Union was founded in 2001 in east London by Steven Macatonia and Jeremy Torz, two scientists who encountered the American specialty coffee scene in San Francisco in the 1990s and started roasting in a garden shed when they returned to the UK.
Union was founded in 2001 in east London by Steven Macatonia and Jeremy Torz, two scientists who encountered the American specialty coffee scene in San Francisco in the 1990s and started roasting in a garden shed when they returned to the UK. When the world coffee price collapsed in the early 2000s and they saw the damage it caused to farming communities, they developed Union Direct Trade as their sourcing model: buying directly from producers, paying above market rates, and building long-term partnerships.
Today they work across 14 countries with over 42 producer partners. In 2017, Union received the Queen's Award for Sustainable Enterprise for this sourcing model.
They claim to have been one of the first UK roasters to trade directly with coffee farmers, and they still work with their original Rwandan partner, Maraba, more than two decades later. They roast on Probat and Loring machines in their east London roastery and report that their work has improved the livelihoods of over 65,000 individuals in coffee-producing countries.
