Is The Future of Coffee Black?
Nadine Umutoni, Founder of Neza Coffee
As a Black woman in Canada's coffee industry, Nadine Umutoni is helping to forge a new path for Black entrepreneurs. The founder of Vancouver-based startup Neza Coffee says she wishes she'd started sooner.
“Yes it is hard, but it is rewarding,” Nadine says. Coffee is a $6.2B CAD industry in Canada, employing over 160,000 people and bringing in $1.4B CAD in retail sales. According to the Coffee Association of Canada, 71% of Canadians have a cup every day. For Nadine and the small number of Black entrepreneurs like her in the industry, there is a great opportunity. In 2020, 35% of Canadians said they purchased their coffee from their local supermarket. It’s no wonder that’s where Nadine has set her sights.
“The big dream is to grow and be in more targeted retail, like Whole Foods for example. Its organic, fair trade and the price point is in line with where we want to be,” she says. “The more we grow, the bigger impact we make. Ultimately, we want to be more in retail or even get a coffee shop down the line.”
Her bold new startup sells fair trade coffee sourced from her native Rwanda. Coming from a long line of coffee farmers in her own family, Nadine says she dreams of carrying on the family tradition – but taking her family's legacy to heights they could have only dreamed of. Coffee has deep roots in Black history. The first coffee shop in Canada was opened in Toronto in the early 1800s, but that was 300 years after coffee had already become a staple in African homes. With Canada being the 7th largest coffee importer in the world, the moment is ripe to help put African countries back on the map, as Black entrepreneurs lead a new wave of ownership in the industry across North America. Soon, the Black Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Map (BEEM), will help Canadians know where these owners are located nationally, increasing access to their products and visibility of their brand.
Nadine is also part of a growing number of Black entrepreneurs who went into business with the intention of making an impact socially. As the Dream Legacy Foundation led community consultations in conjunction with the Black Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub’s national qualitative study, they found many were just like Nadine, having been inspired to start a business with the hopes of addressing social inequalities. Driven by her passion to help build a better future, Neza Coffee is a social impact startup brewing hope and fueling change. Inspired by her grandmothers who were both coffee farmers in Rwanda, Nadine says she's always wanted to be an entrepreneur. A survivor of the Rwandan genocide of the 1990’s, a portion of the company's profits is used to provide mental health support those who are rebuilding their lives back home.
“The dream impact is to extend more help to the genocide survivors in Rwanda,” she says. “We waited so long that our trauma is affecting the next generation. I wish we had help sooner, so the younger generation wouldn’t be growing up with generational trauma because of what their parents went through.”