El Rubi - Colombia

Additional Information

While Osito Coffee' s focus is to highlight the great work  of individual farmers , we know that often our customers  look for larger volume lots . This demand for new community lots has pushed us to explore further afield. El Rubí from Planadas in Tolima is the result of our searching.  

El Rubí is an informal collection of farmers based in three veredas in Planadas . The group has grown by word of mouth through 3 or 4 producer s with whom we've worked for 2-3 years each. Given the challenges of working with only a handful of producers who are far away from our base of operations , we decided it was best to intentionally grow our purchasing in the area to make logistics easier. However, the quality of the coffees themselves are enough to make us want to keep working with them.  

A common thread with many of the producer s in this area is that many are certified organic . Most of the producers we work with are also members of a local association called ASOPEP. We lean on ASOPEP heavily to collect parchment and facilitate direct payments on our behalf since our offices are around 7 hours away . For that service, we pay ASOPEP a small commission. That said, the relationships are very direct with each and every producer in El Rubí and we look forward to growing this project more in the years ahead.