Stone Creek Coffee opened its first cafe in 1993. Since then, the company has grown – much like Milwaukee’s own vibrant coffee scene.
Since its inception, Stone Creek founder and co-owner Eric Resch has aimed to operate a business that can be both “radically human and profitable at the same time.” Part of that mission is not only changing with the coffee landscape to source more responsibly, but also enacting green initiatives that help offset their dependence on global distribution of coffee beans.
Stone Creek Director of Development Drew Pond joined Lake Effect’s Audrey Nowakowski to share more about Stone Creek’s sustainability efforts. He says Stone Creek's renewed emphasis on sustainability began in 2012, as the company shifted from sourcing beans from coffee importers to directly from farmers in Guatemala, Costa Rica and elsewhere.
"We learned a great deal more about the work that needs to be done in origin countries to make it environmentally sustainable, and sustainable economically for the farmer," he says. "Over the last 13 years that we've been sourcing directly, we've been on a steep learning curve to support that work and to try and build deeper relationships with our farmers."
On the cafe side of things, Stone Creek has pursued recyclable coffee bags and alternative materials for disposable cups. In recent years, Pond says they've enlisted the services of Compost Crusader to dispose of coffee grounds.
"It does cost us — like, there's no financial benefit — but there's certainly an environmental benefit and a social benefit to working with Compost Crusader," he says.
Through We Energies' Energy for Tomorrow program, the company also opts to pay higher rates to source 90% of their energy from local wind farms.
"One thing we say a lot at Stone Creek is, 'vote with your dollar,' and unfortunately, sometimes doing environmental good costs more," Pond says. "The world is kind of backwards in that way."
But now, alongside the cost of these green initiatives, the company is also faced with the burden of tariffs. Over the next six months, Pond projects that tariffs will increase Stone Creek's costs by $1.2 million. He says prices at Stone Creek will have to go up.
“If nothing changes here in the next few weeks — because our last container that just arrived got hit with $17,000 worth of tariffs — we have to do something in our pricing or we go out of business in a year," he says.
Under this increased economic pressure, Pond says Stone Creek isn't making any concessions when it comes to paying employees a living wage.
"We're committed to paying fair — which, I'll say honestly that we haven't always paid fair," he says. "That's been a journey for us over the last five years, where we've gotten much more aggressive in fighting against what I talked about earlier — the history of hospitality pay and benefits being crappy in the United States."
And when it comes to Stone Creek's relationships with farmers and commitment to sustainability, Pond says they're not compromising either.
“We're not going to stop paying fair prices to farmers. We're not going to stop trying to do what's better for the planet. We're going to fight through it — and we've fought through other things as we've been around for 30 years as a small, local business."
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