Key Origin Info:

Producer: Bette Buna'‘s farm in Megadu community
Processed at: the Megadu processing site

Region: Megadu, Guji, Southern Ethiopia
Altitude: 2000-2200 masl

Variety: Cultivated landrace varieties - 74112,74110, Wild Guji Megadu varieties
Process: Natural

Exporter: Bette Buna | Importer: Falcon Speciality

Cup profile: Jammy mouthfeel, honeysuckle, blueberry & apricot

Purchase history: First purchase in 2025

More about Megadu & Bette Buna:

Bette Buna is an impact driven coffee company, established by Hester and her husband Dawit Syoum after Dawit’s grandparents asked them to take over their family coffee farm and nurture the local community in Taferi Kela village. Bette Buna literally translates to “Home of Coffee” and their work includes acting as an exporter as well as operating two farms & processing sites, and perhaps most importantly being a pillar in their communities, using quality coffee as a tool for inclusive local development.

Bette Buna is committed to building opportunities for everyone in their community. They teach farmers how to improve their soil to have healthier trees, and harvest ripe cherries to get better prices for quality cherries. To help renovate farms with unproductive old trees, they’ve established a coffee nursery and distribute more than 350,000 healthy seedlings every year to growers. These seedlings are climate-change adapted varietals, and on average the farmers who plant them make minimum $2 per year per seedling once the trees are grown. This means an economic impact in the area of more than $650,000 a year in a region where the average household income is less than $50 per month for an average family size of 9 people.

This  particular comes from their Megadu farm in Guji, operated with the help of community leaders Saffay and Duba. This particular lot is named after Chief Duba and is processed using their natural method: ripe cherries are hand-sorted and dried 20–25 days on raised beds. You can expects a jammy sweet cup brimming with floral and fruit notes.

As Bette Buna explain:

Working in Guji comes with a lot of unique challenges as well as rewards. This region is renowned for incredible naturally processed coffees, and it is a privilege to work there directly. The Guji zone sits just east of Sidamo, but it is a whole different world in terms of culture and customs. Guji has strong cultural traditions, and to work in this region we knew we’d need to approach it as a partnership with local community leaders-- people who are deeply rooted in these traditions and communities. Our farm is about 50 hectares of a 220-hectare collection of plots owned by two Guji community leaders, Gash Duba and Ato Saffay. They are esteemed informal leaders with an incredible knowledgeable of coffee cultivation who are also extremely well respected as decision makers. Having a farm on our own as people from outside the culture would be nearly impossible, so working with these community leaders has been a big success that we’re proud of.

The purpose and mission of Bette Buna is best described in their own words:

We are a Dutch-Ethiopian family growing specialty coffee and opportunities.

We started Bette Buna to realize the legacy of Dawit's grandparents. They left us the ambitious mission of creating a 'house built on coffee'-- the idea that a coffee business built on principles of kindness, diversity, and community can change the prospects of a whole village. In just 5 years we've grown into a passionate multinational team in Ethiopia, the EU, and the UK with principles of equal opportunity that make possible the formerly impossible in places like Taferi Kela and Guji Megadu. We know that in order to make a lasting impact, we must create stunningly good coffee that enriches both people and the environment that grows it.

Learn more about Bette Buna and their work in Taferi Kela and Megadu on their great website!

Bette Buna have been on our radar since last year as an interesting, dynamic company whose values and ways of working really resonate with our own. After an in-person introduction to Hester via Skylark and Falcon earlier this year and having had the chance to taste some of their pre-ship samples we knew we it was a supply chain we wanted to buy from and were keen to find a way to include their coffee in our offering. Luckily, they’ve just started working with our key import partner - Falcon - to bring their coffee into the UK and so it was just a question of choosing our lots and patiently waiting in their arrival. We are so please to finally be roasting and sharing with you the first of our selection!