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Youth double coffee earnings by brewing their cherries

Coffee roasting
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A youth farmer group is making more than double the earnings of over 400,000 co-op farmers by processing their own beans to meet Kenyans’ growing love of a finely brewed cup.

Through its Kenton Golden Coffee brand, the eight-man Young Blood Youth group in Kirinyaga grinds at least 75kg of coffee cherry every month selling it for Sh200. By comparison, Kenya’s 22,800 coffee cooperative societies paid their farmers an average of Sh60-90 per kilogram.

While most of the country’s coffee is exported, a rising middle-class as well as government and private coffee makers youth-targeted promotion in universities, during trade fairs, and field days in all countries is changing drinking culture increasing the yearly amount of coffee drunk in Kenya since 2009/2010 by 10.06 per cent to 1,722 metric tons in 2022/2023.

Founded five years ago by 10 university students, the youth self-help group aimed to add value to coffee, bananas, and avocadoes. These crops which are abundant in Gichugu Constituency are usually sold ‘raw’ for a fraction of the value they have once they undergo even a single value-addition process.        

“I first studied the coffee value chain in Kenya to know what licenses we required to operate as an independent coffee brand and figure out the machines and expertise we needed to ensure every buyer of the medium roast Kenton coffee would have a taste of premium Kenyan coffee,” said the group’s head Ken Mithamo.     

Mithamo’s packaged Kenton Golden Coffee

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When they first harvested coffee beans from their family farms they used a pestle and motor for wet milling or to dehull the coffee cherries. This was an extremely slow and labour-intensive process. They also had to outsource the other coffee-making processes, roasting, grinding, and packaging which increased their working costs. 

“It would cost us over Sh500,000 to set up a coffee processing plant. We could not afford this so we approached Kimiti Farm, who I heard from a friend were looking to introduce their own specialty coffee brand,” Mithamo said.

Thanks to all the research and legwork he had done establishing his coffee brand he had first-hand insights to offer the much larger and resourced farm.

This was everything from what machines were the best to buy, how to get them, how to operate the machines, what packaging material to use and where to buy them, etc. ”As examples, to get a pleasant aftertaste from your coffee, you need experience in how to manipulate a roaster, you need to know how to grade your grinder to fit your coffee’s texture, etc.,” he explained.

In exchange for this invaluable knowledge, they would use the processing plant largely for free apart from a small fee charged for roasting their beans.    

This deal has enabled them to increase their production from 30 kg a month in 2023 to 75 kg today.

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“We have moved from processing about half of the cherry from our farms to all of it. We currently have 50 bags of parchment stored and awaiting processing. This ensures we never run out of coffee to supply our steadily climbing customer base,” Ken informed.

Kenton Golden Coffee is made from AA and AB cherries and is sold for Sh1,500 a kilo with a smaller 100-gram sachet going for Sh150.  

His clients who are mainly friends, colleagues, and people who come across their online pages order finely ground coffee. Only about five per cent, the majority of whom are outside the country, buy beans to crash with their espressos.

Ken Mithamo: 0725294263


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