Boon Boona brews coffee with a purpose

Efrem Fesaha grew up in Seattle, a city famous for its coffee culture. A trip to his family’s homeland of Eritrea led him to add a new dimension to Seattle’s coffee scene.

Boon Boona, the company he launched in 2012 — the name is from two words that both mean “coffee” — is a local, black-owned coffee company specializing in East African coffee. The roaster is a new member of PCC’s Inclusive Trade Program, which connects shoppers with producers from historically and currently excluded communities.

A West Seattle native, Fesaha participated in traditional Eritrean coffee ceremonies with his family growing up. His trip to Eritrea in 2011 solidified his love for coffee, when he saw first-hand how cafes can build community when visiting the capital, Asmara.

Over the years Fesaha has approached every aspect of his retail and wholesale business in an intentional way, even if that means taking longer to find the right bag to package beans, or traveling to coffee-producing countries to connect with farmers and coffee cooperatives. He’s passionate about coffee sourced across East Africa, including Burundi, Uganda, and Kenya.

“For anyone coming down the aisle, we want them to recognize Boon Boona as an option for ethically sourced African specialty coffee,” Fesaha says. “There is intentionality behind what we do, from the compostable bags we use to the different varieties of coffee we source.”

“We’re coffee nerds, we take our coffee very seriously when it comes to quality,” Fesaha says. Boon Boona thoughtfully sources coffee from small farms, some simply consisting of a small number of coffee trees in a grower’s backyard that are harvested and then processed at a local cooperative mill.

The flavors of East African coffee

The coffee plant is native to East Africa, and to this day there is more genetic diversity in coffee grown in Ethiopia, in particular, than anywhere else in the world.

East African coffee flavors tend to be complex, fruit-forward, aromatic, and distinctive: When you taste an Ethiopian coffee, it’s pretty easy to say where it’s from without knowing looking at the label on a bag of coffee because of its distinct bright acidity, floral, and fruit characteristics.

Ethiopian coffee typically tastes more citrusy with traces of bergamot; Kenyan coffee brings more peach and stone fruit characteristics. In Rwanda and Burundi coffees, you’ll taste more berry and red fruit tones.

But flavor is only one part of what’s important in Boon Boona’s model.

Sourcing coffee at Boon Boona

When green coffee is traded, the crop often passes through dozens of hands. Coffee cherries typically move from a farm to a processing mill, then are transferred in a shipping container to a warehouse, roasting facility, and finally to the grocery shelf. Boon Boona Director of Coffee Ali Güldüren pays attention to not just the quality of coffee he sources, but to every step of the process, working to help farmers secure a larger share of income from the green coffee they sell. Güldüren cut his teeth roasting at Seattle-based Victrola, where he also learned how to source coffee. Similar to Fesaha, he became inspired to dive deeper into the coffee industry after traveling to origin to see coffee farms firsthand.

Partnering with women-owned producers is a focus for Boon Boona, who works with several fully women-owned and operated coffee farms. Typically, two or three women-of-color-led farms are on rotation out of the roaster’s eight single-origin offerings, some of which will be available at PCC.

Over the past 20 years, the emphasis in the specialty coffee industry has been moving toward a transparent and farmer-centric view. It’s common for local roasters to ethically source beans from origin. What’s less common is infusing lived experience and generosity into coffee, a kind of reciprocity that helps farmers trying to rebuild after devastating floods in Uganda and people experiencing homelessness in Seattle.

Global and Local Community

Boon Boona actively looks for opportunities to give back here and abroad. After flooding and landslides devastated coffee farms and killed dozens around the Bukonzo Joint Cooperative in Western Uganda in May of 2024, Boon Boona donated 50 cents from every pound of coffee sold to help. This past season, the company supported the renovation of a washing station for more than 200 producers in Kenya to produce natural processed coffee. “We’re keeping our ears to the street for any causes and ways we can help with needs that arise.”

Boon Boona’s brick-and-mortar locations in downtown Renton, on Capitol Hill near Seattle University, and inside the University of Washington Bookstore on the Ave serve as third places for neighbors. Fesaha says cultivating intentional gatherings can look like staff from the King County Library hosting family storytime or open mic poetry nights. Boon Boona also engages with non-profits in the Seattle-area, partnering with organizations including the United Way of King Country and local school districts.

Coffee is roasted for PCC at Boon Boona’s certified organic roastery at its original Renton retail location, where visitors can sign up online to participate in a traditional coffee ceremony. Here, green coffee is pan-roasted, brewed in a clay pot, and shared alongside traditional snacks and stories about coffee’s origins in the 9th Century.

Fesaha and Güldüren have developed a shared philosophy that Boon Boona would help farmers in Africa be able to retain as much agency over their product as possible. “Projects that give back are always helpful, but it’s never as helpful as just providing ownership,” Güldüren says. From rethinking the role of a roaster in the supply chain, in the local community, and on PCC’s shelves, Boon Boona is modeling how coffee can, as company leaders put it, “catalyze shared prosperity.”

“We’re excited to connect with PCC consumers and get our coffee into more people’s homes,” Fesaha says. “It just makes sense to partner with the local community grocery store that we go to — which is PCC for our family — and to have our coffee in the places where we shop and spend our money. We love the cause behind (the Inclusive Trade Program), too. It’s an opportunity for several local businesses to blossom.”

Sara Billups is a Seattle-area writer who covered Seattle’s food and coffee scene for several years. Find her on Substack at Bitter Scroll.