Sponsor Spotlight: Warm Hearts Coffee Club
The Warm Hearts Coffee Club is a community of coffee lovers based in Japan. Since April of this year we deliver freshly-roasted coffee to households & offices all over Japan & provide a connection between the coffee growers, the coffee’s country of origin and our community members. We do this by supporting organic & fair trade coffee growers in Malawi. And like any good community, we want to give something back.
That’s why we are committed to not only providing good coffee but also ensure that 100% (yes, you read that correct) of all proceeds- the full cost of the coffee purchase- is returned to Malawi as a donation to fund school feeding programmes for kids attending nursery & primary schools in impoverished areas.
So we’re not really only selling coffee. The Warm Hearts Coffee Club also poses a challenge to people as to the choices they make in life- starting with the choice to drink “good” coffee- grown organically, freshly-roasted/shipped same day that invests in the country of origin’s future- it’s children.
Doing Charity by Doing Business
The inspiration for our coffee project came from lessons learned the hard way. In 2016 we established a Japanese NPO for the purpose of supporting school meal programmes in Malawi. We quickly learned that the traditional charity model calling on people to part with their cash was not winning enough people to our cause. Our own experiences in Malawi had centred around social enterprise so when we worked out that coffee was already Malawi’s greatest export to Japan we decided to give it a go and recruited several corporate sponsors to help defray costs while we pursued a 100% donation model.
We grow our business by giving
As a community with a cause we learned you had to give before you get and while at first this might seem counter-intuitive has helped us focus on partnerships with like-minded communities such as FEW for whom we are always happy to provide our coffee at events and gatherings. In the same way we have also signed up numerous Japanese causes & charities to whom we have an affiliate relatinship with. They earn 10% of all coffee sales and we still commit to a 100% donation for the kids in Malawi. Now that’s what they call a win-win-win! If you want to know how that is even possible join our community and we’ll happily tell you our secrets 😉
Favourite quote
“With enough coffee anything is possible”
Top Resources for our business
Our lives are made infinitely easier by partnering with a 100-year old artisan coffee roasting house in Tsukishima – without their know-how we would have zapped the goodness out of our coffee at the roasting stage. For a more hi-tec resource the affiliate plug-in on our WordPress site which tracks online orders made by our online partners and spits out the commission reports is saving us endless hours of strife.
What would be your number one recommendation for people who want to start their own business?
To make the main thing the main thing!