New “Cooperative Café” with Long-time Partner Sacramento Natural Foods Coop

July 1, 2022 

Pachamama Coffee is excited to announce its next café in partnership with the Sacramento Natural Foods Cooperative to open in the Fall of 2022. This will be Pachamama’s fifth retail location in California and the first farmer-owned coffee shop to operate within the doors of a North American grocery retailer. At the Cooperative Café, customers will have direct access to organic coffee owned by coffee farmers themselves. 

Since 2006, Pachamama Coffee and Sacramento Natural Foods Coop have worked together locally and globally to bring high quality, specialty coffee beans directly to consumers. The new Pachamama-run café will serve both coffee farmers and consumers alike, while reinvesting in the global communities they serve. 

“Serving specialty coffee consumers directly is the whole reason Pachamama Coffee was established by family farmers in Peru, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico and Ethiopia,”

says Pachamama CEO Thaleon Tremain. “Many of our wholesale customers are consumer-owned grocery cooperatives, like Sacramento Natural Foods, who in turn represent tens of thousands of coffee drinkers in Sacramento.  The best thing we can do to serve the farmers that own Pachamama is to connect them directly with the people who value their harvest the most.”

The Sacramento Natural Foods Cooperative was founded in 1972 as a food buying club specializing in bulk food products, within the year they organized to become the cooperative they are today. SNFC focuses on quality, locally grown and sustainable products. The co-op has had a café for years brewing Pachamama Coffee. The new retail location will be independently operated by Pachamama Coffee Cooperative. 

SNFC General Manager Sean Eakins explained why this collaboration is important to him and the food co-op as a whole:

“Co-ops are all built on stronger communities and in turn build up those communities. A lot of the challenges we see in the food chain are combatted through relationships built through co-ops.”

Sean reflected on the co-op’s values when buying products here in Sacramento Valley, “It is about more than a farm to table movement but noticing the real people and families behind that.”

That was the draw for the new partnership with Pachamama. Knowing that expanding with Pachamama, was serving the coop's customers better AND serving the interests of coffee farmer families who own the Pachamama business and growing the impacts for the community here in the region and internationally at origin.

Cooperatives are a unique space to be in, where it truly is run, by and for the community. The first choice you have as a consumer is where you go to shop. If you’re going into a cooperative or buying directly from farmers, you are investing that money back into the community and the hands of the farmers there. You’re supporting better business and voting with your dollar what you value. 

“We are honored to serve the Sacramento Natural Food Cooperative’s members with an elevated coffee experience featuring state-of-the-art equipment run by professional baristas. We strive to serve guests the highest quality coffee drinks directly from the source,” notes Pachamama’s Chief of Retail, Cruz Conrad.

Construction has officially started and the two teams have been working together to design a brand new space to better serve their customers. Plans to open the new Cooperative Café are set for Fall 2022. SNFC and Pachamama Coffee will announce further details as they arise. In the meantime, visit https://sac.coop/pachamama-cafe/ for more information and listen to the coop scoop podcast with CEO Thaleon Tremain and SNFC General Manager Sean Eakins here.