Relational Sourcing
Saint Frank is a rare coffee company that works exclusively through committed and developing relationships with small scale producers to create value and transformation at origin while aiming to bring that same transformative energy to our customers.
We seek out terroir and producer-specific coffees in a seasonal program cycle that creates a natural rhythm for extended connections. We want to promote producers but I also wanted that tasting experience to be a recurring one year over year with new stories and deepened meaning.
This means two things: first, we commit and invest in producers through long term relationships with mutual risk and reward. Second, we buy all that a producer grows or enough volume from a cooperative that our guests and community could take time with the coffee and develop the relationship.
These kind of commitments and relationships at origin can provide a meaningful and authentic connection in your morning cup that you can trust. Far from being a romantic story used for marketing, we can enjoy our coffees knowing they are the result of a mutually beneficial collaboration among peers dedicated to mutual well-being and holistic sustainability. But trust and transparency aren't really what sets our sourcing apart, that distinction is found in where and with whom we seek to work.
Our first questions are never, “Where is the best coffee? Who are the best producers?” Our questions start with, “Where can there be great coffee? Who can be great producers? Where can our connection and investment influence transformation?”
We don’t select new exciting coffees each year from trending producers, we commit to people and communities where exciting coffees are developed and created. Places that are largely undesired and avoided for risk, lack of recognition, and costliness are bewilderingly attractive to us for precisely those same reasons. To us, transformation in challenging circumstances provides the kind of compelling and timeless attraction that offers a deeper satisfaction than the fleeting flavors of fashion.
In cases like these and so many others we can share, the potential was always alive in the land and in the people, they merely needed an invitation to have the chance to show who they could be and how great their coffees can be. These are the kind of stories we want to believe in are the stories we want to be in, the stories we want to invite you into.