The Coffee Guide Network

This pre-competitive network serves as a vehicle to promote collaboration and partnerships to address pressing coffee sector challenges. It was born out of the unique collaboration to co-create the International Trade Centre’s acclaimed publication, The Coffee Guide, 4th Edition, in a bid to take coffee sustainability off the page and into policy and action.

OUR GOAL is to produce practical resources that bridge information gaps for coffee sector professionals, policymakers, academia and consumers and to promote widespread co-creation and collective action. 

The people
behind the network

In less than two years, the Coffee Guide Network has grown from 70 to over 154 engaged participants motivated to contribute their expertise toward building a more equitable, thriving, and sustainable coffee sector. These include:

Nonprofits and consultancies	Private sector roasters	Traders and trade associations
Coffee professionals from government agencies	Small producer organizations and associations	High caliber academic institutions

They contribute through learning and research initiatives chosen by the network each year to inform and update the Coffee Guide content.

Our working process

We work through a simple, three-step process:

1. COLLABORATE: by selecting research topics at network plenary meetings. These become working groups to deepen knowledge on the topic with topical experts and value chain actors outside the network as well.
2. CO-CREATE: new, practical resources in a pre-competitive way, pooling data, information, case studies, and expertise from across the global coffee sector.
3. DISSEMINATE: knowledge products to a global audience through the network integration into training materials and programs participation in industry events contributions to prominent coffee sector publications ITC’s online Coffee Guide Resource Hub.

We use ITC’s ‘Alliances for Action’ collaborative approach combined with data driven action research, to catalyze broad systems change for the coffee sector.​ Each year, the network prioritizes initiatives that address pressing coffee sector needs.

The growth in participation and interest in these three initiatives has shown the importance of them for the sector. We intend to build upon each of them to establish as on-going initiatives sharing important, reliable information to the coffee sector. Each year, the network will prioritize new research initiatives that address pressing coffee sector needs.