From crop to cup – bringing love and relief through coffee
BY: Angela Veugeler
With temperatures cooling and the holidays around the corner, a hot cup of freshly ground pumpkin spice or peppermint chocolate coffee sure sounds good. What if drinking that cup of coffee could help bring a cycle of relief to people in our community and around the world that really need it? Well, that’s just what happens when you purchase Phoenix Community Coffee. According to Founder, Brian Holland, “When we drink coffee there is a personal connection- names, faces, stories…”
Phoenix Community Coffee helps fund relief efforts locally and globally. Holland and his team work with farmers in Central America and visit regularly, seeing firsthand the support that their farmers provide to their communities. Some of the aid they give includes feeding over 400 meals per week to mothers of sick infants and at-risk boys, building homes for widows, and providing jobs for a number of workers on the farms. While visiting, Holland and his team have helped to plant coffee, build homes and have also learned the roasting process from one of the top roasters in the world.
The team calls it “the cycle of relief.” They purchase the coffee at a fair price, which is substantially higher than the “fair-trade” minimum. That income helps support the farmers, their teams and the mission efforts they provide throughout Central America. Locally, Phoenix Community Coffee provides resources to domestic relief projects such as: ending the commercial exploitation of children, ending homelessness, restoring abuse victims, supporting single mothers, and much more through organizations such as Atlanta Mission, Wellspring Living, and Street Grace.
In 2006, Holland founded Phoenix Community of Atlanta, withe the mission to to transform lives through community. At the core they believe that we are all much more alike than we are different, and we connect on a deep level of “Like-Brokenness” that transforms isolation into community.
Phoenix Community of Atlanta holds weekly worship and community groups and invites people of all walks of life to learn what it’s like “to live the life for which God created us.” They keep the community groups small (no more than 100 to 150, with many being 30-40) for the purpose of transformative friendship and accountability, but will continue to add branches to reach more people.
Phoenix Community Coffee is 100% Arabica coffee, grown and rated as specialty coffee and ranking among the top 1% of coffee in the world by the Specialty Coffee Association of American and the International Coffee Association. While most of their coffee is single origin, their blends take into consideration complementary flavors and tastes, avoiding blends of lower quality beans. There are four conventional options, including: a blonde roast, mid city roast (the most popular), dark, and espresso. There are also six flavors, including French vanilla, hazelnut, caramel, chocolate and the seasonal favorites pumpkin spice and peppermint chocolate.
The name Phoenix come from the nickname “the Phoenix City,” which Atlanta was nicknamed after being burnt down during The Civil War and rebuilt so quickly. The Phoenix bird burns itself then rises from the ashes, in old myths. Holland shared, “Phoenix is the official bird of the city of Atlanta and represents the people we are trying to reach that have been broken under society.” Funds raised through coffee sales also help support their local ministries, currently in Duluth and Buford, with plans to add Suwanee and Gainesville locations.
Phoenix Community of Atlanta
2650 Chattahoochee Dr
Duluth, GA 30097
phoenixcommunitycoffee.com
