Conversation Over Coffee: An interview with Matt Lamason, founder of Peoples Coffee

20 years ago, still at university and working as a barista, Matthew Lamason had an epiphany: What if there was a coffee business that made a difference to the communities that grew the beloved bean?

Working with small coffee-growing co-operatives in far flung parts of the world, Peoples Coffee focused on bringing a certified, premium, organic, fair trade product to the coffee drinkers of, first, Wellington and then later, the rest of Aotearoa.

Two decades later, Matt returned to the helm of the independently owned, and first B-corp certified coffee roastery in Aotearoa; Peoples Coffee.

WCL: Peoples Coffee is celebrating 20 years in business. In an industry as competitive as coffee, what do you feel is the reason for the longevity of the Peoples brand?
Matt: I think embedding ourselves in Newtown was a good idea. The original Constable Street shop opened in 2005 and became a real institution. That’s where the brand sent its message out to the city from. There’s such a loyalty to that Newtown spot and so many people have heard of Peoples through that.

I also think the mission of the brand contributes. We don’t find it hard to recruit people. There’s always people in the world who want to be something more than just the job. Time and time again we hire people, either globally or across the industry, for whom the purpose of what they are doing in coffee is really important. I think that stands out in the coffee industry.

WCL: Staff aren’t just employees at Peoples – they’re part of a movement that makes a difference to people’s lives?
Matt: Absolutely. A beautiful illustration of that is that the baristas who are all the age I was when I started Peoples, did a showing of Black Gold, which is the seminal fair trade film set in Ethiopia, and they did that all on their own bat. They did a viewing here almost 20 years after I started the business. They’re coming to it for the first time but with the same amount of passion I did. And that makes me go “Ohhh, there is a generational transfer here, people want to carry on this conscious, globalised work. They’re very astute young people today.

WCL: Overall what changes have you seen in both the Wellington coffee roasting and cafe scene in that time?
Matt: I think the major changes have been consolidation. It’s gone from being small and beautiful, the days of where it was just the shop and it was me and just a couple of other people bagging beans as people wanted them, to the corporatisation of the New Zealand coffee industry.

When I first started a bunch of roasters set up the New Zealand Roasters Association to keep the Australian multinationals out. What’s happened is, over time, those multinationals have bought out L’Affare, they’ve bought Havana, they’ve bought Supreme, they’ve bought Allpress. All those companies are now owned by corporates and offshore business so we just don’t have owners in front of companies anymore. Therefore you can’t have this personal dialogue when you think the industry is going to shit. You can’t go “Hey, let’s stop racing to the bottom with prices because it’s not good for any of us”. That’s disappered. The fraternity has gone. Now its more of a fraternity of baristas and speciality people, not owners.

WCL: Peoples is still 100 percent independently owned and operated?
Matt: Yeah, which really does make a difference. There are loads of provincial roasters around New Zealand but in the main the Wellington and Auckland coffee scene has consolidated.

WCL: In 2022 Peoples Coffee established a Pledgeme campaign to crowdfund the expansion of production capacity. How was that process and what did you learn from it?
Matt: Although Peoples set out to raise $1.5 million but we had to shift it down because we weren’t getting the traction. We raised around $300 000. The reason for the fundraise was that, until then, the whole business had been bankrolled by me and by cashflow. Over time, as the place got bigger, it wasn’t really balanced.in terms of my exposure but also our ability to grow alone. So we hatched the idea that we are Peoples Coffee so why don’t we go out to the market and see if we can be owned by the people. Conceptually it made a lot of sense and it has enabled us to not only grow our production and get into supermarkets, but the support for small brands is a real thing for Kiwis. Its really wonderful to be in that company and seeing what‘s possible there.

WCL: Many people don’t realise the dark history of slavery and exploitation behind their favourite brew, or that it is still a very real part of life in coffee producing countries. Why is working with small co-operatives and paying a fair price integral to Peoples’ kaupapa?
Matt: Way back in 2003 when I was a barista I remember pouring out these kilos of coffee into the hopper and thinking “I wonder where these little beans come from”. That started a bit of a journey to understand where coffee came from. When I was 23 I went to Nicaragua and spent a week staying of Don Wilfredo’s farm (who is the namesake for our espresso blend). That confirmed how necessary and beautiful co-operatives were within the wider cut and thrust of the coffee trade.

Coffee is a commodity that is bought and traded on price and quality. It has no human factor and that’s the way you can avoid the dark side of it, because you don’t get to see how people are treated.

It was on that trip that I was like “Wow. If we’re going to be in coffee these are going to be our people”. These small farmer co-ops really do shift the dynamic on the trader and take responsibility for their own destiny. It just seemed like a no brainer. If we were going to be in coffee, we shouldn’t be just buying back into the system of commoditisation and depersonalisation. We should be looking at the dignity of these farmers. That’s a big part of it.

WCL: What impacts have you noticed on the communities you are involved with for many years as a result of long term trade commitment with them?
Matt: First of all, they’re getting beyond the mindset that the government needs to look after them. We saw that a lot in Ethiopia; where they are really taking the power back and beginning to develop new industries of their own and diversifying their resilience beyond coffee. They’re getting into apiaries and honey, fish farms, making all their own nurseries for the production of new coffee crops and really marketing themselves to the world.

A lot of the farmers were getting too old so basically the farm would die out with the farmer because there wasn’t enough money for the kids to take over the farm. What we’re seeing is children often going to the cities to get trained then coming back as agronomists or doctors or teachers. So there’s an intergenerational empowerment in that. They have a business model where they get to decide. There’s all these other possibilities for new businesses running in these indigenous parts of the coffee lands.

There's a better infrastructure for the whole community so even the people who are not in coffee benefit from the increased investment in bridges and roads and things that make a difference. Some really subtle but powerful shifts are happening.

It’s important to make those trips back and for the communities to see us. The conact is essential. We could not travel and just take their stories third hand but [going to the communities] makes the connection far more visceral. The sense of solidarity where they know they are being valued and their product is being valued They get to hear our story and how we are using coffee. They have no idea the industry is as it is.

One year we showed up in a mountain villge in Peru and fireworks were going off. The whole village had shown up with banners. The kids had taken a day off school and learned the New Zealand national anthem. We got treated like kings. And that’s something about working with co-operatives – they really understand the value of their business and having good traders like Trade Aid as a contact for buying green coffee. They really show hospitality. They want their story to be told. Everytime I ask if it’s ok to put their name on the bag they say “Yes, please tell our story”.

WCL: Recent times has seen cafe closures throughout Wellington and the rest of the motu. How is this impacting on your business?
Matt: The recession effects on hospitality are pretty palpable. We notice it in numbers down, not so many people going into cafes. More people are working from home, buying coffee from supermarkets.

Since Covid there’s been such a heavy hit on front line hospitality workers and its a real challenge. How do we continue to elevate the value of going to a cafe when costs are going up in the market but the price of a cup of coffee isn’t really staying on par with the costs?

We’re really just having to double down on service and providing really great coffee and also [keep telling] our story. We’re Living Wage accredited and we’re organic and fair trade and that really costs us as a business. But we also expect to be giving you a great service and real value. So its continuing to find ways to express that to people. The value you are getting in a cup alongside the vision and the mission of Peoples.

WCL: What strategies are you implementing to offset potential sales downturn as a result?
Matt: Expanding into supermarkets is all about having more resilience. In the time of Covid we would have been completely ruined if we didn’t have that channel. It’s just where most Kiwis shop as well. We really want to be the lead go-to ethical coffee company in that huge, crowded market. It’s just as competitive as wholesale cafes.

What we are seeing is people who have moved from Wellington to Auckland or Christchurch, who know the brand, and love the brand, are early adopters. We can leverage that alongside digital marketing targeting these new areas where we are in supermarkets. It’s a total learning curve. We stayed away from it for a long time, because working with the big supermarkets is quite brutal but we really want to get into the hearts and minds of Kiwis all over the country.

Outside of Wellington loads of people don’t know about what we do. Why should people know about the dark side of coffee? Well, here’s a brand that actually gives you a postiive spin on that and you can get behind it and it tastes really great for a little bit more than your average price.

WCL: You recently stepped back up to being more hands-on with the business after taking time out to pursue other entrepreneurial interests. How are you finding being back at the helm of things?
Matt: I just love the people at Peoples. That really does make such a difference to me. We have such an amazing team and there’s a newness for me. Having been out of it for ten years I’m not sweating the small stuff as much. People have full permission to have more impact on the business from their own ideas. I feel I am able to step back and allow the genius of our people to shine more. It feels really lovely to come back to something I created so obsessively back when I was in my early 20s. Now I’m in my mid 40s its “Let’s have fun while we get stuff done and bring more of ourselves to life”. I think the work I’ve done in the coaching world and the embodiment world benefits my engagement with the company and what’s possible now. To be able to think outside the box or just allow certain things to happen instead of trying to micromanage everything. We’re really not in control of how this whole thing goes.

WCL: You’ve taken on the role of business mentor – what drives you to share your business knowledge with a new generation of entrepreneurs?
Matt: I feel like one of the most powerful things I’ve experienced in life, when I’m coming upon new territory, is both permission and support of someone to explore and fully be myself. And that’s what you don’t have when you are starting out in anything. You don’t know how its going to go and so just providing a presence and space for people to explore what is possible in their lives and not minimise their own genius even at the outset. And not be too prescriptive.

I feel like in New Zealand when we talk about business development we are often very straight down the line of bach, boat and BMW. We have this very small idea of what success looks like. But actually in this totally changing globalised world we need to bring our hearts in line and just more of ourselves to whatever we’re doing.

Sometimes opportunities are there that are outside of the normal business parameters. I just love the energy I get from young people that I maybe don’t have. The possibility for what is possible as well as just letting people know “You’ve got this. This is possible. Just keep trying”.

Miles Maitland was my first Bus Mentor in Wellington and he provided accountability every week or two. We had a few questions, I was going to go away and do these things and when you are starting a business on your own, its like having your own board and yet it was not someone who was going to knock you down if you didn’t hit your straps. So I think that accountability early on, because you are so busy and so caught in your own siloed world, is a real gift.

WCL: At a recent event you recommended the book Be more Pirate and you mentioned earlier the documentary Black Gold . What is it about these resources that is meaningful to you?
Matt: Be more pirate came through a Men’s circle I was part of. A guy just held it up and I listened to an audio book from start to finish and I was like “Oh my gosh. This is utterly the energy I had when I started Peoples”. There’s a Steve Jobs’ quote “I’d rather be a pirate than join the Navy” and its just like that rambunctious energy that wants to stick it to the man and just risk things sometimes but also they talk a lot about writing your own rules for things.

In New Zealand, we’re quite tall poppy adverse ... we don’t like to stick out too much. This book encourages you to be your version of more pirate. Which is writing your own rules and what are your outcomes? Just taking the best from that era of the golden age of the pirates where they were actually some of the social leaders of their day in terms of equal pay and a fairly flat leadership structure that would shift in times of war when the Captain was the Captain and in times of peace it was equal votes.

So we are using that in the team to have more eyes on our business numbers like sharing our profit loss with the team and going “This is what’s actually going on and this is how you affect it”. That in itself is a little bit revolutionary, opening the black box of the business and letting all the team be aware of what makes the ship sail. Also more imagination – pirates are far more interesting than corporate executives.

Black Gold was filmed around the year Peoples coffee started. It’s the story of Tadesse Meskela who was the head of the Ethiopian coffee farmers union and he was the first coffee guy I met at Victoria University before I started Peoples. Then when I went to Ethiopia, twice, he travelled with me and literally held my hand through villages and was just this incredible power. At the time Ethiopia was not known in the coffee world at all. Therefore people did not pay good prices for their coffee, yet it was where coffee originated. Tadesse spent twenty years going to trade fairs and making Ethiopia famous. This story details both the plight of coffee farmers but also the possibilities when someone works tirelessly with the market to showcase the quality in the cup. It’s an inspiration for people and also makes a good economic case around how these countries get shafted by the WTO and international trade agreements. It’s not an even playing field at all so really it turns that conventional economics on its head and goes “We really need to do something different”.

WCL: Finally – what is your vision for the next twenty years? Do you see Peoples becoming a generational business?
Matt: My seven year old loves making coffee. I did used to think of it that way. I quite like the idea of the family making coffee.

Part of me would love it to be completely owned by the general public. By the people who love the coffee and care about the mission. It would be a unique story where it’s a publicly owned small to medium sized company that’s got this continual connection to origin. It’s going to be a perennial issue – slavery and colonisation and I think if we can continue to reinvent the way that we tell that story and also continue to track how things are happening at origin and the developments on the other side of the world, that will remain a vital Trade not Aid agreement where we are having a dignified connection.

I also would love to see Peoples being more of a community of embodiment whether that’s music, poetry and the arts. We do dance spaces in here. How do we bring more of ourselves into cafes being so important for Wellingtonians as a way to meet? How do we continue to deepen that history of coffee being the place of fermenting change and ideas of change versus just a transactional drug. The ground is ripe even though we are in this challenging environment right now.

Along with their three cafes around Wellington, Peoples Coffee is also served by The Collective Cafe at the Te Awe Brandon Street Library.

Interested in knowing more? Have a look at these titles.

Be more pirate, or, how to take on the world and win (2018) by Sam Conniff Allende.
Also available as eAudiobook Libby

Black gold (2007) - Also available on both the Kanopy and Beamafilm streaming platforms.

Peoples Coffee barista handbook (2012) by Dave Lamason

The devil's cup : coffee, the driving force in history (1999) by Stewart Lee Allen

The world atlas of coffee : from beans to brewing - coffees explored, explained and enjoyed (2014) by James Hoffman

Coffee : a dark history (2005) by Antony Wild