We are bringing awareness and equality to women of the coffee industry.

City Girl Coffee is not just a cute company with cool colors and a chic look. We are a sustainable and responsible coffee company who is working to bring awareness and equality to the women of the coffee industry. We source as much of our coffee as possible from small, women owned or managed farms and co-operatives, and give a portion of every sale back to the organizations that support the success of women in their country of origin.

In April of 2015, our Founder, Alyza Bohbot James, was fortunate enough to attend the IWCA breakfast at a Seattle conference. There, a man from Colombia got up and told a story about a husband and wife. The husband had died fighting in the war, and when a key piece of farming material broke down, the Colombian banks refused to provide the loan the wife would need to keep her farm alive, for no other reason than she was female. 

Of the world's estimated 1 billion poor, 70% are women. Women own less than 1% of the world’s titled land. The World Bank estimates that more than 500 MILLION PEOPLE throughout the world are dependent on coffee FOR THEIR LIVELIHOODS, and of that number, 25 million are coffee farmers. Hearing these staggering statistics, Alyza thought to herself, “There has to be something we can do." And then she thought, “How cool would it be if we had a coffee brand that tried to source as much coffee as possible from women coffee farmers, and then on top of that, worked with these organizations to give back to these women!"

At the Bogota Colombia IWCA conference in October 2015, 400 women and men from 30 different countries came together to discuss the issues of sustainability and gender equality. A member of the committee stood up, stopped in the middle of her speech, and said, “Can I just take a moment and say how amazing it is to see a board with 50% men and 50% women sitting on it? Can you imagine what this world would look like if that were the norm?” This quote speaks so accurately to one of the main struggles in these countries of origin. While women are often a majority of the workforce on a coffee farm, they rarely have decision-making power, much less access to family resources, rights, or proper education. 

Empower. Encourage. Strong. Self-sufficient. Successful. Business owner. Beautiful. These are words women, not only in these countries of origin, but in every walk of life, hear far less than they should. Our hope is that City Girl Coffee can become a platform to make this change, even if only in the smallest ways. We can empower women to follow their dreams, to encourage one another instead of tear each other down, to become strong and self-sufficient in a world that continues to throw them challenges, to be successful, in whatever aspect that word embodies, and most importantly, to wake up every day beautiful.

So, cheers to women, cheers to you, and most importantly, cheers to waking up every day beautiful!

Meet Our Growers

Our growers are strong women entrepreneurs who are breaking through coffee’s male-dominated social and economic systems around the world. By working exclusively with women-owned and managed coffee farms in countries like Honduras, Peru, Guatemala, Sumatra, Colombia, Brazil and others, City Girl Coffee provides women farmers a fair and sustainable price for their coffee, as well as access to financing; business and agricultural training; food and healthcare; and land ownership opportunities.

In everything we do, we live our tagline: Empowering Women of Coffee. We don’t just offer great coffee beans, we offer beans with benefits. As a result, women throughout the coffee value chain are now benefiting from financial equity and equal opportunities to thrive.