About this coffee

This coffee holds a special place in the heart of Founder's Frank La's heart. In 2014, this was the coffee he used to compete at the Big West Barista Championships where he placed 3rd overall, qualifying him for the National Barista Championship. When this coffee was made available, we jumped at the opportunity to bring this into our roster.

The Gaturiri Cooperative is a part of the very famous Barichu Farmers Cooperative Society, along with some of the best and well known cooperatives in Kenya: Karatina, Karindundu, and Gatomboya. These co-ops have been instrumental in developing Kenyan specialty coffee, and continue to produce some of the best, most dynamic, coffees in all of Kenya.

Gaturiri is a Kikuyu word for “the shrubs.” The area for being a place people visit to collect herbs for medicines for humans and livestock.

The Barichu Farmers Cooperative Society is located in the Mathira East Sub-County in Nyeri. It is currently composed of four factories, Karatina, Karindundu, Gaturiri and Gatomboya. It was registered in October 1996 with the Cooperative Development and Coffee Board of Kenya. It has 5,800 registered members and produces 3 million to 5 million kilos of coffee per year.

Barichu works to offer its members access to credit for school fees, farm inputs and emergencies. Its goal is to share information with farmers regarding crop husbandry and other agricultural practices important to coffee. It has a demonstration plot financed by Tropical Farm Management and a nursery that serves the whole community, providing mature seedlings to help reduce drops in production or income for farmers.