25 Years Strong: A Dynamic Partnership Between Keurig Dr Pepper and Root Capital

Poverty today, at the global level, is concentrated in a single industry: agriculture. More than 2 billion people—⅔ of the world’s poor—depend on agriculture as their primary source of income: for food security, access to health care, and education opportunities.

In an economic system that has largely excluded smallholder farmers from achieving prosperity, access to financing, markets, and growth opportunities has been limited. However, it is these workers who are best positioned to lift entire communities out of poverty.

Root Capital CEO and Founder Willy Foote witnessed this injustice firsthand while he was living in rural Mexico during the late 1990s. He saw the gaping disconnect between how hard smallholder farmers worked to sustain their families and the economic opportunities available to them. Shortly thereafter, he founded what would become Root Capital to address these systematic failures.

Around that time, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, now part of Keurig Dr Pepper, was a growing coffee company focused on roasting and selling high-quality coffee beans sourced from around the world, with a strong emphasis on sustainability and fair trade practices. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters was also seeking to expand its supplier network, identifying promising but undercapitalized coffee businesses in new regions. The company was known for its efforts to source coffee from smallholder farmers and cooperatives, often paying above-market prices to support sustainable farming practices and improve the livelihoods of coffee-growing communities.

In 2000, when Root Capital loaned money to coffee business clients in Central America, we began accepting purchase contracts with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters as collateral for the loans. Two years later, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters made their first direct investment in Root Capital, providing $100K for us to on-lend to coffee businesses, many of which were Green Mountain Coffee Roasters suppliers. In 2005, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters made its first donation to Root Capital, $220K over four years, becoming our very first corporate funder. The collaboration yielded a triple win: Green Mountain Coffee Roasters broadened its supplier base, Root Capital deployed investment capital to underserved regions, and cooperatives thrived when they were able to expand their operations and cultivate new buyer relationships.

Partnering to Spur Growth and Resilience: Successes So Far

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters acquired Keurig in 2014, becoming Keurig Green Mountain (KGM). KGM then acquired Dr Pepper Snapple Group in 2018 to become Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP). Root Capital found an ideal partner in KDP, whose commitments to farmer prosperity, gender equity and climate resilience align with our organizational values. Since 2000, KDP has provided millions of dollars in funding to Root Capital to support coffee businesses, advance regenerative agriculture, and promote climate change adaptation in rural coffee communities. This support has allowed Root Capital to provide more than half a billion in lending to KDP suppliers, the majority of which provided trade capital for farmer cooperatives to buy the coffee required to fulfill contracts. 

Along with financing, KDP’s support has allowed us to provide trainings on business management, agronomic and climate resilience, gender equity, digital business intelligence, and youth engagement to small and growing agricultural enterprises. Additionally, our collaboration with KDP has enabled us to offer 32 resilience grants to coffee clients. This catalytic grant funding supports rural communities during acute crises like the COVID-19 pandemic and provides long-term resources to confront climate challenges.

KDP and Root Capital played a pivotal role in launching the Coffee Farmer Resilience Initiative (CFRI), a multi-stakeholder effort in response to the coffee leaf rust crisis that hit Central and South America particularly hard. CFRI has been widely lauded for its innovation, responsiveness, and holistic approach. In December 2015, USAID recognized CFRI as the most innovative public-private partnership across all its programming.

Kevin Costner raises a Green Mountain Coffee Roasters mug in celebration of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters’s new “Horizon Blend by Kevin Costner” coffee line. Photo credit: Green Mountain Coffee Roasters.

New Horizons Ahead: Coffee From Kevin Costner

Most recently, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters teamed up with Academy Award winner Kevin Costner to craft a series of freshly inspired coffee blends. Though Mr. Costner has always loved coffee, he struggled to find a great joe on the go. The busy actor would use Caffè Mocha to mask bad brews purchased from gas stations in the past. His growing appreciation for coffee, both the effects and the flavor, led him to seek a partner who could create a unique product he would enjoy and align with his passions for land stewardship and the people who work on it. Mr. Costner approached Green Mountain Coffee Roasters who then introduced him to Root Capital, and it was a match. 

Horizon Blend offers a bold cup of “cowboy coffee” with sweet, chocolatey notes sans sugar. Made from responsibly sourced beans, including those from Root Capital clients, the blend embodies Mr. Costner’s commitment to sustainability while invoking images of the American West. In celebration of the Horizon Blend’s launch, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters generously donated $100,000 to Root Capital in addition to KDP’s annual support to further grow our successful three-way partnership.

Exploring Corporate-NGO Partnerships: Insights From the SCA Discussion Panel

Root Capital and KDP teamed up to promote the mutual benefits of this long-standing corporate-NGO collaboration at this year’s Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) Expo in Chicago. The panel featured: 

• Lindsey Bolger, Root Capital board member (moderator),
• Chris Patterson, Root Capital’s Senior Manager, Strategic Partnerships,
• Omar Mendoza, Manager of Cooperativa Agraria de Productores de Alonso de Alvarado, a Root Capital and KDP client in Peru, 
• Allie Stauss, Senior Project Manager, Supply Chain Sustainability at KDP, and 
• Scott Christensen, Senior Marketing Director at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. 

Presenting to a room full of representatives from leading international coffee companies, the discussion centered around the successful partnership between Root Capital and KDP. The panelists discussed how the work is helping agricultural enterprises scale, strengthen their operations, and become engines of impact in their communities.

Omar Mendoza spoke about how his coffee cooperative in Peru, Cooperativa Agraria de Productores de Alonso de Alvarado, has truly benefited from this partnership. Thanks to financing and support from Root Capital and KDP, the cooperative has grown, improved their operations, and prospered. In fact, the cooperative has become a leader in regenerative agriculture practices by converting grazing pastures and degraded land into productive coffee farms, thus ensuring coffee lands, coffee quality, and quality of life for future generations. The cooperative’s success has trickled down to the individual coffee growers they work with, who benefit from higher, fairer prices for their coffee and improved livelihoods. For the wider community, the cooperative’s success has shown the next generation that there is a future in becoming a coffee producer.

A Journey of Sustainable Impact

Root Capital and KDP have successfully sustained our long-term partnership by remaining dynamic and responsive to the evolving needs and opportunities of the agricultural businesses with whom we work. Together, we seek to be a force for positive impact to create strong and responsible coffee supply chains, from producer to consumer, with an emphasis on transparency, partnership, innovation, and investment.

We are thankful for KDP and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters’ generous support and look forward to many more years of partnering together. It is our hope that we continue to inspire our peers to embark on cross-sector partnerships to advance sustainability and achieve greater impact.