Introducing: Meg

Kua writes a Letter To Coffee Drinkers once a month. Topics range from daily goings on, to updates on Kua’s strategy, to recipes for coffee biscuits. The content below was the Letter To Coffee Drinkers for June 2022.

To the dearest and most wonderful Kua drinkers,

These days, things just appear. At the click of a button, you can have something whizzed round the globe and a few days later there it is, right at your doorstep. Imagine your great-great grandparent time travels to pay you a visit.

“What’s that shiny thing on your wrist?”
they ask.
“Well, that’s my Apple Watch,”
you reply with a smile.
“That’s the strangest apple I’ve ever seen” they seem distressed now.
“Well, no, it’s not an actual apple, it’s a….”
you trail off.

The Apple Watch pings, your food delivery is here. You open the door; a delivery driver is waiting with a hot apple pie. Your great-great grandparent accuses you of witchcraft and at this point it would be no more outlandish to tell them the food was prepared by a goblin. They’re overwhelmed. They vomit into your indoor Fiddle Leaf Fig and pass out cold (time travel is nauseating business).

If you ever find yourself in this situation and need to explain where and how your items came to be, allow me to introduce myself, I am one of the goblins that packs your coffee. You can call me Globule; I also respond to my human name, Meg. I work out of the Kua shed in Maroubra alongside Hamish, our trusty Kua Operations Manager (I’m unsure of his goblin name). It’s a picturesque location, and on the morning of writing this letter, I saw a pod of whales. I think that is a very good omen.

Before I get to packin’, the coffee is lovingly roasted by Hamish at Neoma Roastery in Banksmeadow. Before Hamish gets to roastin’, the coffee is carefully grown by farmers along the slopes of Mount Elgon, Uganda. It’s bought at Bukhanakwa Ridge buying station by a cooperative called Zukuka Bora. It’s processed in Muyanda, bagged in Mbale, transported by truck from Mbale to Kampala, moved into shipping containers in Kampala, back onto a bigger truck and whizzed to the Port of Mombasa, Kenya. Onto a ship it goes and six to eight weeks later, arrives at the Port of Melbourne. Finally, it’s whacked onto pallets and into a truck, making the final journey to Sydney.

So, in case your great-great grandparent pays you a visit, or there’s a climate crisis or you’re concerned your purchases aren’t ethical. Demand to know where your products come from, you never know what’s lurking underneath.

Lots of love,

From the goblin that packs your coffee (Meg)