From Farm to Filter
Lisbeth Pacheco, alongside her husband Julian Rios, is on a mission to change the lives of coffee farmers with their Lakeland-based coffee brand, Ethos Coffee.
Lakelander MADE - Taste
PHOTOS BY DAN AUSTIN
The popularity of coffee has served as a grand unifier around the world. Many of us need it in the mornings, and many of us find it to be the one common denominator across some of our best conversations and evenings with friends. The modernization of coffee and its unique forms have helped form social ambiances across the globe. Coffee makes vital contributions to a city’s culture because, simply put, it is one of the most beloved drinks in the world. And while we all enjoy our morning cup, it’s not often that we think about the farmers who grew the coffee beans that helped make the drink in our hands. Ethos Roasters in Lakeland, Florida, is out to change that.
Lisbeth Pacheco and her husband Julian Rios started Ethos Roasters in 2016, almost immediately upon arriving in Lakeland. They met at school in Gainesville, Florida, in 2005 while Lisbeth was getting her master’s in nutrition and food science, while Julian was getting his undergrad in microbiology. “I grew up in Guatemala, and he grew up in Colombia,” says Lisbeth. “Julian grew up in Colombia’s main coffee growing regions. So his hometown is surrounded with mountains full of coffee.”
After some moving around post-graduation from the University of Florida, Lisabeth and Julian found their way back to Florida, ready to start Ethos. “Before coming to Lakeland, we went to a few coffee conferences trying to network with people in the industry. I suppose my little advantage was that we actually came from coffee-growing countries. So I already knew a lot of the people that brew coffee or work with the cooperatives.”
“Our belief has always been that we can transform the lives of small farmers through better coffee prices,”
There’s energy alive in Lakeland that seems to constantly be reaching out and clinging to the arms of entrepreneurs. With Ethos, Lisbeth says Lakeland had her heart at first glance. “Since the very first time we visited Lakeland, everything was just right,” says Lisbeth. “Everything just clicked. We came to the Saturday morning farmers market during our first time in Lakeland, and I just fell in love with the city that day. I was like, “Yes, I’m going to be a vendor here.”
And they have been ever since. Today, you can find Lisbeth and Ethos at the farmer’s market every Saturday morning, ready to offer the people of Lakeland some of the best coffee in the state of Florida. And ever since Lisbeth and Julian started to dream about selling their coffee, they always wanted to do it with a larger purpose in mind. “Ever since the very first time that we met, I think we both connected over a desire to at some point in our lives do something for the people that we kind of left behind, you know?”
Ethos exists to make sure you get the best quality coffee out of high-quality coffee beans and, perhaps most importantly, to ensure the farmers get paid a fair, livable wage, one that can be life-changing for their suppliers.
“Our belief has always been that we can transform the lives of small farmers through better coffee prices,” says Lisbeth. “So, subsequently, our mission with Ethos is to champion the best prices possible, which we call “life-changing prices,” for small farmers. By doing business with small farmers, you can impact their lives in a very profound way if you are able to pay them better for their product because they only get paid for the product itself. They don’t get paid any extra for their time or their work directly.”
Lisbeth and Julian are making a difference in the lives of small farmers and their families right here in central Florida.
Ethos has stayed true to its mission, providing all of its small farmer suppliers with better prices for their coffee. Even when it may have been tempting to take their business to a larger farm or supplier, Lisbeth and Julian have stayed true to what they set out to do. “We work exclusively with small farmers,” says Lisbeth. “So we won’t ever buy coffee from a large farm, even if it’s amazing coffee. And it is a hard decision to make sometimes because you might have a very delicious, very outstanding coffee with an attractive price, but it just doesn’t support our mission.”
In the beginning (circa 2016), Ethos was such a small operation that Lisbeth and Julian traveled with their coffee back from Guatemala in their luggage. “Today, we ship everything.” Now, Lisbeth says that they routinely order pallets of coffee from Guatemala, with about 700 kilos of coffee per pallet (about 1500 pounds). This is a direct result of Ethos’ efforts to pay their farmers the best prices possible. And as Ethos has grown in popularity, so has Lisbeth and Julian’s ability to order higher quantities of coffee from their farmers.
“These farmers have grown a lot in their capabilities, and a lot of that has come from their personal efforts,” says Lisbeth. Ethos’s mission is vital to the farmers. It provides them with the tools necessary to invest back into their farms by having profitability proof they need to approach banks.
Running a business is already a leap of faith, but a company that set out to make this kind of change in a coffee market valued at over 100 billion dollars worldwide requires a few extra leaps. For example, Ethos pays their farmers half of the money, sometimes nine months in advance, nine months before they’ll ever see any coffee, to ensure that their farmers can cover all of their expenses during the harvest. A leap of faith, for sure. But one that produces strong ties between Ethos and their farmers after six years of doing business together.
If you were to visit the Ethos website, you would read about how Lisbeth and Julian have a vision for Ethos to create a future where no child has to sacrifice school for a life in the coffee farms to help their parents feed their siblings. Lisbeth says this vision goes back to when she was a kid growing up in Guatemala. “I would have to trace it back to my childhood. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a family that had enough. Both of my parents are physicians, and we always had something to eat. But growing up in Guatemala, I was surrounded by kids who didn’t have anything. You see them in the streets. I remember seeing all these children, and I never forgot the images of these kids trapped in poverty. These kids don’t have enough money or the privilege to ever go to school. I loved school, and the thought of children not attending school because they have to work is terrible. I always knew that one day, I wanted to help.”
The truth is, and it’s not an exaggeration to say, that Ethos’s impact isn’t just felt in Lakeland. It is quite literally felt around the world. Lisbeth and Julian are making a difference in the lives of small farmers and their families right here in central Florida.
And while Ethos is one of the best in the business to focus on ethically sourced coffee, they’re not alone. Lisbeth encourages coffee lovers everywhere to jump in on ethically sourced coffee. “I would suggest; look for the smaller players. We’re not the only ones working directly with the farmers, but we’re certainly one of them. Look for transparency. I think a lot of the time, transparency is very powerful. If somebody can tell you exactly who the farmer is or how much money that farmer gets paid, that’s probably a roaster you should support. Honestly, it is a big, big deal to know the facts. Most people won’t reveal the cost of their beans from farmer to roaster, and there’s a reason for that.”
“Our dream is to elevate your coffee experience well beyond taste - we want you to brew a cup that helps change the world!”