About
Thread Coffee is a women & queer-owned coffee roasting company based in Baltimore, Maryland. We are a worker-cooperative and use a transparent model of trade, buying coffee directly from farmers we want to be in solidarity with.
Casey grew up in her mom’s coffee shop and was passionate about both coffee and social justice from a young age. In founding Thread Coffee, she attempted to bring those two passions together. After roasting for the past five years, she now is doing a lot of the behind the scenes work. When not working, Casey can be found playing soccer, taking photos, building things and hanging out with her dog. Right now, her favorite coffee is an AeroPress of the Ethiopia Telamo.
Nani has been working in specialty coffee since 2012. She started as a barista in a small Brooklyn coffee shop that featured Crop to Cup coffees. There she learned to pour latte art and how to properly brew coffee. She went onto roasting, production, and education for Joe Coffee and Nobletree in NYC. She was the Lead Educator and Sales and Marketing Director for Unique Coffee Roasters in Staten Island, NY. In 2017, she moved to Baltimore, MD to work with Woodberry Kitchen, Artifact Coffee, and Bird in Hand as coffee director and manager. Now at Thread, she works in roasting and sales. When not working, Nani is a writer and musician.
Holly grew up in the UK, and still remembers drinking her first cup of black coffee at the tender age of 11, a stone’s throw from Dracula’s castle in Whitby. Years later in Chicago, she became a barista on the side of adjunct work and anti-war activism, but soon got swept up into the third wave and fell in love with the coffee craft. Now a roaster and barista at Thread, she relishes a Chemex of Fero, and enjoys a democratically-run workplace. At home, she reads Kafka, draws comics about a rabbit girl, and looks at her corgi.
History
Thread Coffee formed in 2012 when three people got together and decided they wanted to come up with a way to be in solidarity with different social movements. Luckily, they also all shared a deep passion for coffee. Combining those two things together, Thread Coffee was born.
Beyond Fair Trade
Thread Coffee works to create relationships directly with farmers, ensuring that producers receive a just price for their beans, and that their coffee is grown in a way that’s good for both the environment and the culture. Thread goes above and beyond fair trade standards to provide a model of trade that is more than just a logo. More and more farmers are expressing that fair trade minimum standards are not, in fact, fair. Thread strives to build a better model by:
- Paying higher prices than the fair trade minimum
- Establishing long-term, direct relationships with farmers
- Supporting practices that protect the environment and the culture
- Making a commitment to participatory democracy and collective structure, both here in the workplace and with the farmers
Transparency
In striving to create a better model of trade, transparency is key. Thread works to provide information about our coffee’s journey every step of the way. All of our contracts and financials are open and available to the public.
Revolution through Coffee
Many different social movements throughout the world have turned to coffee as a means of supporting their autonomy. From the Zapatistas and Las Abejas of Mexico, to the women in the Democratic Republic of Congo, we seek to work with farmers we want to stand in solidarity with.
