I'm a few days late on our monthly blog post (my apologies)... yet it is for good reason - we've been really busy roasting and preparing for our debut at the Tampa Holiday Gift Market, as the winner of this year's Young Entrepreneurship Program! We have FOUR awesome new Fair-Trade Organic coffees joining our lineup for this event - Damas de San Ignacio (a women-grown coffee from Peru), Copan (Honduras), Chiapas (Mexico), and La Cumbre (Colombia), and which will be added to our online store shortly after the event (Nov 9-12). If you're near the Tampa Bay area, please come meet the team! (we'll have special freebies/offers for regular customers, so please let us know who you are!)

We're so excited about this Holiday season! It is our first one at The Roastery, and we really want to make it special for you, our customers - the ones who make everything possible! So... please mark your calendars for:

* Our first-ever THANKSGIVING FRIDAY @ The Roastery | Friday Nov 24, 9 am - 12 pm | Free tours and free coffee all morning - our way to say THANK YOU to all our customers for your support (we're not planning to have roasted beans for sale that day, as we'd like to focus on saying thanks and giving back, but if you're making a special trip to Lakeland and would like us to roast something for you, of course we can make it happen!)

* Our new Artisan Dripper Launch! | A ceramic dripper handmade by Guatemalan women artisans that will take your pour-overs to the next level... a very limited edition will be launching online December 1st! (Please check our FB and IG for preview pics!)

* Friday Coffee Tastings | Every Friday in December, 5-7 pm | Come relax and enjoy with us the coffees we've roasted that week, along with a beautiful view of Lake Beulah!

We're also open to your suggestions on other events you'd like us to have! Please connect with us in social media and let us know!

Always grateful for the opportunity to be your roaster,

- Lisbeth

This month we celebrate coffee (National Coffee Day is Sept 29th) - the amazing drink powering our days and inspiring our conversations for over a thousand years! (Yes, coffee is really that old, discovered in 11th century Ethiopia).

As we celebrate our love for coffee, I wanted to take an opportunity to connect with you, our customers (current and potential), and thank you for making this dream, this leap, possible!

Coffee for us is so much more than an amazing drink... it is the way we've chosen to try to make a difference in the world. You may have not realized, but each of our coffee origins has not been selected based solely on quality and flavor, but also to support the people behind it - and to ensure their efforts are increasingly recognized and rewarded. This has meant saying "no" to high-scoring Specialty coffees that were absolutely delicious and attractively priced, but that did not meet our "Ethically Sourced" criteria (Fair-Trade or higher prices paid to the farmers, supporting a Co-op or small group of small farmers, and grown under sustainable methods or certified Organic). Quality and price can't matter if we're supporting well-funded coffee farms only trying to "grow their business" - no matter how high the quality or price, this is not ethically sourced. Our buying power is the single most powerful weapon each of us (businesses and individuals) has - and if we use it thoughtfully, we can support - and build - the kind of world we want to live in... and those who are trying to build it!

Thank you for supporting us, at Ethos Roasters - wholeheartedly trying!

= Lisbeth

PS. Thank you for reading! If you made it this far, you deserve a discount code! Please use "BACK4COFFEE" at checkout for 10% off your entire order until Oct 29th!

'TIS THE SEASON

CELEBRATING COFFEE!