March 2007
Paul Katzeff remembers the call he received back in 2005 like it was yesterday. A young woman who was just back from working as an aid worker in Uganda had called Katzeff, owner of Thanksgiving Coffee Company in Fort Bragg, California, out of the blue. “She asked me a simple question,” he recalls, ‘Would you buy five sacks of Ugandan coffee?’ I rolled my eyes and thought, ‘Oh no, another Peace Corps worker who made some promises that she should not have made.’ I could hear the desperation in her voice.”
Katzeff had been in the business for more than 30 years and, while his company, which specializes in gourmet Fair Trade and organic coffee, prides itself on putting people first, he knew that his customers demand quality—nobody in the business just buys coffee from random callers, especially not without a sample. Indeed, 39 other coffee companies had already rejected the young woman. But something kept Katzeff from hanging up.
