a look in the mirror to see the truth about ourselves.

Multi-stage analysis is a process of meticulous examination of raw materials and products using scientific methods. This methodical approach involves a comprehensive evaluation of coffee, taking into account its physical and sensory properties. It also considers the first person data about sensory impressions associated with its consumption. In addition, it includes an in-depth sociological, economic, and environmental analysis to ensure a diverse and comprehensive ranking.

We all know that we have only one planet Earth and we cannot destroy it. We assume that this is true – we cannot, but the well-being of people is no less important than the well-being of the planet. A symbol of equality.

In general, at The Better Coffee, we talk a lot about equality, because we believe that the specialty coffee paradigm has forgotten about it, and we also advocate for freedom. So we encourage you to make a free decision: do you want to learn more about The Better Coffee?

The Places: Real-World Applications

If you've reached this point in our “short introduction,” thank you. The Better Coffee is coffee for decent people. In other words, coffee for everyone. We fight for social and political causes, and we're not afraid to step on the toes of powerful players. We support ourselves through the emerging network of The Places (which is not easy to maintain when you are just starting out) and education. 

We will soon publish another article dedicated exclusively to The Better Coffee education, which you will find below, on our blog or on social media. If you have any comments regarding its form, please let us know by email or private message. We consult on educational matters not only with the teachers and participants, i.e. students, but all opinions are welcome.

Our white paper costs €35, which is a lot for many people – don't hesitate to contact us, we will find another solution. Or sign up for a free 30-minute consultation in the Cooperation tab. 

Coffee meeting

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Put it in your calendar, we'll meet and talk about better coffee and your problems. It's a substitute for more expensive training, but we need to understand each other. We also have a free online course on sensory analysis, which we've heard is worth your time.

Your Role in Shaping the Future of Coffee

We are actively looking for investors – preferably in the form of development funds rather than bloodthirsty venture capitalists. We have several commercial projects, let's call them “The Places-type start-ups.” 

We are also looking for partners who would like us to implement The Better Coffee standard in their existing companies. It's a super cheap and effective solution, unrivalled in terms of training and development. 

We look forward to hearing from you and seeing you take action. Here on the blog – read and comment, share with your friends. Participation in courses, consultations, joint organization of events, building The Places, implementing The Better Coffee standard. We write in English, but we can communicate in any language. Feel free to write to us. Did you know that you can translate our entire blog and website using your browser? We know you know, but we're just reminding you for your convenience.

Okay, let's get back to one more thing—The Better Coffee is not the killer of specialty coffee. We like specialty coffee and the romanticism we grew up with. We ourselves come from SCA and CQI education, we are still rooted in the world of specialty coffee/Q coffee, we work with it, we develop it, we do not boycott it, although there are certainly reasons to do so. We have no rivals or competition; there are similar systems and ventures that we support in changing the fate of coffee workers for the better.

Whether coffee is better or not depends not only on its aroma or other properties, but also on the lives of the people who make it.

But this change will not start here, at Red Ink Coffee, nor will it start in the offices of NGOs or companies. It starts only within ourselves, the coffee industry workers who are disappointed with the current state of affairs, regardless of whether we harvest it around the world on farms, select defects in a dry mill, carry bags in a warehouse, throw coffee out of a hot oven, brew flat whites and iced lattes, or teach about it. We are giving you a path to a new paradigm, without promising that we will get there with our vision. A paradigm in which we will be equal, free, have our needs met, and feel that we have dignity. No, we are not promising that. But we do promise that we will walk there together, without any hidden agendas. 

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Call to action!

Thank you for reading to the end! If you enjoyed our article, share it with your friends on social media and help us reach them.

And if you are interested in coffee in every way, especially from a human perspective, follow our blog or take part in our training courses, including the free “Learn at 13

The link to the White Paper is unnecessary here; you can find the purchase option yourself in the Store tab if you wish, or contact us.

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