The story
Cafédirect was founded in 1991 by Oxfam, Traidcraft, Equal Exchange Trading and Twin Trading as a response to the 1989 global collapse in coffee prices. Its aims was to "give coffee bean, cocoa and tea growers a larger slice of the purchase price for the products".
Cafédirect secured its first commercial contract for Co-op and Safeway's Scottish stores in 1992. Very early on, the brand was endorsed by Secretary of State for International Development Clare Short.
CaféDirect was the first coffee brand to carry the Fairtrade certification mark. The company reinvests about 60pc of its profits into grower training and development programmes.
In February 2004, the company released more share floats on the stock market in a move to raise $9.1 million.
In 2007, the company's market share for hot drinks equated to 34%, 32%, and 14% respectively of the UK's Fairtrade coffee, tea, and drinking chocolate markets. In the overall market, Cafédirect is the fifth largest coffee brand and seventh largest tea brand in the UK.
In May 2014, CaféDirect purchased Kopi, one of the largest coffee subscription services in the UK. In April 2019, Cafédirect partnered with Waitrose to launch a small batch of premium coffee products.
From Wikipedia’s article on Cafédirect, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5