Transcription of Mike Mwenedata for the show Farming Flowers & Cultivating Coffee #301
Lisa Belisle: It is my pleasure today to have in the studio Mike Mwenedata, co-founder of the Portland-based Rwanda Bean Company along with Nick Mazuroski. The company buys coffee beans from coffee farmers in Rwanda and invests 50% of its profits back into the communities from which it sources the coffee. Thank you for coming in today.
Mike Mwenedata: Thank you for having me.
Lisa Belisle: Why did you become interested in coffee?
Mike Mwenedata: That’s a good question. Coffee back home is the first product that the country export and 85% of population lives on agriculture. Everyone who really needs … Some people who need some kind of resources of income they get involved in the coffee. When I moved to the United States I didn’t know that coffee is business like I saw. Seeing how people come in the shop from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. spending $4.00 for a cup of coffee and I keep wondering why people back home still are poor if one coffee cup can feed the whole family back home. That really hit me hard and that’s how I started figuring out what is missing and why really they are poor over there if everyone who needs money gets involved in the coffee. That’s how the idea came in.
Lisa Belisle: In Rwanda, do people drink a lot of the coffee?
Mike Mwenedata: Not really. They drink tea.
Lisa Belisle: They drink tea?
Mike Mwenedata: Coffee is the first product to export and tea is the second. Most of the people, they don’t drink coffee, they drink tea and I didn’t drink coffee until I came here. They don’t drink coffee, sometime they do, sometime they don’t and as you know the final product is too expensive so sometimes some of them if a coffee is like a dollar or something, that’s a lot of money for them to spend unless they can prepare it themselves to get the cup so otherwise go to the shops and they spend a dime on it to buy the cup. It’s too expensive I would say but tea’s easier, it’s cheap, so I think that’s why most of them drink tea.
Lisa Belisle: In Rwanda people also grow tea?
Mike Mwenedata: Yeah. We grow tea.
Lisa Belisle: What type of tea is grown over there?
Mike Mwenedata: It’s black tea.
Lisa Belisle: You grew up in Rwanda.
Mike Mwenedata: Yes.
Lisa Belisle: You came to Maine when?
Mike Mwenedata: Seven years ago, eight.
Lisa Belisle: Seven or eight years ago.
Mike Mwenedata: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: Why Maine?
Mike Mwenedata: That’s a good question. When I moved to here, when I immigrated to here, I was in Boston and then after that I moved to Maine when I was looking for a place to go to school. I was looking school that are affordable and then when I kept looking it looks like was the one state that I can maybe start to live and beside that I [inaudible 00:33:19] Africa and I like soccer so one I came with a group of guys to play soccer here and I made connection and we start talking like that. I think here in Maine it was easier to connect to people because of the community and down there it’s a big city, you don’t see that much people going around. I think there is so many societies up here that people get connected with others easily done. In Boston it’s so … When I moved here I loved it and then I stayed.
Lisa Belisle: Do you still play soccer?
Mike Mwenedata: Yeah, I do play soccer, twice a week.
Lisa Belisle: Twice a week.
Mike Mwenedata: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: Why did you leave Rwanda?
Mike Mwenedata: We had the history and that history was somehow affected some people in any ways. Some people don’t have family, they are still looking a place where they can start life. Some other people are struggling, who we’ve deported, genocide, the conflict that were still going on so there were so many reasons that people came, leave the country so it was one of that.
Lisa Belisle: What about your family? How was your family impacted?
Mike Mwenedata: My family, they died in genocide.
Lisa Belisle: Your family all died as a result of the genocide?
Mike Mwenedata: Yeah. It’s a long story.
Lisa Belisle: That’s terrible.
Mike Mwenedata: Yeah. They died.
Lisa Belisle: You came here because you needed to have a new life.
Mike Mwenedata: Yeah, you know. I think I will say sometimes when you grow up you start looking, the opportunity based on maybe, your history, what you connect to. Sometime when you get a chance you grab it. It was one of those chances and then I grabbed it and now I’m here.
Lisa Belisle: You’re working towards your MBA at the University of Southern Maine?
Mike Mwenedata: Yeah. It’s not easy. It’s tough. Because you know, when you move here speaking another language and then you try to get education in the language you didn’t grow up speaking which is in high education so it requires so much resources and you have to focus. I think education was … In the family I grow up education was a big thing in our family so I remember my dad used to say that you can lose everything in life people can take because of what was going on with the conflicts. People lose their jobs, people lose their homes and they always say, “You know, we can struggle but when you go to school, you can start to avoid and to try to.” I never lose that focus and that’s why also in the percentage as we grow, we gonna be giving back to the farmers, the operational rate is gonna be to help other kids over there to go to school.
Lisa Belisle: The 50% of the profits from your company, that’s part of what you’re hoping to accomplish.
Mike Mwenedata: There is so many things to accomplish with that 50% because sometimes people don’t know how value Rwanda, what impact to Rwanda can make over there so with that 50% we are looking to find a way to help farmers be more sustainable, help them get connected to this market, produce a good quality of the beans, but also help them improve their lives. That includes some of them, even if they are in the coffee business, they can’t afford to send kids to school. Sometime those farmers, their children are relying just on coffee business so that means if they can’t afford to go to school when they grow up after they finish elementary school or high school they start helping the parents and somehow they end up in that way and the country is coming over tragedies they went through and they tried to develop the business where everyone is involved and I believe education is one key to help the country, society grow more and I think education can reduce that 85% of population relying on subsistence agriculture. Create more jobs and so … it’s just the beginning but I hope a small step can take you to a big step. It’s a beginning and I want to see it grow and see where it takes us.
Lisa Belisle: When you go to a coffee shop and you see somebody spending at least $4.00 for a cup of coffee and you know that $4.00 back in Rwanda.
Mike Mwenedata: Can feed the whole family.
Lisa Belisle: Feeds the whole family.
Mike Mwenedata: A day.
Lisa Belisle: For a whole day.
Mike Mwenedata: Then maybe someone is buying two cups a day, so that’s like a meal of two days. That’s how I try just picturing and then I’m like how can I sell them more coffees and then I can …
Lisa Belisle: So you can send more dollars over.
Mike Mwenedata: We don’t focus just on giving back because we also buy the beans at a premium price. We are not buying through the middleman so we’re bringing in the beans direct from them so but the whole system is to help them. Some of the farmers don’t have access to the resources they need to be able to provide the final product which is the beans we bring here because they can’t afford it. We have a structure for business of giving back, we gonna be building those kind of resources that is owned by those co-ops, those farmers. That means even if we can’t buy all the product because we don’t have the market yet but they can still not selling the beans as cherries, they can sell the beans as a final product. That means that we are bringing value to their products so that’s the whole thing, that’s the program that we’re trying to accomplish.
We’re still figuring out how to make it happen but I believe this is our third year and I believe we have run because when I come in the coffee business, I did not know anything about coffee so I run every day, every day. I speak to them every day. I speak to people who drink coffee. I know people want to like really good coffee here and I know people have to feel like what they are spending is getting back to the earth, where does the product they’re eating or drinking come from. I try to be like a bridge that connected those farmers and the consumers and see where it takes us.
Lisa Belisle: Where is your coffee sold now?
Mike Mwenedata: We are online on our website so people can buy the beans and roasted coffee on our website and then it is shipped to them. We do wholesales in local stores like Scratch Bakery in the South Portland, the Farm Stand in the South Portland. Lois’ Natural Market in both Portland and Scarborough. Iron Cheese in Scarborough, Cheese Iron …
Lisa Belisle: Oh, the Cheese Iron in Scarborough, yes.
Mike Mwenedata: We are in Aurora Provisions in the West End. AC Store up here on Washington Ave. Arabica in a few restaurants, EVO, The King’s Head, so we are … Those are small shops around the city but we hope to expand it as we grow.
Lisa Belisle: Your co-founder is Nick Mazuroski.
Mike Mwenedata: Yes.
Lisa Belisle: Are the two of you responsible for getting the coffee into the wholesale locations or into the restaurants? Are you the ones who are convincing people to put your coffee out there.
Mike Mwenedata: Yeah. We go there, door by door, we talk to them. We have a few tours that we use. We try to get the order and then we know the coffee’s really good so we know when it gets in their hands there is a big chance they will have it. We try just to get the order and then see what happens.
Lisa Belisle: Once people try the coffee, then they’ll keep buying the coffee.
Mike Mwenedata: Yeah. Because what we focus on is the quality first then all other things comes after because we want … If we want you to drink coffee and we want you to have impact, first you want to make sure you are drinking coffee and then you feel good about all you’re doing with it. Once we get the coffee there our job is done, we are waiting to see if you really are drinking it.
Lisa Belisle: How many other people work in your company?
Mike Mwenedata: By now I will say it would be me and Nick but most of our jobs we hire like third party contracts as we hire agencies and companies to do some of our job. We haven’t been focusing much on business development on branding development so I think now we are working on expanding the team and bringing in more people in the area where I would need to and then working from there.
Lisa Belisle: How many farmers do you work with in Rwanda?
Mike Mwenedata: Right now we are working around 300 to 400.
Lisa Belisle: These are farmers that work within a cooperative?
Mike Mwenedata: Yes. That’s one co-op.
Lisa Belisle: That’s one co-op.
Mike Mwenedata: Yeah. In one region. There is more than 200,000 farmers in Rwanda, coffee farmers and Rwanda, it’s a small country. It’s a third of Maine. You can fit three Rwanda country in the state of Maine but it’s 13 times population. So Maine have 1.3 population, Rwanda has 13 million. You can imagine if you are working with 300 coffee farmers, that’s a small number compared to how small the country is and how overpopulated it is. That’s just one small region. That’s one co-op. I always get calls, text message from people from Rwanda asking if we can work. I just fly back from Seattle to the Coffee Expo, all these coffee experts and I was lucky to meet people from Rwanda who are there to talk about the coffee, talk about the products, and so I got a chance to meet all of them and every one is like how can we work together. That really shows you the inability to access to the market and I think finding a way to connect to the market would be a great way to improve what they do and see if the magic happens.
Lisa Belisle: How much coffee are you able to bring into Maine and the United States right now?
Mike Mwenedata: We don’t it on a big scale, as I told you. Focusing on branding development but we have access to the inventory. We have warehouse. We have been focusing on bringing in the quantity of the beans that we are able. We to move, but we can bring containers and containers with just working on the access to the market, coffee business is a very competitive market. It takes the time to start trusting your brand and to start knowing you are out there to know your quality so … I think we are moving towards to bringing as much as we can, as grow the market as much as we can. We are right now getting involved in a few products so we are launching like cold brew that is gonna be in the bottle so that’s another piece of the market that we are bringing in so if that’s increased the quantity that we really want to bring in, then that’s how we’re trying to walk step by step.
Lisa Belisle: What have you learned through your MBA studies that you’ve been able to apply to your coffee company?
Mike Mwenedata: I have learned maybe how I would say to be professional but I wouldn’t say that what I’m doing I learned from the MBA. What I’m doing comes from my heart. That’s what I really wanted to do. I wasn’t even thinking about owning a company. Just when I saw the coffee situation, I just say I want to do something from school but I will say it’s not like skills that I learned in school that I’m applying to the business, not really. It’s just things I love to do. I like to do something socially that have impact to people and makes me feel good and I like to be connected with people so for me it would be amazing to see the company succeed by connecting people here and people back home and see good things happen.
That is not something I learned from school. It’s just I love people and I want to do something to improve their lives. I want to provide good coffee to people who love drinking coffee but I also want to do amazing things to people who grow that coffee. But, you still need to know how to navigate your numbers and the prices and the taxes. Those are where the school comes in. I will say it’s a complement, it’s not just saying you’re good at what you do but sometimes there is some things you have to learn when you want to throw the rose in so those are stuff you have to get educated on and I think I will say just having to do things doesn’t meant you do it right so you always have to comply with the laws and what you are not doing, make sure it all flows together. I would say education comes in and complements what I try to do and I will say it’s all vice versa.
Lisa Belisle: Your father was right about education, that it’s important. It’s not everything but it is something that once you have it, nobody can take it away from you and it’ll become what it needs to be in your life?
Mike Mwenedata: The reason why my father will said that he was really hard on us when it comes to education so if you don’t have good grades he would be yelling at you but he want to show you he’s not getting at you because he just wants you to perform well. He just want to show you how important is the education and I believe in that. I believe education is a good tool for people to have and it’s important because I think it opens up your mind to analyze what is going on but also enable you to do, to be an employee or employer of something so you will see when there is not any application where even if it’s serving in a restaurant, it’s always asked to have you wait sometime when I lived there and they say at least you need to have education in high school. It is always something you have to learn from school and I can second my dad saying that education is something that is important and I think he was right.
Lisa Belisle: I have been speaking with Mike Mwenedata who is the co-founder of the Portland based Rwanda Bean Company which buys coffee from coffee farmers in Rwanda and invests 50% of its profits back into the communities from which the coffee was sourced. Good job with what you’re doing. I appreciate all the hard work you’re putting into this and I thank you for coming in today.
Mike Mwenedata: I really appreciate the opportunity you guys gave me and thank you