Fair Trade Coffee, Digitalized.

📖 The Story

Who, When, and Where — Context

Founded 2017 in the US, Bext360’s tech-driven fair trade solution to the coffee supply chain started its story in Honduras and has been expanding to Mexico, Peru, El Salvador, Ethiopia, and Nicaragua.

Why — Challenge

Even with the vast global coffee market and numerous people who make their living by growing coffee, it is difficult for the farmers to receive a fair price for their beans and get paid instantly; the complexity of the coffee supply chain makes it difficult to ensure its accuracy and efficiency, which will force both suppliers and consumers to compromise transparency and trustworthiness of a cup.

What and How — Tech Solution

Bext360 has developed a mobile app equipped with an “AI vision” that automatically and accurately measures the quality of coffee beans and grades them for fair pricing; both producers and buyers of coffee beans have access to the reason behind a price. The records about coffee cherries are then stored in a blockchain network, allowing consumers to know where beans came from and who paid what to whom along the way. The end-to-end traceability solution makes the coffee supply chain more transparent for everyone who’s in the value chain.

💡 Key Insights

• The global supply chain of commodities is complex, and it often makes people behind the scenes invisible — causing exploitation from underpaid laborers.

• Point solutions (e.g., solution A for farmers, solution B for buyers, …) may not be sufficient. Rather, a holistic approach is needed that connects an origin — one side of the ends — to consumers — the other side — in a traceable manner.

• Yet, multiple technologies can be blended into a final deliverable, so we can efficiently and effectively address a systemic issue — like the mobile app, AI vision, and blockchain in Bext360’s case.

✅ Try This

Read Fairtrade International’s summary of challenges and opportunities in the coffee industry.

📊 Did You Know?

According to World Population Review’s summary, Luxembourg had the highest per-person coffee consumption in 2020 (6.5 kg — or 14 lbs — per person per year). Meanwhile, the United States, Brazil, and Japan were the top countries that drank the most coffee in the world in 2020-2021.