How Kebon Coffee Founder Winter Wall Is Encouraging Social Impact Investments and Mentorship for Women around the World
By Stacey Lindsay
For more than 15 years, Winter Wall traversed the globe to push forward the greater good. As a consultant with expertise in international relations, Wall worked and lived throughout east and Central Africa, Central America, and South Asia as she collaborated with NGOs and mission-focused companies to strengthen their efforts in community development and emergency relief.
But no matter where she was or what the task at hand was, her ultimate driver was absolute: to amplify the women.
Wall strategized to help women start businesses, and to educate people on how giving females opportunities and access was not only the right thing to do, but the smart avenue to take for building a stronger, sounder world. “It’s proven over the years to be one of the most durable and lasting economic plays: To really encourage financial independence in females,” she tells us. “Because women invest in the things that really help the success of their families and their communities.”
This knowledge now pours into Wall’s new company, Kebon—an endeavor that focuses on curated single-origin coffee from women farmers and business owners around the world. Equal parts coffee company and women-founder incubator, Kebon spawned from Wall’s contemplation in 2020. As many aspects of the world quieted down in the face of COVID, she found herself not traveling for the first time in her adult life with a mind filled with questions: What was important? Where did she want to be investing her time and resources? How could she really make an impact on women and help them scale their businesses?
Coffee was an organic answer. Wall had met many women who worked in the coffee business during her time living in Uganda. The place they really needed championing, she realized, was access to market. “And because the US is such an incredible consumer of coffee—the retail market is around 48 billion a year—it’s a place a lot of coffee farmers want to be.”
That got her wheels turning. Coffee is an opportunity for Wall, as she says, “to be a go-between between some of the incredible women growers and business owners.” These are women who are craving “bigger picture things,” like growing their companies, hiring more women, acquiring more land, and widening their distribution, yet lacked the access or ability due to stigma, antiquated politics, or other Draconian gendered barriers. “A lot of the countries that we work with and partner with we’re looking at land rights issues, and whether women can own the land that they're farming on, or if they need to inherit it from a male family member—and what does that look like and what does that mean? There are a lot of downstream consequences and implications to women-owned businesses globally.”
Wall anchors Kebon around three pillars: access to capital, access to market, and access to mentorship. In this light, she sees Kebon as being a platform, one that both partners with women who have small to medium-sized coffee businesses to get their coffee into the hands of US-based customers through direct-to-consumer and wholesale accounts and provides insight to help them scale.
And more than anything—to help women thrive.
“The goal is really to create a robust network of women-owned coffee businesses and coffee growers, not only to increase their market, but also create a mentorship model so that we can, continue to move the industry forward.”
A Conversation with Winter Wall
What does coffee reveal in terms of gendered barriers around the world?
Coffee, and agriculture in general, is such an interesting microcosm of the disparity of pay and ownership that we see in so many industries. There are statistics that are all over the board, but as much as 70 percent of the coffee labor is done by women and as little as 25 to 30 percent of the women are getting credited or paid well for that work. That’s a huge disparity and something that we feel very strongly that we can be a part of that solution.
Where do you feel this information around disparity lands with customers, particularly those in the US, today?
I think customers are becoming more educated in general. It’s a trend that I hope continues—and I think will. People are caring more about where their food, their beverages, their clothing comes from and how it gets to us. And they are thinking about the supply chain. We have a long way to go as far as realizing the implications of our purchases, and looking at the full-scale consequences of those, not only environmentally but also the social and equitable side of purchasing. Where we invest our money is really where we place our values.
This is a big thing, and unfortunately it takes a lot of thought and a lot of time, and it's a privilege to be able to evaluate your purchases; to make sure that they're fair trade along the way and that people are being treated well. It takes a very mindful and thoughtful consumer.
COVID has been interesting in the coffee space where a lot of people started making their own coffee maybe for the first time. So they’ve been thinking about what choices they're making. It’s been an interesting moment for a specialty coffee, and I have a hard time believing that people are going to revert to different choices. Again, we have a long way to go, but I am encouraged, and I do feel optimistic that people are starting to see their choices as a part of a larger framework.
Above: Endiro Coffee, a woman-run coffee business in Uganda, is one of the many Kebon partnerships. To learn more and purchase the beans, click here.
Today we find ourselves in an interesting place when it comes to artisanal foods products and wellness products. On one hand, it’s great that we are learning about new items—be it coffee or spices or anything else—from different countries. On the other hand, it's horrifying to witness the white-washing and capitalization, and how many farmers cannot afford to eat the goods they harvest.
Yes. A lot of the people in the biggest coffee exporting nations are drinking instant coffee, and they’re the ones growing this beautiful specialty single-origin coffee that is getting shipped to the US, to Europe, and to Asia.
For the person who want to make better, more equitable choices in the coffee they purchase, what should they look out for?
Single origin is an important identifier. This means you’re getting something direct from a source. It can sometimes be misconstrued, and it could come from an exporter. But generally, single origin means it’s coming directly from one farm to either the retailer or to your door. And this cuts out a lot of the middlemen that can continually take bites out of the profit model for the farmers and the coffee business owners.
As much as time allows, it is also good to look for companies that represent actual farmers. There are lots of companies that are doing great direct business with farmers and are looking to ensure that that whole supply chain is taken care of, and the farmers are paid fairly, and paid on time. That is a huge, huge, huge issue. Anyone that can build a long-term relationship with farmers proves that they're thinking about the livelihood and sustaining the growth potential for that farmer or that farming community.
Speaking of women, there’s a lot of pinkwashing out there; making it seem that a company is truly championing women when the efforts are more of a marketing tactic. What does supporting women mean for you?
It’s absolutely relationships first. Building honest, true relationships with the women that own and grow the coffee that we work with. It’s not about checking a box that 51 percent of the ownership is women. I haven’t heard of pinkwashing, but I that’s an accurate portrayal of some of the business model or the quota models that we see in a lot of spaces and places.
Marketing is not my forte, so it’s been an interesting learning curve to create the buzz around what we're doing. Because again, for me, it's about building relationships with these women that I admire so wholeheartedly. They— against all odds—are creating success for themselves and their families that will really be enduring and we'll show their sons and daughters that anything is possible. And for a lot of these places, that's not part of the ethos. It is an American way of thinking, that if you work hard and put in the effort, anything is possible. Well, that is not how many of these women were raised. But despite challenging circumstances, they have decided to really do work that could even go against their cultural norms, but in doing so are driven to better themselves and their communities. There’s nothing better than being a part of amplifying that story and helping spread that message. And everyone gets coffee!
Really good coffee.
Right!
Again, the statistics are a little spacious, but there is a lot of quality and gender correlation. A lot of people say that the best quality coffee is picked by females. They’re more careful. More diligent. I think we're proving that. The coffee quality we see over and over is stellar.
And that goes back to how it makes simple sense to invest in women—just the fact that it just makes dollar dollars, so much more sense cause women are savvy. They're so incredibly smart.
Proving this model proves so many larger picture ideas and theories that we've been talking about and that a lot of people have been working towards for years and years: proving that women are incredibly capable businesspeople. This isn’t a nonprofit that we're hoping to pull on heartstrings and get people to be good-hearted. We’re really selling the best coffee and while supporting incredible businesspeople.
To learn more about Kebon Coffee and to order their beans visit kebon.co.
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