We were lucky to catch up with Maria Palacio recently and have shared our conversation below.

Maria, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I was born and raised on a Colombian coffee farm. I saw and experienced all the struggles a coffee farmer goes through. However, after seeing all the struggles I wanted to do something different than my family business. So I decided to move to NY and pursue a different career from my family’s coffee business. There, I got present how large the coffee market is and how much it was growing, however, my community was falling into a poverty loop. But it wasn’t until I brought my co-founder John T to Colombia after he tasted my father’s coffee he right proposed the idea of opening a coffee brand in the US. We started brainstorming, and with his expertise on branding and my deep knowledge on impact, we decided to open Progeny Coffee in 2016 with the mission to lift farmers out of poverty. It took us 4 years of brainstorming before we opened Progeny Coffee.

Maria, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I was born into coffee, so much so that when I was born, my dad didn’t make it because he was a few hours away learning about new coffee techniques. Growing up, my dad and grandpa were very intentional with me to teach me about coffee farming. Coffee is my inheritance, is what my family has done for generations.

We opened Progeny Coffee with the mission to lift farmers out of poverty. We created an innovative supply chain, which we call Beyond Trade, that provides free education, and tech support to the farmers, as well as we have developed very low-cost methods that help to mitigate the effects of climate change and promote environmental sustainability.
With Progeny Coffee you don’t buy or choose a Blend, our customers get to Adopt a Farmer and enjoy their coffee. We invite you to sit back and drink a specialty cup of coffee while lifting them out of poverty.

What we are most proud of is our impact platform and how, by partnering with our customers, we get to power impact an climate change.

Have you ever had to pivot?

We started Progeny Coffee as a B2B company serving the major tech companies in Silicon Valley. We were growing, and by the end of 2019 we had acquired incredible new contracts that would move a large amount of coffee. By 2020 we got ready, grew our team, and expanded our production and the pandemic hit; when the lockdown was set in place, all of our clients closed their doors, losing 97% of our revenue. We needed to pivot, and quickly, we quickly readjusted the positions of our team, training them in new skills and pivoting into E-commerce. We needed to build a subscription model, start social media, and tailor our communication to our new audience.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

John Trabelsi is my co-founder and husband. We both met in NY through mutual friends. We both started Progeny Coffee few years after we got married. He is from Paris and I am from Colombia. After telling him many stories about coffee and our farms, he fell in love with it and we decided to approach our family business through a different lense and impact.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.progenycoffee.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/progeny_coffee/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/progenycoffee
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-jose-palacio-3ba97324/

Image Credits
John Trabelsi