have your trendy coffee and save a monkey too.

Two weeks proudly and happily off of caffeine, I find myself in a chilly classroom on a Saturday morning with Shallom Berkman and his crew measuring, boiling, french-pressing, grinding, and whisking coffees and teas to taunt me. Urth Caffe has been taunting guests since 1989, when Shallom and his wife Jilla opened their first shop as a "business of passion."


Brilliantly self-righteous, speaking of the "cheap thrill" of winning over customers from Hollywood celebrities to Downtown Los Angeles hipsters with locally grown produce and elaborate latte art, Beckman's quest for culinary excellence is only half of his mission. Beginning with a run-in with Jorge, a Mexican man cultivating coffee in Peru in the late 1980s, Shallom, Jilla, and later their rosy-cheeked opera singing daughter took up the task of travelling from Colombia to East Africa to Japan to find farmers for whom coffee and tea were their livelihoods. Working with these communities, Shallom found their agricultural practices were becoming detrimental to their local eco-systems; specifically in Uganda, where the native Mountain Gorilla population was dwindling significantly along with their rain forests. By transforming farming methods and encouraging organic, heirloom, and fair trade philosophies (those not being the buzz words in the early 90s that they are today), the Beckman's tasty drinks have brought visible change to the world far outside of Beverly Hills and Santa Monica.

(source)
And, sipping from the four mossy green cups in front of me, I too feel empowered. Why not have my caffeine fix if it can also save the monkeys? Or perhaps that is just the caffeine talking.