Ethiopian coffee shops sprout up across the US, thanks to Starbucks

The chain is a punching bag for those who distrust big business, but it has helped revolutionize the US coffee scene and paved the way for smaller businesses to flourish

Nina Roberts

The Guardian

May 2, 2015

Three years ago, Elias Gurmu and his wife, Sarina Prabasi, spotted a shuttered shoe repair shop in their new Manhattan neighborhood. They had moved only a year earlier from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. And they thought the tiny vacant space was the right spot for an Ethiopian coffee shop.

Their gentrifying pocket of Washington Heights, dubbed “Hudson Heights” by realtors, had no coffeehouses despite New York City’s more than 280 Starbucks and a slew of small boutique coffee chains like Stumptown Coffee Roasters and Blue Bottle Coffee. The closest specialty coffee shop, a Starbucks, was a seven-minute walk south, a world away by New York City standards.

Gurmu, a serial entrepreneur, and Prabasi, both 42 years old, took a gamble. They invested their savings, bolstered by personal credit cards, to open the street-level Café Buunni.

It’s the only Ethiopian-owned (technically co-owned, as Prabasi is originally from Nepal) and -run coffee shop in New York City. But it’s one of a dozen coffee houses that have been popping up across the country, including in Chicago; Washington, DC; Minnesota’s Twin Cities; and San Francisco.

The trend is a sign of the growing number of Ethiopian immigrants in the US. It’s also a testament to the country’s gourmet coffee revolution. And that, Prabasi says, is thanks – at least partly – to Starbucks.

Among coffee aficionados and those who love to hate big business, Starbucks is a popular punching bag. When its shops first burst onto the US scene in 1994, Starbucks was considered a funky new coffeehouse concept from Seattle, home of Nirvana and grunge music.

Twenty years later, with approximately 11,450 locations in the US alone, it’s often thought of as soulless, its cachet a few notches above McDonald’s. Plenty of small coffee shops feared they would end up closing when Starbucks came to town – the company faced protests on some towns, as well as complaints from smaller competitors – but fear of operating near a Starbucks has largely dissipated.

A neighborhood sensation

Unlike the nearby Washington Heights Starbucks, Café Buunni has a distinct neighborhood feel. The full-bodied aromas of Yirgacheffe, Harrar, Limu and other prized Ethiopian coffees have long replaced the smells of leather and shoe polish. The towering Gurmu is often stationed behind the gleaming espresso machine, young baristas working around him.

From its first week in operation, the cafe has become a neighborhood sensation. It is nearly always full, with a line out the door on weekday mornings and weekends, and goes through 200lbs of coffee a week. It has also exceeded all of its owners’ financial expectations, breaking even in a mere six months and turning a profit soon afterward, Prabasi says.

Its prices are on par with Starbucks’: the slightly sweet Ethiopian macchiato is a house specialty and sells for $3.50, cappuccinos are $4 and a pound of Buunni’s freshly roasted Ethiopian beans costs $15.

Gurmu and Prabasi, among other Ethiopian café owners, believe Starbucks deserves a little of the credit for their success. “I think it expanded people’s idea of coffee,” Prabasi says, “that coffee could be decadent, luxurious; something that’s a treat.”

The corporate behemoth normalized the $4 to $5 cuppa and introduced espresso drinks to mainstream America, she says. It cultivated a large customer base of more discerning coffee drinkers, opening up the market and allowing small chains and independently owned coffee shops like Buunni to compete.

For some customers, anyway, Starbucks has acted as a gateway into the world of craft coffee, with customers expanding their search of the best cup they can find. Starbucks also has educated American consumers to coffee’s origins, Prabasi adds.

“Starbucks, to their great credit, has done a really good job of putting Ethiopia on the map,” says Dan Cox, the president and owner of Coffee Analysts in Burlington, Vermont. For many Americans, Yirgacheffe and other Ethiopian coffees were first introduced through the safe and familiar vehicle of Starbucks.

When Starbucks’s iconic green signs began glow throughout the US’ major cities in the mid-1990s, the US imported an average of $24m worth of Ethiopian beans. The amounts have steadily increased to $93m last year, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

“Starbucks might have led the way,” Cox says, but now “just about every coffee store selling whole bean coffee will have an Ethiopian.”

Specialty coffee shops thank Starbucks

Buunni Café is hardly the only independent coffee house to thank Starbucks, either. Dawit Bekele, owner of Royal Coffee in Chicago, says that the corner Starbucks has actually helped his business. “People come to Starbucks and then they find us, taste our coffee, and then become our loyal customers,” Bekele, who opened Royal Coffee six years ago, says with a chuckle.

In Washington DC, Kenfe Bellay, the proprietor of Sidamo Coffee and Tea, notes that his customers, who he describes as a mix of “regular Americans”, have been increasingly open to Ethiopian coffee since he first opened nine years ago.

Why? After talking about subconscious yearnings for the right taste, he concludes, “I’m sure Starbucks also contributed.”

In San Francisco, the aunt and niece team behind Bereka Coffee – which opened in 2013 and specializes in custom blend drip Ethiopian coffees – enjoys a steady flow of customers despite a Starbucks around the corner.

Even in Seattle, the epicenter of coffee culture and home to Starbucks, Solomon Dubie, the son of two Ethiopian immigrants, is confidently converting his minimart store into an Ethiopian coffeehouse, to be called Café Avole, slated to open early this summer.

Starbucks isn’t even on his radar as possible competition. “They have a great setup, a great system that works for them, but their coffee is not on the specialty end,” Dubie says. “Here in Seattle, we’re into specialty coffee.” He cites small chains such as Caffe Vita and Stumptown as true specialty coffee shops.

Ethiopia has a long, rich coffee history. Coffee shops abound in Ethiopia’s cities and towns; beans are still bought green and roasted at home. The lively, highly social two-hour coffee ceremony remains intact.

Of all the coffee-producing countries, Ethiopia is the only one that has a higher domestic consumption rate than export rate. This is in spite of the fact that the government has imposed higher domestic prices for lower quality coffee beans, selling the best coffee more cheaply overseas because Ethiopia needs foreign currency.

Despite Addis Ababa’s construction boom, most coffee farmers live in poverty, farming on tiny plots of land they can’t own in rural areas lacking infrastructure. Does the growing popularity of Ethiopian coffee in the US actually help Ethiopian coffee farmers?

Is the trend helping farmers?

Wondwossen Mezlekia is an exiled Ethiopian living in Seattle who blogs extensively about Ethiopia’s coffee industry. Having been trained in economic development, he started blogging in 2006 from Seattle when a public dispute between Starbucks and the Ethiopian government emerged.

Ethiopia discovered Starbucks had tried to trademark the name Shirkina Sun-Dried Sidamo – a rare coffee – which sparked a dispute, and also led to similar trademark disputes about Yirgacheffe, Harrar and Limu, all coffee growing regions in Ethiopia.

Farmers are benefiting slightly from the growing popularity of their beans, Mazlekia says, but government challenges keep them from earning more. A lack of smart policies, corruption and internal government failures all have contributed to keeping most coffee farmers from getting adequate compensation, he says.

Foreign buyers don’t have direct contact with farmers to form partnerships. As of 2008, all coffee must be sold via the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange, with the exception of a small number of larger commercial farms and cooperatives.

Ethiopian immigrants abroad like Gurmu don’t have an insider track to buying Ethiopian coffee beans.

In an attempt to help coffee farmers, Buunni Coffee and others buy Fairtrade-certified Ethiopian coffee. Others, like Royal Coffee’s Bekele, call Fairtrade in Ethiopia a gimmick. Bekele buys coffee through independent exporters that, he asserts, pay the farmers the highest price.

Meanwhile, Starbucks uses a sourcing system called Coffee and Farmer Equity, verified by Conservation International. Spokeswoman Haley Drage claims it’s more rigorous than Fairtrade.

Outside of the comfort zone

For many American coffee drinkers, Starbucks is like a security blanket, a safe bet and familiar experience accessible in nearly every city or town. Fans of Ethiopian coffee shops can hope the specialty shops continue to multiple across the US. 

It’s happening in New York City: “We are ready for our second location,” Gurmu says somewhat majestically, describing a second Café Buunni slated to open inside the mammoth Washington Bridge Bus Station this summer.

This Café Buunni will be just two blocks south of the nearest Starbucks. Time will tell if the aromas of Ethiopian coffee will lure fervent Starbucks fans out of their safety zone, giving them courage to savor the Ethiopian macchiato

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Nina Roberts: A New York reporter and photographer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and more