Add Meaning To Your Morning Cup Of Joe

Chad Mills and Scott Holmen, both residents of Fallbrook, allow their customers to choose a nonprofit organization that will receive a portion of what they pay for a bag of roasted beans.

Fallbrook-based Crown Coffee is about to enter its second year of selling coffee beans, mostly via the Internet, an enterprise that Mills, 31, and Holmen, 33, say they founded to earn a living and to benefit charitable organizations.

So far, the company has donated $12,000 to local charities, Holmen said last week.

It's an example of how a new wave of socially conscious businesses are making their way into daily life, Mills added.

"We wanted to build a company that did good in the community ... and we did it through coffee," he said. "Coffee is such a huge industry -- we found it is the second-leading commodity being bought and sold, behind oil. It's a powerful resource."

In addition to a Fallbrook headquarters, Crown Coffee has an office in Temecula where the beans are packaged and shipped.

But the biggest part of the business is online sales, Mills said, where customers pay $22.99 to have two bags of coffee shipped to their home each month.

There are nearly 100 customers with such online "memberships," Mill said, and 10 percent of the money from each sale is given to a charity that a customer chooses from a preselected list.

Socially conscious model

In a world with a coffee shop on every corner, the unique part about Crown Coffee, the owners say, is that their customers are offered the choice of which nonprofit organizations they want to receive a portion of their money.

"It's individualized to what they want to support," Mills said. "They go onto our Web site and choose the two bags they want ... then they can go through a list and choose which nonprofits to support."

There are now 10 nonprofit programs that customers can support, including the Surfrider Foundation, Autism Speaks and Escondido High School's AVID program.

One customer, Sandy Helmantoler of Scripps Ranch, said Thursday that she enjoys the coffee and the fact that part of her purchase price goes toward a good cause.

"We tried the coffees and loved them," she said. "The part that was most appealing to me was the aspect of giving back, and being able to donate to some wonderful charitable organizations."

She said she has subscribed to the online program for nine months, and currently directs her nonprofit proceeds to a downtown school for homeless and at-risk children called The Monarch School.

Crown Coffee also organizes trips and other opportunities for its customers to get involved, Holmen said.

"The hands-on opportunities, getting people involved, I put a high value on that," he said.

Customers have already participated in several trips to an orphanage in Tijuana and a beach cleanup day in conjunction with the Surfrider Foundation.

Holmen said they also have plans to do some volunteer maintenance work at the REINS Therapeutic Horsemanship program in Fallbrook.

A soothing business

Holmen and Mills said they savor the good deeds and financial support that their business has encouraged its customers to become involved with.

But even day-to-day business can be rewarding when you work with charitable groups, Mills said.

"I think my favorite part is meeting with the different nonprofit organizations, to see what they're doing, and feed off of the passion that they have," said Mills, who was an international teacher before wading into the business world with Holmen, a longtime friend. "I learn so much from these people, and I get excited about (their cause), too."

Holmen, who came from a business background before starting Crown Coffee, said that he also has enjoyed working alongside nonprofit groups.

"You kind of get burnt on seeing the greed and backstabbing" in the rest of the business world, Holmen said. "So meeting people that are passionate about helping others, living their lives to give back, has been very therapeutic for me."

In addition to aiding nonprofits, Crown Coffee only buys and sells "fair trade" coffee, a phrase that indicates that the farmers who grew the coffee beans were paid a fair price for their product.

"We wanted to start by making a difference in our farmers' lives, so all 12 of our coffees are fair trade," Mills said. "Four are organic, and we have three flavored coffees."

The business

For now, Crown Coffee buys its coffee beans from a Seattle company, Urban City Coffee Roasters.

Mills said that he and Holmen plan to eventually roast their own coffee, but for now they are content to resell the beans they get from Urban City, which has worked with Crown Coffee to create a few unique blends.

"Within a year, we'd like to start roasting our own coffee -- we're raising capital to kind of get into that," Mills said. "Starting a business and learning to roast our own coffee all at the same time was going to be too much."

Because of the online nature of the business, Crown Coffee has customers all over the place, he said.

"We have customers in the Northwest and the East Coast, but Southern California is where most of the money comes from," he said, adding that Crown Coffee may also open its own cafe in North County, although a location has not yet been selected.