Like any entrepreneur, Jose Vido craves profitability. “But I have to be profitable the right way,” he says. For Vido, owner of MorningStar Coffee in Minneapolis, the right way is green—as in organic.
“Our main concept is to be a green company,” says Vido, who grew up in Brazil on his family’s coffee plantation, where adjuncts like fertilizer were rarely used. He moved to Minnesota in 1986 to learn English and attend college, then decided to stay. Working as a waiter led him to import his father’s coffee beans into Minnesota for a number of top local restaurants. But he wanted to get closer to the consumer, and launched MorningStar, his own roasting and distribution company, in 1996.
Now Vido supplies his coffee to about two dozen Twin Cities restaurants (some of which he worked for), including Manny’s, D’Amico Cucina, Café Latte, and Campiello. MorningStar also produces and packages private-label coffees for several of his restaurant clients to sell on grocers’ shelves.
Vido buys and roasts coffee only from small, certified-organic farmers who have been guaranteed a fair price for their products and have been certified by the Rainforest Alliance, an organization that supports farmers who maintain forests and wildlife areas. MorningStar also supports Trees for the Future, an organization that plants enough trees around the world to compensate for the amount of carbon its partner businesses release into the environment through their manufacturing and distribution processes.
But Vido struggled for years to identify a green packaging solution for his products. “The consumer thinks ‘if it’s good for the body and good for the earth, then that’s good enough,’” he says. “But a lot of people are missing the aspect of packaging. How good is it to buy organic sausage, for example, that’s packaged in plastic that you can’t get rid of?”
Last year, when Kowalski’s Markets asked MorningStar to create a high-end, private-label coffee that could be packaged and sold in a can, Vido had to devise a solution that would be environmentally friendly yet maintain premium quality. Though metal cans are recyclable, coffee sold in cans is traditionally vacuum packed, a process that Vido says erases its character and freshness.
“After coffee is roasted, you must let it breath and continue to de-gas to be truly fresh—like a young wine,” he explains. Today’s higher-quality coffee typically is sold in heat-sealed bags with valves, which allow it to continue de-gassing and stay fresh on store shelves. But these bags generally have polyurethane or foil liners that aren’t biodegradable; as Vido says, “Those bags are just landfill.”
His solution: Outfit cans with valves that allow “breathing.” He’s using this not only for Kowalski’s, but also for MorningStar’s own Earth Savor brand. Vido officially launched Earth Savor in May at the All Things Organic trade show in Chicago in hopes of attracting national grocery chains and distributors.
“Organic is a huge market,” Vido notes. According to the Organic Trade Association’s 2006 Manufacturers Survey, organic food sales in the United States were $13.8 billion. The association projects that U.S. organic food sales by 2007 will be around $18 billion.
Vido, who says MorningStar’s annual revenues are close to $1 million, hopes that being green will translate into more green for his growing operation.
