A chat with Lisa Lawson, owner of Dear Green Coffee Roasters.
Dear Green is a coffee roaster and supplier of "speciality" grade coffee beans established in 2011 and based in the vibrant East End of Glasgow.
They are among the few companies in Scotland that have been recognized with B- Corp Status.
I am always curious about the beginnings because they are the part we looked back with pride and also with a bit of nostalgia after we see all the good results we have reached.
Talking about nostalgia, I just wish I could do it all over again from the beginning.
I started working in the coffee industry when I was in Australia, in 1999.
At that time the coffee scene in Australia was not as well established as it is now. A lot of coffee culture was still post-war, European like Italian style. Coffee was not freshly roasted, it was roasted quite darkly, it was not high-quality coffee. I have been lucky the person I worked for was a pioneer. He was roasting coffee that was single origin. What he was doing was a kind of unique thing. We used to work in farmers market at the weekend and at events. Farmers markets were a fantastic environment. I remember we swapped freshly roasted coffee for amazing cheese, olives, feta, oysters, or wine.
For me it was an amazing time: I was on the coffee side of things, learning something new. We were doing latte art when not so many people were doing it, we were roasting and talking about single origins rather than talking about a blend and really focusing on the consumer market. Things were changing and we were into that change. I feel the same excitement when I started doing this in Glasgow.
Dear Green Picture from website
When Dear Green started in Glasgow it was something absolutely new, in a market dominated by exporters and with a totally different taste in coffee.
When you think about ten years ago and someone was asking "Glasgowwhere I could take a good coffee in Glasgow?", there were maybe 5 great places. Now you have to think about which area you are in and try to choose among so many options, just in that area! There are lot of places that source great coffee beans and have amazing baristas. Glasgow definitely developed a strong coffee culture.
But when I started we had to establish not only good coffee but also a coffee culture. It was not easy!
I really tried hard to make that change because no one was roasting in Glasgow. I had to explain to people what I was doing. This was the kind of conversation I was having:
They were like: "you are a roaster? what do you roast? Do you roast meat?"
"I roast coffee."
"Ah, so you are a coffee shop". "No I am not a coffee shop, I roast coffee and I supply it to the coffee shops."
"Where do you get it? Did you get it from Italy?"
Nobody had an idea. I really had to explain what I was doing. I had to convince them that having fresh coffee, roasted in Glasgow, close to them was much better than buying it at the wholesaler. Like fresh bread, fresh meat, fresh vegetables. I was trying to find the analogy.
You were going to the places with your beans and let them try. What was the initial reaction?
After I came back from Australia, I worked in wine shops all around the city. I was a wine representative selling wines to bars and restaurants and people knew me from there. When I started I was already kind of known and people trusted me.
When I said I had this passion for coffee, that I wanted to roast coffee here everyone was saying: "Oh I will support you". People are really supportive in Glasgow, they are loyal. And when I gave to the company the name Dear Green, only Glaswegians knew what that meant, that there was a connection with the city.
You started in a tiny unit with a second hand roaster.
It was funny. Even now when I am passing in front of it, I looked with a bit of nostalgia thinking "everything started here". It was a little triangle room. It is a shame I don't have even a really good picture of this space or of me working here. Smartphones were not so good back then. I had professional photos but they were more closed up, more focused on the product.
I was there for maybe 6 years in total and we did not have any chairs, there was not even a room to sit down. We had to take an extra space where we had a pop-up shop and that we used for storage and meetings.
I have great memories: it was a fun time, I worked hard and I had really good people working for me.
I feel lucky I am still around, doing the same thing, considering what is going on these here and also the number of new roasteries that opened up.
You built a name in Glasgow and in UK that is the fruit of the things you have done through the years.
I think everyone that is starting this journey should look at Dear Green as an example and an inspiration.
I also think is important for people to see where you started because it is a positive lesson that states that there are no results we can't achieve.
I guess when you started you had values like sustainability, an eye for the environment already in your mind . There are of course lots of things you learned on the way,still lot to learn, there has been a lot of technical progress. It is important to see the full picture of it.
You know what means to build a business, the hard it gets. I don t come from a wealthy family, I did not have any money, I started my business with debts, with student debts, credit card debts.
I just thought if I don't try this I would never know if it is gonna work. I did not know that my personal values would gonna become the values of the company.
It is a positive thing to champion things that other businesses have not tried yet. Living a long time abroad, in Australia and New Zealand exposed me to different systems of environmental awareness. This alongside my obsession with coffee quality built a huge desire to build all the processes in the right way. Even if it is not always easy to apply your values to the entire coffee industry.
I am totally aware that we are born in such a privileged world. Regardless of the wealth of our parents, we have a system we can work to our advantage, we are protected in certain ways. We are buying from the developing world, there is nothing ethical about the way we live, we are consumers and they are producers.
It is definitely an interesting sector to be in and where you can witness dynamics that as customers sometimes we decide not to look at. Even if you are a small business you are doing your part.
Absolutely. We essentially source coffee from importers. It is like when you go to a restaurant and you want to drink a glass of wine: you can buy only from the twine list.
We have a chain like that. Of course we have to make informed choices and to make informed choices you have to ask all the questions. Buying high quality coffee is already a way that could help farming conditions to improve.
It is difficult to make a difference when you are a small company, we are a splash in the ocean.
But not everything is lost: we put in place different strategies: we buy high quality and we try to make choices as informed as possible.
For example we used to buy some coffee from Rwanda and we were focused on repeat purchases so the farmers could know in advance they have that coffee sold. But this year we were told Starbucks bought it all.
Even if it is good that big coffee companies are going in a good direction about coffee quality they have so much more buying power compared to smaller companies.
Even if small, you are setting an example in Scotland and you have received the B-corp status (that measures a company social and environmental impact) at the end of 2020. What does it mean for Dear Green?
Yes, the first coffee roaster in Scotland and among one of the first 10/12 to get this status.
I have always been environmentally aware, and I always had processes and procedures in place but because it was something we used to do automatically I had not measured exactly what we achieved as a company. As the company started to grow and change we started to introduce always new ways to reduce our impact on the planet and find systems and procedures to reduce waste and packaging.
Ita is simple format to follow and brings profit. More is not the answer.
My team wellbeing is essential too and as a company we provide a wellbeing package that includes gym, therapy, away days, I want them to have a balance in their life, we do lot of team lunches, and we increased the annual leave.
I think it is just good business. If your team is happy, they will work and give a good impression of your business because they would care about it.
The B- corp is audited by Blab UK and is very fairly audited.
It is a really important recognition that proved our company is going in the right direction and not only in terms of profit. When you register your company at Companies Housethey ask you who are your shareholders. We changed it to stakeholders which are the planet and the people and not the profit only. The good thing is that we get the profit from protecting the planet and the people.
Our workers, our staff, our local community, and our customers: if you look after them they look after us.
Dear Green has also brought to Glasgow the first Coffee Festival, of course with great attention on the environment as well.
I have been to different festivals in Australia.
Back to UK, I went to the coffee culture show and to the world barista championship in 2010. That was really inspiring for me. I kept going to these events around the world.
I was excited about coffee and I was really determined to make people understand coffee was cool that there was lot of great people in the industry and I want to bring all of this to Glasgow.
The first year I think we sold 300 tickets and 900 people turned up and we did not have enough change at the door. The next year we started the UK coffee roasters championship because there was not one. There was one in Scandinevian countries and in USA and I wanted to introduce it here as well. All the championships we had in UK were about brewing coffees, cup tasters, latte art.
I was a roaster and I wanted a roasting championship. I have always been an early adopter in the industry when there was a subculture of coffee specialty. I have an international network and now I am happy to say we have that.
Coffee became definitely something people are loving more and more and that has seen lots of new rosteries opening up. If someone wants to start a coffee roasting business what it should be the best advice you can give?
I would say focus on quality, get informed on last trends, approach coffee scientifically in order to get consistency and be sure to put good values on top of these. All these things would help you because they show you to the consumer you know what you are talking about and that you have integrity.
Even if not always easy, especially at the beginning, try to have a healthy life balance.
Also, building and growing your business is hard, implies sacrificies in terms of money, times and sometimes relationships, work ethic is essential, you need to be multi skilled and ambitious.
Not a easy root but the most rewarding one.
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