SCA Names Coffee Circle and Bean Voyage Its 2026 Sustainability Award Winners

The number that makes Coffee Circle's model concrete: for every kilogram of coffee sold, €1 flows to Coffee Circle Foundation e.V., the company's nonprofit arm that funds community-led projects at origin. That structure, not a vague sustainability pledge, is a core reason the Specialty Coffee Association named the Berlin-based roaster its 2026 for-profit Sustainability Award winner on March 30.

The SCA simultaneously named Bean Voyage, a Costa Rica-based nonprofit co-founded in 2016 by SungHee Tark and Abhinav Khanal, as its non-profit category winner. Together, the two organizations illustrate what the SCA's restructured award program, now with separate for-profit and non-profit categories, is explicitly designed to surface: measurable, replicable models rather than aspirational commitments.

Coffee Circle, founded in 2010, pairs above-market pricing and long-term producer relationships with digital traceability that makes price flows visible across the supply chain. Over 15 years, that per-kilo mechanic has translated to more than €5 million invested in coffee-growing regions, funding clean water access, food security programs, reforestation, and climate resilience work. This is also the company's second SCA recognition: its Jimma Agro-Biodiversity Project in Ethiopia won in the "project" category in 2022, making the 2026 for-profit award a validation of the full business model rather than a single initiative.

Bean Voyage targets a structural problem in supply chain equity. Women perform an estimated 50 to 70 percent of labor in coffee production but have historically been cut out of the income and market relationships that flow from it. Tark and Khanal built Bean Voyage to close that gap directly: the organization has connected more than 1,300 women smallholder producers to markets, generating more than $1.4 million in direct income alongside $800,000 in seed grants and support programs. "By connecting smallholder women coffee producers directly to markets, we help ensure that a group often excluded from these spaces is not only visible, but meaningfully included," Tark said.

For roasters and importers evaluating sourcing partners, Coffee Circle's per-kilo reinvestment rate and Bean Voyage's income generation figures are exactly the kind of documented proof points the SCA's evaluation criteria, which include measurable outcomes, governance, equity, and innovation, were built to validate. The final-stage jury was composed of previous SCA Sustainability Award winners, adding practitioner credibility to the selection process.

Winners will be formally recognized at World of Coffee San Diego, running April 10 through 12, where both organizations are expected to share learnings with the wider specialty community. When other brands claim comparable impact, the Coffee Circle and Bean Voyage playbooks now set the floor for what "measurable" actually has to mean: a per-unit reinvestment figure you can audit, and an income number tied to real producer relationships you can count.