Intro to TrueStart and who we are, how TrueStart began!

TrueStart Coffee started 9 years ago when my husband and co-founder Simon and I Helena, trained for an Ironman Triathlon! Many early starts, training sessions and long car journeys for work meant I drank loads of coffee. I know it sounds strange for someone from a coffee business - but I’m quite sensitive to caffeine! So I noticed that sometimes after coffee, I would get heart palpitations. Other times, I felt nothing!

We were really into nutrition as part of our triathlon training, and we started to look into what coffee and caffeine do to our brains and bodies, and how much of it we should be drinking. There are so many benefits to drinking coffee, but we discovered something mind-blowing - that the caffeine level in coffee varies wildly.

You could be drinking, in a regular cup, anything from 30mg of caffeine to over 600mg! We were genuinely shocked. This is like going into a supermarket, buying a bottle of wine, and not knowing whether it’s 4% or 40%. 

We thought - surely we’re not the only people in the world who think a reliably caffeinated coffee, that tastes great AND makes you feel great with no crashes or jitters, would be awesome! Why has nobody done it before?!

So we spent a year developing a hyper-selective sourcing process that takes all these variables into account and a rigorous testing process, to bring to market the first, and 9 years later TrueStart is still the only coffee that we know of with a reliable level of caffeine, so you feel great with no bad side effects. I used to live in Antioquia, Colombia where our coffee is from. The careful sourcing and testing means our coffee tastes exceptional, is super high quality, clean and beneficial to your health - it contains more antioxidants in a cup of TrueStart than in green tea!

What does being a B Corp mean?

B Corporation certification is the gold standard for ethical business practices. Instead of a narrow focus on improvement in one area without measuring the impact of other parts of the business, the B Corp certification is a holistic approach to using business as a force for good.

With organisations like Patagonia, The Body Shop and Ella's Kitchen leading the charge, B Corporations are a new model for businesses that are tackling some of the world’s most pressing issues and challenges, and building a new economy led by shareholder capitalism rather than profit at the expense of people and the planet. 

To become certified, you need to score highly in a rigorous assessment that covers your whole business in detail - from worker welfare to governance, to social and environmental impact, to product quality and beyond.

You then must recertify every 3 years and show improvement, which in my view, being a B Corp is exactly that - a mindset of continual improvement, rather than a destination of certification. 

What being a B Corp means to us and our journey to become certified

We discovered the B Corp movement about 7 years ago and were sure that this new type of ethical, sustainable business is exactly what we wanted TrueStart to be. We worked hard on the lengthy assessment for over a year and are indescribably proud to be a part of this wonderful community, using business as a force for good. B Corps are creating a more inclusive, more sustainable economy in a world that desperately needs it. 

We are now undertaking our recertification, and hoping to improve on the already high score we got last time! It is an in-depth process, requiring a deep dive into every aspect of the business. Once all the elements have been submitted we will keep everything crossed for an improved score.

Rewind to four years ago, we were already working on our first assessment when Covid hit. The pandemic put the brakes on as we suddenly had so much unexpected new work to do, it allowed us to step back and implement some major projects and changes to improve our social and environmental impact even further. Some of these projects included:

• Changing the legal structure of our business to report a triple bottom line - profit as well as our impact on people and the planet
• Moving our drinks production to the South West, which has saved 2.2 tonnes of CO2 with every regular small batch produced, whilst simultaneously helping create and safeguard jobs
• We moved into an awesome new eco-first HQ on the Bristol-Bath cycle path, where we’ve implemented many eco-first processes and ways of working, including harvesting rainwater, planting trees and tracking our energy usage and waste disposal.
• Moving our warehousing & logistics to a fantastic local family business that shares our values
• Eradicating plastic from our drinks production line, including our outer packaging

How does it fit into the bigger picture of sustainability and ESG?

The B Impact Assessment is a very comprehensive test that asks businesses questions in five stakeholder-focused “Impact Areas”: governance, workers (employees), community (including supply chain), environment and customers. It goes further than other certifications such as Fairtrade, as it accounts for the whole supply chain, in our case, from farm to cup and everything in between! 

Being a B Corp demonstrates that sustainability and ESG (Environmental, social, and governance) form a core part of the business, so when you see the B Corp logo, you can be sure that the company is undertaking an all-encompassing approach to ensuring sustainability. 

Importantly, all companies seeking to become a B Corp must meet the B Corp legal requirement and update their Articles of Association to include mission-aligned legal language.

So for example, we are committed to measuring our impact rather than just our financial achievements - each year we release an impact report to the public. - we are currently working on this now!

View our TrueStart coffee range

Blog written from Helena’s perspective - at truestartcoffee.com!