Ask an Expert - Minni Forman

Christina Stork
2025-09-19T13:44:27-07:00

Discover how Peet’s responsibly sources coffee. Expert Minni Forman shares projects, partnerships, and efforts to support farmers and fight climate change.

More

We love sourcing, roasting, smelling, tasting, crafting, and drinking coffee. See the first word there? It’s ‘Sourcing.’ At Peet’s, we take responsible sourcing seriously. Let’s turn to the expert, Minni Forman, Peet’s Sr Manager, Responsible Sourcing, Coffee Department

What does “responsible sourcing” mean at Peet’s, and how does it guide your day-to-day work?

Responsible sourcing at Peet’s means ensuring the success of our coffee is shared across the entire supply chain, especially with the farmers who grow it. It starts with identifying the real issues on the ground, then working alongside supply chain partners and producers to address these issues in ways that build lasting prosperity at both ends of the chain.

On a day-to-day basis, this requires a lot of intentionality. For me, it might mean working with multiple stakeholders to design a bespoke farmer engagement project. Or, for the coffee buying team, it might mean influencing business decisions to prioritize relationships and coffee quality over price in a tight market.

Can you share an example of a recent sustainability project at origin that you’re especially proud of?

As someone with lived experience as a smallholder farmer of tropical crops, the real test of a project’s impact is lasting results after it ends. The Peet’s projects that resonate most are the ones that go deep into agronomy and quality training. These projects address root causes of poverty like low yields and limited market access and it is these types of projects which make up the majority of our responsible sourcing portfolio.

Like the Climate Pioneers Project in Honduras, where we partner with Hans R. Neumann Stiftung Foundation (HRNS) to support young farmers to become climate-smart leaders in their communities. Or our Regrow Yirga project in Ethiopia, where we’re co-funding TechnoServe’s work in training farmers to rejuvenate aging coffee trees and cultivate healthy soil. In Indonesia, we’re partnering with Olam Food Ingredients to fund farmer training on agronomic best practices such as pruning, coffee cultivation with shade trees, and preventing banned pesticide use.

Some of our projects offer more immediate relief and are highly effective as well—like the multiple schools and daycare centers we fund in Guatemala and Costa Rica year over year to prevent child labor.

We say that coffee is "people-powered." How do you see that value showing up in our supply chain?

Through our Sourcing with Impact platform verified by Enveritas, we support more than 38,000 farmers through active initiatives in 20+ countries based on long-term partnerships, farmer training, and practical solutions tailored to origin realities. Even in a year of historically high coffee prices, we’ve stayed committed to quality and consistency as a buyer, staying with suppliers we’ve worked with for decades. Why? Because responsible sourcing is about standing by our partners and not chasing the cheapest bean, especially when the market makes it hard to do so.

What’s something most customers don’t realize about the work that goes into sustainably sourcing coffee?

Amid significant cuts to US aid programs, some of the most meaningful farmer engagement in coffee is happening through trade-led efforts. Peet’s is proud to be part of that momentum by investing in resilient supply chains and working toward a future where coffee and the people who produce it can thrive, together.

Climate change is a growing challenge—how is Peet’s working to support climate resilience?

On a sobering note, we’re facing a hard truth: without bold, collective action, coffee—a delicate, high-altitude crop—is becoming a casualty of climate change. Erratic and extreme weather is already putting farmers out of business and shrinking the global coffee supply.

Peet’s was one the first companies to support the launch of World Coffee Research (WCR), a nonprofit dedicated to preventing the loss of commercial coffee production due to climate change. Since then, we’ve invested pre-competitively in WCR’s development of climate-smart, high-quality coffee varieties as a public good. The development of these climate resistant coffee varieties between now and 2039 represent one of the most important, yet underrecognized, initiatives in coffee today.

Peet’s partners with Enveritas to verify sustainability practices. How does that third-party verification work, and why is it important?

In a world full of greenwashing, third-party verification keeps us honest. Enveritas is our sustainability assurance partner. They don’t take our word for it, and we wouldn’t want them to.

Enveritas independently assesses the coffee we buy by tracing it to the regions it is sourced from. They send local enumerators to visit farms, survey conditions, and identify key challenges. Based on that, we receive a “farmer support target” each year—concrete actions we must take to back up our responsibly sourced claim. They conducted more than 70,000 surveys for Peet’s in 2024.

Enveritas also verifies farmer participation in our origin impact projects—every farmer we say we’ve supported is matched to a name, location, and intervention and cross checked by Enveritas.

In what ways do gender equity and community support factor into our sourcing decisions?

There are many ways, but I’ll give you two examples to make it more concrete. For nearly two decades, we’ve partnered with Las Hermanas, a cooperative of over 200 women coffee growers in Jinotega, Nicaragua to consistently buy their coffee at a fair price even as the market twists and turns. This all-women group has been incredibly successful and improved their yields, quality and livelihoods.

In Colombia, we helped launch the Women’s Center for Entrepreneurship in Huila in 2019, alongside Coocentral, the local coffee cooperative. By 2023, that evolved into Mujeres to Market, a microloan program and retail infrastructure investment that gives trained women farmers real capital to invest in their farms, sell value added products, and build year‑round income. The Mujeres to Market rotating microloan funds are active today. We also consistently purchase coffee at a premium from Coocentral’s group of women producers, Mujeres Cafeteras.

These are just two examples that reflect a sourcing philosophy with gender equity as a driver of community resilience rather than one-off gestures.

If you could have every coffee drinker know one thing about responsible sourcing, what would it be?

Responsible sourcing goes way beyond charity or glossy photos. It takes collective action and long-term vision to see our supply chain as a mutually beneficial ecosystem. Real progress is often measured over a long arc of time. And, like most things in life, it’s not always linear.

It means showing up year after year, even when it’s hard, and doing the work that is hard to package neatly in a blog article, social media post, or email. With 59 years under our belt, Peet’s is committed to continuing to trailblaze for lasting difference.

FINAL QUESTION
What are you drinking right now?

Organic Single Origin Yosemite Dos Sierras. I recently visited Yosemite National Park for the first time on a Peet’s volunteer trip. We drank this at our camp site, located right at the foot of Sentinel Rock. The stunning views and the dried stone fruit, chocolate, and toasted nut notes of the coffee paired well with trail mix. Our Yosemite Dos Sierras coffee is also certified Bird Friendly which means the coffee is cultivated in an agroforestry system, intercropped with shade trees that feed and shelter migrating and endangered birds. Peet’s also sponsors Bird Friendly coffee cultivation trainings for farmers in Peru and Colombia.

It's hard to top that cup!