The engineering grad fighting poverty with ethical coffee
Darcy Small is one of the co-founders of Kua Coffee, a social enterprise launched in mid-2017 that harmonises people and the planet with every sip of coffee. Kua supplies high-quality ethically-sourced coffee from Ugandan farmers to Australian businesses, whilst working towards zero-waste. The idea for Kua was born following a pilot program between UNSW and Gulu University — students visited Uganda for 3 weeks and worked with local agriculture students.
Building a social enterprise
Q: Where did your passion for social entrepreneurship stem from?
I grew up in a small town in the mid-north coast of NSW called Crescent Head. My family of five spent most afternoons and weekends outdoors, whether it be hiking or surfing. Interacting with nature was such an important part of my upbringing and it helped cultivate my passion to protect the natural environment.
Putting this passion into practice, I decided to pursue a degree in Renewable Energy Engineering at the University of New South Wales. This gave me the opportunity to go on overseas trips to countries like Uganda, a focus for UNSW’s Institute of Global Development. Here, engineering students like myself were partnered with local agricultural students to deliver innovative solutions to smallholder farms. This was where my interest in social entrepreneurship was born!
Q: What was the turning point that led you to launch Kua Coffee?
During our stay in Uganda, my co-founder Brody and I met a student who had grown up near Uganda’s top coffee-growing region. After learning about their childhood experiences and the livelihoods of coffee farmers in that area, we decided to take a sample of the coffee back to Australia.
Brody and Dan Okinong at Zukuka Bora, a farmers’ collective
The price disparity between growing the beans was starkly different from how much Australians pay for a cup of coffee. With such a burgeoning coffee culture, we recognised that the link between coffee drinkers in Australia and coffee growers in Uganda was a unique relationship which carved an opportunity to make a difference.
While this may seem like a trade-off for a social enterprise, we consider impact as the key to unlocking growth opportunities. As we continue sharing our story and expanding our customer base, this, in turn, will fuel our growth.
For us, impact and scale move in the same direction.
Q: What are some measures you’ve taken to ensure you’re always nurturing team motivation and culture?
This is such an important question for the Kua team — as the six of us live in a house together and we aren’t yet paying ourselves properly. To maintain a positive environment, we have a culture of self-management and always prioritise enjoyment and fun in everything we do. This helps us bring our best selves to work and gives us a chance to wind down at home.
We also make sure that each of us has the chance to attend workshops and conferences on topics across social impact, team building, or design thinking. These experiences are taken back to the team and help shape our values and expected behaviour internally. This ensures our team culture is constantly evolving.
Journey of the bean
Q: Why do people love your coffee? What makes it different from other brands?
Taste and impact!
Our team are devout coffee drinkers, so we always ensure our roasts are kept in check. As well as our own blends, we drink other coffees regularly to ensure that the flavour of Kua’s coffees is just as rich and flavoursome. We also work closely with our roasters, so we’re not afraid to blow the whistle if we think our quality isn’t up to scratch.
We think that nothing tastes better than brewing an impact to start your day every morning. For every 6kg of beans we sell, that’s one more woman we can support through a program called Cents for Seeds. This is an agricultural micro-loan program for female farmers in Uganda, and it’s run by one of our partners called Love Mercy Australia.
Q: What is the end-to-end process of growing coffee beans to delivering it to your customers?
In September, coffee growers will harvest the coffee beans and process it. We coordinate with our partners abroad on finalising quantities over the next calendar year for shipment in March. This lasts for the full year.
Every fortnight, the beans are roasted locally and put into reusable canisters. We then drive to all our partner companies to deliver the coffee, while simultaneously collecting their waste coffee over from the previous two weeks. At the moment, we only distribute this waste to community gardens but are exploring other end uses for coffee grounds.
Want Kua Coffee?
When my bleary-eyed, morning self reaches for a cup of coffee, the last thing on my mind is where my coffee beans come from.
After chatting to Darcy Small, I now know that I can brew an impact every morning without skimping on taste. It takes just 6kg of Kua coffee to fund one woman through Cents for Seeds — an agricultural micro-loan program which empowers and enables women in Uganda to provide for their families.
If you’d like to sip on fair coffee and take on a tasty environmental and social initiative, make sure to check out Kua’s coffee subscription here: https://www.withkua.co/what-we-do.
This piece was written by Audrey Thehamihardja of Textbook Ventures — we organise startup events, write newsletters and cater exciting activities for student entrepreneurs across NSW.
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