As both a Christian believer and (therefore) a democratic socialist, HelioRoast's founder/owner believes that the purpose of business is to leave the world a better place. We will try to do this by:
• the excellence of our products;
• the salary and benefits that we provide to our employees (including but not limited to not implementing exorbitant profit margins), and
• buying our coffees through structures that guarantee higher incomes for growers.
HelioRoast purchases most of its beans from Coffee Shrub in Oakland, California. Coffee Shrub supports Fair Trade (FTO) practices, which are general agreements between suppliers and purchasers that guarantee minimum prices for covered commodities. More recently, and for the same reason, we have begun to purchase from Bellwether Coffee in Berkeley, California, whose social and payment structure we strongly affirm.
The only wrinkle with Fair Trade agreements is that they generally establish price levels for cooperatives, not small independents. Nor do they take product quality into consideration. Most coffee producers are not covered.
On its own, therefore, Coffee Shrub established a direct trade coffee buying program which it calls Farm Gate Coffee™. Farm Gate prices are guaranteed to be a minimum of 50% over Fair Trade minimums, and are often twice that. Farm Gate practices ensure that all employees benefit from the sale of the beans, and high quality beans as well.
Income fairness and quality control are both monitored by Coffee Shrub itself. Coffees purchased through brokers and resellers are not certified as Farm Gate. At times, large numbers of small producers bundle their beans in order to simplify exporting. While Coffee Shrub sometimes purchases beans through these arrangements, it does not certify them as Farm Gate.
Other than special-order coffees from our customers, nearly all of HelioRoast's single-origin beans come from north-east Africa and the Indonesian Islands. While not individually certified as such, Ethiopian coffees are traditionally organically grown. Indonesian coffees may or may not be, and we will note this on the label. When FTO and Farm Gate beans are available from these regions, HelioRoast will purchase them and include "FTO" or "Farm Gate" in the description.
HelioRoast's owner / founder has long supported Kiva.org. HelioRoast directs 1% of monthly gross revenue to Kiva for coffee-related loans according to these criteria:
• Coffee-related enterprise
• Female-headed, owned, or directed
•"HelioRoast-producing" regions -- i.e.,
We strongly encourage you to make use of Kiva or other micro-loan agencies in order to help to create capital in developing countries and cultures.
PRIVACY AND SECURITY
HelioRoast will never -- ever -- give, sell, or distribute your contact information to others unless legally required to do so. Furthermore, once you have registered and made your first purchase through Volusion, our e-commerce partner, your pay data are managed by it and/or the specific pay channel you use there (e.g., Apple Pay, Paypal).
In the event that you store your charge card data with Volusion, its policies will determine how those data are secured, stored, and managed. Consent to store your charge card data is on an opt-in basis, and is fully dependent on your decision whether or not to use Volusion.
Other than for Repeat Sales (for which, see below), HelioRoast will not acquire, maintain, or manage your charge card data. Requests alleging otherwise are fraudulant and should be reported at once to your issuing bank.
We use Apple Pay, PayPal, Venmo, and Square e-commerce services to process sales. Volusion utilizes Stripe.
(Please note that Apple Pay is only able to function on Safari browsers at the current time. Hopefully this will expand to all modern browsers soon.)
GROUP AND CORPORATE SALES
If your group or company needs ten pounds of HelioRoast coffee per month, for instance, and we agree contractually to provide it at a certain cost to you, it will be delivered all at once in order to achieve the lowest transportation price. You may, of course, request this to be changed.
REPEAT SALES
If you wish, you can ask HelioRoast to record the frequency of your orders so that you do not have to remember to place them yourself. In this event, HelioRoast may ask for your charge card data. You do not have to deliver them to HelioRoast if you would prefer to be billed for each order and pay by check. If you do provide HelioRoast with your charge card data, they are stored on servers owned and managed by Square. After being recorded there, HelioRoast and its employees are only able to see your name, the last four digits of your card number, and the issuing company (e.g., Jane Doe, Visa, 0000). After the first successful use of your charge card, HelioRoast no longer retains its data.
RETURNS
The best way to deal with dissatisfaction over the coffee we deliver to you -- a perishable food item -- is not to return it to us. Instead, please dispose of it in any way that you see fit and then contact us with the reason(s) for your action. We will do our very best to maintain your confidence in our artisan coffees, including but not limited to sending you the same amount of coffee at our expense.
We reserve the right to respond appropriately to apparent abuses of this policy. If we notice that we are responding to multiple dissatisfactions on your part, we will contact you to discuss how best to proceed thereafter.