Our Why
Growing up, my mother would tell me stories about our family grocery store founded by my grandfather, Matt, in the 1930s. She told me how coffee was one of the store’s top sellers, bested only by the salted herring, (which was apparently quite popular). One of my fondest childhood memories was dunking glazed doughnuts into my mother’s coffee when she wasn’t looking. Delicious! Inevitably, I would get caught. She’d say, “You’re too young to drink coffee. It’s going to stunt your growth.” Worth the risk!
College is where I developed a real taste for coffee. I would spend late nights in the library studying for exams, completing lab reports, and writing papers. Back then, coffee was not a hobby, but a necessity to survive, a delivery vehicle for caffeine. With that said, I still wanted my coffee to taste good.
My introduction to doughnut coffee as a kid influenced my coffee preferences as a young adult. This meant adding generous amounts of cream and sugar. Isn’t that why they call it “doughnut shop blend?” Today, I prefer my coffee black, enjoying the unique flavor profile that reflects the origin of my coffee.
In college and then into my 20s and early 30s, I was not too concerned about how my coffee was grown. I considered all coffee to be the same, like so many others. That may sound naïve, but there wasn’t much education about coffee at the time. The turning point came when my wife and I started to think and act more intentionally about our health and wellness. We sourced as much as we could on our grocery list from local farms and farmer’s markets. We also made the conscious decision to buy organic, even though it was more expensive. As my mother-in-law would say, “you pay now, or you pay later.” This heightened consumer consciousness practice also applied to coffee.
Our journey to enhanced health and wellness found that the selection of “Organic” coffee was relatively limited. “Fair Trade” Organic was even more rare. And “Single-Origin” Fair Trade Organic, rarer still. And when it came to decaf, of the options available— there were not many to begin with—I only found one that used the Swiss Water Process® method; all others used harmful chemicals for decaffeination.
The recognition of limited Organic, Fair Trade, Single-Origin coffee awakened a calling, a higher purpose within me. At that moment, I made it my mission to provide others, just like me, with the highest quality coffee. I wanted to give people peace of mind knowing that the coffee in their cup is free of harmful agrochemicals, that the farmers who made it all possible are being paid fairly. The results is coffee that not only tastes better, but is better for you.
And just like that…
Class IV Coffee Company was born.
Rafe Mattingly - Class IV Founder
