A roastery built on trust, before it was ever built on a roaster.

Photo by Erik Hathaway on Unsplash

From a single sourcing trip to a full-time roastery.

Kaldi Trail began as a handful of buying trips into the Gedeo and Guji highlands, riding out to washing stations and family plots to taste cherry straight off the tree. What we found was coffee good enough to rival anything on a specialty menu abroad — grown by farmers who rarely saw a fair share of its final price.

So we set up a small roasting workshop in Addis Ababa, built direct relationships with cooperatives and independent growers, and committed to roasting only what we could sell fresh — never stockpiling, never letting a bag go stale on a shelf.

Small batches, cupped every single day.

Our roaster runs in short cycles, never large ones — enough to keep every batch consistent and every cup accountable. Each roast is logged, cupped by our team the same morning, and only cleared for packing once it passes our house standard for sweetness, body, and clarity.

Addis Ababa gives us more than a home address — it gives us proximity. We're a few hours by road from both Yirgacheffe and Guji, close enough to visit our partner farms during harvest and close the loop between the tree and the bag.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash