World Classics Coffee, About the company - Big Y® World Class Market®

About Us

The Rogers Family Coffee Company is the exclusive manufacturer of World Classics Gourmet Coffee. The Rogers Family has been a leader in the quality gourmet coffee industry for more than three decades. Combining award-winning gourmet and organic coffee and tea products with social and environmental consciousness, World Classics Gourmet Coffee sets the standard for "quality" coffee.

Headquartered in San Leandro, California, the Rogers family offers what president Jon B. Rogers calls "absolutely the best cup of coffee available - anywhere" or your money back.

We have a markedly different approach than many of today's "macro-roasters", who have forgotten their love and appreciation of fine coffee and have instead focused on cutting corners, fattening the bottom line, and seeking shareholder approval. While we recognize the importance of profitability, our business priorities are still firmly grounded in offering exceptional, high quality coffees to our consumers and providing successful programs with the highest level of service to our resource partners. Harnessing the talents of his wife Barbara, four children - Jim, Lisa, John and Pete - and daughter-in-law Kirsten, Jon engineered what one industry publication described as "a model for the American family-run business." Collectively, the Rogers family has more than 120 years of coffee industry experience.

Bringing the "best cup of coffee" to consumers is part science, part craft and part "Indiana Jones." We are one of the few companies - if not the only one - that typically goes directly to the source. Although most buyers purchase from huge corporate coffee brokers in New York or make token visits to growing areas by meeting representatives of the grower in the comfort of a capital city, green coffee buyer Pete Rogers travels to the most remote areas of the premier coffee growing regions of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and Africa to find the "best of the best." Rogers endures monsoon rains, treks to mountaintops and even sometimes is forced to avoid guerilla attacks - all to secure the finest coffee beans. Because Pete is fluent in Spanish, he gets the true, "unfiltered" picture of conditions on each farm. There is no "middle-man" - and thus Pete and World Classics can cultivate effective relationships with individual farmers and ensure we obtain the world's finest coffee at a fair price.

Roasting is a critical process designed to bring out the fullest flavor of the coffee bean. World Classics utilizes the "most effective roasting technique in the business" - a proprietary, quality and consistency- oriented approach that brings each coffee to its optimum level of roast.

Too little roasting and the coffee is raw and "green" tasting, too much and the taste is burned or charred. To keep the just-roasted coffee fresh, it is packed within minutes into a unique, but simple, vacuum bag with a "one-way" valve that keeps the coffee absolutely fresh and maintains the exceptional flavor - guaranteed.

Finally, a full-time quality assurance department ensures that World Classics is providing the best coffees possible - evaluating green coffee, tasting every roast, and checking every bag.

However, World Classics Gourmet Coffee has perhaps its greatest impact thousands of miles away from its customers.

Even before the global headlines about "Fair Trade" certified coffee - which ensures farmers receive a "living wage" and encourages quality and organic cultivation methods - the World Classics and Rogers Family were establishing their own groundbreaking "FAIR PRICE" program. In keeping with our promise to improve the quality of life of everyone who has contact with our coffee, we establishe "social contracts" with farms. Implementing a fixed price over 5 years to ensure the farm a reasonable return and to help establish social programs that improve living and working conditions on the farms and improve the quality of life for workers and their families. Our program keeps farmers in business, ensures the long-term viability and productivity of World Classics' source communities and guarantees we can continue to offer our customers the world's finest coffee. The concept of a "Fair Price is, and has always been, a staple of World Classics' business philosophy and corporate culture, and it provides an effective foundation for our innovative "Source Aid" program.

"Source Aid" - described by a syndicated radio program as a miniature "Peace Corps" - turns "coffee into clothes" as well as houses, meals, medical supplies, day care centers and schools for coffee farm workers and their families from Latin America to Africa.

Begun in 1994, "Source Aid" is the inspiration of Pete Rogers, who recognized early on in his travels that one company COULD make a difference. With farmers' assistance, Pete ensures that aid is funneled directly to improve the living and educational standards of coffee farm communities throughout source countries. We pay bills for materials or services directly. There is no "administration" to consume funds intended for the AID projects.

World Classics was formed in 1979 by ex-Revlon executive Jon B. Rogers, who transformed a bankrupt company into what is today one of the nation's leading wholesalers/roasters of branded gourmet coffee. World Classics is one of the nation's few remaining family-owned gourmet coffee roasters. World Classics supplies millions of pounds of coffee and tea each year to discriminating customers worldwide. World Classics' product lines/divisions include San Francisco Bay Gourmet Coffee, Fairwinds, Organic Coffee Company and East India Coffee and Tea. For free coffee samples, more information on the company's Source Aid program, Fair Trade and any other coffee industry issue, please call 800/829-1300 or
send an email: info@naturefriendly.org.