How it all started?
Moving to the coast
Curve began in 2016 when Tereza and Jon left London for the Margate coast, with a second-hand roaster and a simple ambition: to make a living doing something they loved, while bringing better coffee to Kent — better for drinkers, producers, and the planet.
Tereza first came to coffee through barista work and training, eventually volunteering on a Brazilian farm and finding her passion in responsible sourcing and ethical supply chains. Jon found his way to speciality coffee in Sweden before pursuing roasting back in the UK, where quality and consistency became his obsession.
We started roasting coffee from the back of Cliffs — a wonderfully diverse community café and multi-purpose space — before setting up our own café and eventually moving the roastery to a bigger premises. Now, nearly a decade on, we're a team of fifteen, serving our community here in Margate and supplying coffee to a wonderful network of wholesale partners and coffee drinkers in Kent and further afield.
Curiosity, integrity, and a commitment to doing things well still guide everything we do. We believe that businesses should be forces for good and we want to use ours to contribute to real, positive change in the coffee industry and in our community. This is what gets us out of bed every morning. This and coffee!
Our big ambition?
To make coffee kinder
We love living in time when the quality of coffee produced around the world continues to improve and cutting edge processing methods expand flavour possibilities. At the same time, it’s important to acknowledge that the modern coffee industry was built on extractive practices and significant inequalities still exist today.
Majority of the world’s coffee is grown in rural communities in the global south, yet only a small share of the value generated makes it back to these producing regions. Over 40% of world’s smallholder coffee farmers live at or below the poverty line with an even greater number failing to earn a living income. At the same time, conventional coffee production - sun-grown monocultures dependent on agrochemical inputs - degrades the very ecosystems on which it depends. Making coffee kinder starts with acknowledging these realities and doing what we can to help bring about positive change. Starting with improving value for the people who grow coffee and together building an industry where everyone can thrive while protecting ecosystems we all belong to.
Visiting our supplier partners - El Zapoteco Cafe in Sierra Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico. The community is here represented by their leaders - farther & son - Romulo (left) and Alejandro Chavez.
Delivering consistently great coffee is at the heart of what we do, but quality has to go hand in hand with responsibility. Without producers and their work, we simply wouldn’t exist. That’s why we’re committed to long-term buying relationships, paying fair prices, investing in equitable supply chains, and supporting projects that contribute to sustainable local development. We also aim to work in ways that protect ecosystems and biodiversity, including supporting regenerative farming practices that help protect ecosystems and strengthen communities.
For us, sustainability means looking at the whole picture — people, planet, and product. Alongside our sourcing, we’re continually finding ways to reduce the environmental impact of our operations and support environmental protection projects where we can make a meaningful difference. As a small business, we know this is an ongoing process, and we’re always learning and improving — in our sourcing, in our operations, and in how we show up for the people we work with.
Our aim is to help build a coffee industry that’s more resilient, more equitable, and better equipped to care for the people and landscapes it depends on. Every purchase you make contributes to this mission!
