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Our Values

Two hands hold a cup of coffee at the edge of a balcony, person is facing eucalyptus trees.

We are committed to celebrating great coffee, using business for good and helping our communities flourish. The following values inform the way we buy coffee, the people we work with, and how we run our business:

Exceptional Quality

We are committed to building an appreciation of, and market for, high quality coffee. Quality can improve the revenue and premiums paid to producers, drive innovation, and ultimately contribute to the building of a more sustainable coffee supply chain (that can operate outside of the volatile commodity market).

We have always taken an uncompromising approach to quality. This starts with sourcing the most delicious coffees we can find from producers who share our values and are also committed to quality. We then do everything we can do to preserve that quality by roasting each coffee carefully on our 45kg Probat, and tasting it to ensure we’re bringing out the most exquisite characteristics in each lot. We carefully curate our shop menu, keeping it small and focused, and we change our coffee offering with the seasons to ensure we only showcase coffees that are fresh, vibrant and at their best.

To support our customers’ appreciation of these coffees, we invest heavily in education. We seek to improve people’s understanding and appreciation of specialty coffee through coffee classes, events, free public cuppings, books and handbooks that we’ve written, postcards distributed with every coffee, and through our journal and newsletters. We also strive to ensure that our team members are equipped to engage customers who are curious and want to learn more.

Our commitment to quality extends beyond coffee to every part of our business – from our packaging choices, the milk we source from Schulz Organic Dairy and the organic Dulce sugar we buy from Costa Rica, through to the way we hire and train staff, and the hospitality we extend to each customer, during every visit to our shops.

Transparency

Transparency is integral to our company at every level.

Across the business, we foster a culture that encourages direct, open and transparent communication – an approach that has helped us form strong and long-lasting relationships with our team members, our customers, our local suppliers, and our producers overseas.

We ask for a lot of information from our supply chain partners, and we make sure this exchange feeds in both directions and that we share as much information as possible back up the chain. This approach promotes better understanding of the complexities, challenges and opportunities that exist, and how we can collectively work to support the best possible outcome for all involved.

We are also committed to sharing information with our customers. That's why when you buy our coffees, you will always know who produced them, where they come from, how they were processed, and when we roasted the beans. We are currently working on an annual transparency report which will provide even more insight into our purchasing practices. Watch this space!

We are also working together with industry to make the coffee supply chain more transparent and equitable. We are financial and data donors to the Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide, joining around 100 other coffee companies and organisations worldwide in an initiative focused on shifting coffee pricing away from the highly volatile C-market to a more relevant, equitable, transparent and sustainable model.

Read more about our approach to sourcing coffee >

Sustainability

We’re constantly looking at ways to make our supply chain more sustainable and in turn, build a better future for specialty coffee.

We have an ongoing commitment to supporting World Coffee Research and make a contribution to its essential research efforts for every kilo of coffee we buy via their Check-Off Program.

Since July 2020 we have been a proudly carbon neutral business. This means that for every tonne of carbon we emit across the entire business, we purchase offsets in renewable energy projects.

In addition being carbon neutral, we’re also deeply invested in finding other ways to reduce our impact on the environment. We have developed a sustainability strategy with metrics to keep us accountable, and are very motivated to find ways to implement and advocate for positive change.

Learn more about our environmental practices >

Community

We are lucky and privileged to be connected to, and be part of, so many communities through Market Lane. Our goal is to have a positive impact on, and to actively contribute to, all of them.

These communities include:
The Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and First Nations Peoples

Our shops, office and roastery are built on the land of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Kulin nation. We pay respect to these traditional landowners in each of our spaces, and are committed to continuously learning about the lands we are on, and advancing reconciliation.

We seek to engage and learn as a team and with our wider community. We partner with, and donate to, important First Nations organisations, including Children’s Ground and the Woi Wurrung Council, and we also partner with First Nations artists and businesses.

Our team

We have an awesome, diverse and inclusive team at Market Lane, with staff members who are positive, friendly, warm and thoughtful, and who help create a healthy, safe and supportive workplace. We strive to nurture this culture and create an environment that encourages our staff to learn, develop and flourish.

Our coffee shops

The unique communities that surround each of our shops and our roastery are very important to us, and we place great emphasis on developing meaningful and ongoing relationships with our customers in each of these neighbourhoods.

We strive to deliver a consistent and exceptional coffee experience, and to be a special part of people’s daily routine.

We are passionate about supporting and celebrating local businesses and creative people. In designing our shops and stocking our retail shelves, we work with many local artists, ceramicists, writers and designers, whose work we love and are excited to showcase.

We also partner with several local charities and social enterprises to provide support to those in our community who are disadvantaged, underserved and/or in crisis. These organisations include Scarf, Food Bank and Café Smart.

Our relationships at origin

We're passionate about, and deeply committed to, buying coffee in a sustainable and socially responsible way. This starts with paying prices that are fair and sustainable, and building strong, meaningful, and mutually beneficial long-term relationships with producers, based on trust, openness and respect.

The specialty coffee industry

The specialty coffee industry is young and ambitious; it began with a desire to build a more equitable value chain and share delicious coffee experiences with customers. The industry has matured but it is still relatively young, and there are still many issues to address. At Market Lane, we strive to continually find new and better ways to run our business in a socially, environmentally and financially sustainable way, and to share our experiences with the broader industry so we can all do better as a community.

Learn more about the way we connect with our communities here >
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