Sourcing · 6 min read
What "direct trade" actually means when we say it
The phrase is on half the bags in every grocery store and it is not regulated by anyone. Here is what it means on ours.
Lucky's Coffee Roasters · Aug 20, 2026
"Direct trade" has no legal definition. Nobody audits it, nobody certifies it, and any roaster can print it on a bag without being asked a single question. That makes it close to useless as a signal — so rather than argue about the term, here is exactly what stands behind it when it appears on one of ours.
Two farms, two names
Right now two coffees on our list carry it. The Kenya AB from Rhino Farms in Nakuru County is grown by Jacob Kibiri. The Kenya AB from Mumu's Estate in Meru County is grown by Zakayo Murauki M'Anampiu, who everyone calls Mumu, on seven acres in Tangata Ward.
You can read both names on the bag. That is the first test, and a surprising number of "direct trade" coffees fail it: if the roaster cannot tell you who grew it, nobody went anywhere.
Through Undugu, not around them
The Rhino Farms lot comes to us through Undugu Farms, a partnership built specifically around transparency and fair pricing for Kenyan farmers. We are not pretending we fly to Nakuru ourselves every harvest. We work through people who live there, who know the farms, and whose entire business depends on the farmer being paid properly.
Saying so costs us the romance of the origin-trip photograph. It is still the honest description.
What Jacob's science tastes like
Jacob brings a scientific mindset to farming — measurement and experimentation, applied until the Batian lots come out reliable rather than lucky. His processing is wet, double washed, dried on raised beds, then put through extended gravimetric sorting with triple optical sorting.
That is an unusual amount of sorting. You taste it as clarity: the cup has structure, and the blackcurrant is clean rather than muddled.
Mumu's first harvest
Mumu's is a different story. This is the first harvest from his farm that we have brought to market at all. Ruiru 11 and SL28 at a thousand metres, wet processed, double washed, raised beds, triple sorted. Blackcurrant again, but rounder — peanuts, citrus, a little rosemary, and a butteriness the Rhino lot does not have.
Being first to market a farm is a risk. It is also the only way a farm ever gets a second buyer.
How to brew both
We pull these on pour over, between 200 and 210°F, on a V60 or a Kalita Wave. Hotter than that and the acidity turns sharp instead of sweet.
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