Sustainability at Glen Lyon Coffee Roasters

As a B Corp certified business, we are proud to run Glen Lyon Coffee Roasters as a force for good. We build long term relationships with our producers and import partners, provide a relaxed and supportive work environment for our team in Aberfeldy, and are committed to making our impact on the planet a positive one.

Glen Lyon Coffee was set up by Fiona Grant back in 2011 at the top of one of the most beautiful glens in the Scottish Highlands. She installed a five-kilo roaster in the bothy next to her house and started selling small batch roasts in local farmers markets. The first years were the hardest, with no staff and no heating in the bothy through the winter.

The business has grown steadily, we are now a team of eight and have two state of the art roasting machines and a beautiful light and airy roastery in Aberfeldy. Thankfully the days of digging lorries of green coffee deliveries out of the snow on our single track glen road are long gone.

We’ve strived from the start to prove that the coffee community can work towards positive change. We pioneered compostable coffee packaging in Scotland, plant trees in the Highlands to pay back our carbon debt and do our best to care for the people we work with. We also set up a Coffee Academy that works to support young people in our community into meaningful employment.

In February this year we were thrilled to become a certified B Corp. B Corporations are committed to building strong, resilient communities and we are so grateful to be able to play a part in both our amazing local community here in the Highlands as well as the speciality coffee world at large.

We source most of our coffee from Latin America and East Africa and travel to meet our producers as often as possible (although sadly not for the past few years). We roast in small batches and check every batch for quality and consistency before sending it out. Final decisions on all the coffees we source and roast are made by Fiona, our own in-house sensory professional and Q Grader.

We are delighted this month to introduce a first for the Scottish speciality coffee industry: sailboat-shipped coffee, brought all the way from Colombia aboard the schooner De Gallant.

In collaboration with New Dawn Traders, the new Colombia Las Brisas has crossed the Atlantic using only the wind, and arrives at Glen Lyon’s Aberfeldy roastery offering a taste of a possible future less reliant on carbon-intensive cargo shipping.

Video: Business Purpose Commission for Scotland