Fair Grinds Partnership with COMUCAP in Marcala, Honduras

Suyapa Amador of ACORN Mexico first brought Wade Rathke to meet the leadership of the more than 200 person strong women’s coffee and aloe vera growing cooperative, COMUCAP, in Marcala, Honduras early in 2010.

This first visit led to a number of things later in the spring including ACORN International opening up organizing offices in San Pero Sula and Tegucigalpa with Suyapa’s help.  It also led to a blossoming partnership between COMUCAP and ACORN International to attempt to open up new markets for COMUCAP’s coffee and aloe vera products in Canada and the United States, where previously they had only sold coffee to German roasters in Bonn.   This visit also led to Wade putting two and two together and realizing that the Fair Grinds Coffeehouse in New Orleans could be a model for how to make the partnership work, and one thing after another, led to Fair Grinds Coffeehouse as we know it now and as it is evolving.

These are some pictures of the COMUCAP operations both at Café Organico where they sell and work, their washing operation near the fields where the crop comes in, and the outside drying and storage operation.

In the spring of 2012, Fair Grinds and ACORN International are visiting the agricultural town of Marcala in the state of La Paz near the El Salvador once again to arrange for purchase and shipping of green coffee to Fair Grinds Coffeehouse in New Orleans.