Hi! We’re glad you’re here.

We are Paul and Scott Tupper, brothers and cofounders of Onda Origins. We wanted to take a second to invite y’all into our back story, our “why.”

If you’ve ever walked down the coffee aisle at any grocery store, you know that coffee marketing is replete with labeling and certifications -- a lot of talk about sustainability. Meanwhile, the real impact of those cups of coffee remains opaque.

But what's clear is that the people responsible for the quality and sustainability of the coffee are the growers; meanwhile, the price they are paid is not sustainable.

It’s the growers who put in the work to uphold the quality; most of a coffee’s flavor is completely dependent on the grower.

It's also the growers who are key to upholding the values that are so important to us -- whether it’s farming in ways that support the environment, or protecting workers’ rights.

While the average price for a cup of coffee in the US has increased by 500% since the 1970’s,, the average price of coffee paid to farmers has remained stagnant. In many cases, growers barely cover their cost of production, if that. It’s no wonder we’re facing a mass rural exodus of younger generation farmers who are leaving the trade to pursue a more stable livelihood.

In 2016, we started working towards a solution. Hand in hand with our original farm partner, Enrique Navarro Jr., we considered what it would look like to bring the two ends of the coffee supply chain together; to create a social and financial connection between coffee growers and drinkers that actually rewards growers for their efforts.

The idea for Onda grew out of our experiences on opposite sides of the globe.

In Samoa, Scott was passionate about global development, but became disillusioned after a supposed aid project failed to invest in actual people. In Costa Rica, where Paul was leading eco-tours on the edge of Monteverde Cloud Forest, he met coffee farmers who had found ways to respect the rich environment around them while increasing the quality of their crop. But their businesses were struggling to connect with a market beyond seasonal tourism.

We thought: What if we connected coffee growers and drinkers, in a collective effort to make coffee more equitable and self-sustaining?

Enter the aforementioned Enrique Navarro, a Costa Rican coffee legend. It all started with Enrique sleeping on our couch in Seattle for a summer while he took English classes. He taught us about how much care and detail goes into coffee before it ever leaves origin. Together we immersed ourselves in profile roasting and cupping, meeting customers, and checking off his bucket-list item of seeing Guns N’ Roses live.

For him, being included in the marketing of his own coffee has had a profound impact: “When I won Cup of Excellence in 2014... I thought I had reached the summit of coffee. But soon I realized that I wanted something more, I wanted to know who was really on the other side of our hard work. Onda is the first partner I’ve had with this level of authenticity in their vision for connecting producers and consumers.”

We've created a business model to return money from every single coffee purchase to the farmer behind that coffee. We invite growers to share their identity and story with their customers, illustrating what better livelihoods mean for them and their community.

It's forever a work in progress, and one thing we know for sure is that we can’t do it alone.

We are only as powerful as our community of customers who use their daily coffee ritual to make a difference.

From the very beginning, when it was just two brothers with a side hustle selling hand-written bags of coffee out of our garage, we wanted a name that could serve as a guide for our work. “Onda” means ripple or wave in Spanish (it was Enrique's idea). We believe that small actions can lead to bigger change.

Thank you for being a part of our efforts to change the specialty coffee industry, one connection at a time.

Paul & Scott Tupper, Co-Founders