Trudy Scherting at Moka Joe blends community service with her coffee beans

For Trudy Scherting, the line between running her business, Moka Joe Coffee, and helping people here and abroad is a very thin line, indeed.

"I can choose to give, so I do," she said. "I have a hard time saying no."

Scherting runs the business she owns with her husband, Joe. He works for Group Health Cooperative. They began nearly a decade ago, roasting a pound of beans at a time at their home and selling coffee to friends.

Moka Joe coffee is now sold in Washington and Oregon as well as online, and occupies a remodeled and expanded house on James Street, with a sit-down coffee shop in front and a storage building across the alley.

From the get-go, the Schertings have sold "fair trade" coffee, meaning the beans are grown under conditions friendly to the environment and fair to workers. Moka Joe's beans also are organic and shade-grown, completing the trifecta for customers who want to do good while savoring their cup of java.

Moka Joe and other fair trade buyers pay an extra 10 cents per pound for beans to support health care, education and other improvements in coffee-growing communities.

"We had heard stories about how mistreated the farmers were," Scherting said. "If we pay the farmer fairly, we don't have a lot of problems."

Moka Joe also sells coffee from Café Femenino, a network of women coffee growers in Central America and South America. Femenino coffee raises extra money for the women, their families and their communities.

In similar fashion, Scherting donates a share of her profit to Dorothy Place, a 21-bed housing facility in Bellingham for women and children who are survivors of domestic violence. That share raises about $500 a year.

"It's camaraderie of women in coffee," Scherting said.

Moka Joe also voluntarily roasts and packages beans for the Coffee for Clean Water program, which raises money for water-purification systems in poor countries, including coffee-growing ones. So far, the effort has raised about $4,000.

To be sure, Moka Joe donates to local groups, but for a business such as Scherting's, supporting small-scale, conscientious, struggling-to-get-by coffee growers overseas makes perfect sense.

"It becomes a common thread," she said. "Working in coffee makes us think about where the coffee comes from."

---

FOR MORE

Moka Joe Coffee: 2118 James St., Bellingham. Phone: 360-714-1953. Online: mokajoe.com.