Whittard, a City of London merchant, soon branched out into coffee sourced from South America and Indonesia.
This disadvantages not only the grower but also the consumer – coffee sourced from good quality beans is hard to find.
Despite Starbucks' success, however, companies must work on more efficient coffee sourcing processes throughout their supply chains.
On coffee sourcing, the company – part of Swiss multinational Nestle – is an industry leader, training coffee farmers and paying premium prices.
As a direct coffee sourcer your world can cut a pretty wide swath and include any number of some 80 countries.
This could be applied to sustainable coffee sourcing at Nestlé as well as to supply chain engagement at Adidas, amongst others.
Starbucks, for example, appears to have discontinued its organic shade-grown Mexican coffee sourced from farmers in Chiapas's El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve.
In August, Kraft (the world's second-largest food and drink company) announced the launch of Kenco Sustainable Development - an instant coffee sourced from eco-friendly farms certified by the Rainforest Alliance, a US conservation charity.
On Tuesday, Nespresso announced it'd be extending this scheme into Africa, and said it expects to double the amount of coffee sourced from Ethiopia and Kenya to 10,000 tons by 2020.
He said: "The conversation has become too much about the fact that the scheme (Fairtrade) just happens to provide a minimum price, and this has become so strong as to eclipse any correctly informed discussion about quality – like all coffee sourcing, it is down to the roaster to build strong relationships and demand/encourage/reward growers to produce better quality, Fairtrade or not".
Eventually they started roasting their own coffee, sourcing beans from El Salvador, Colombia and Brazil.
