We're called Lime Blue because we've set out to merge various aspects of the coffee industry into something new that is awesome and slightly mysterious. The same way the colours Lime and Blue exist, but what colour is Lime Blue...Our motto is "We save time, you save money, without the need to compromise on quality."
How can we offer 84+ grade high quality coffee at such low prices? Efficiency; we're a small hardworking team with lean operations. We're based in Victoria, Australia. We roast our blends, rotating Single Origins and Decaf several times a week. Our systems keep our overheads manageable based on our product prices and means there's hardly any wastage, as we roast-to-order.
All our coffee is omni roasted, meaning it suits both espresso and filter brewing methods. For optimal enjoyment of our fresh coffee we recommend each order you place will be consumed within a Month.
We love roasting coffee! Most of our time is spent focusing on roasting coffee really well, consistently. In terms of operation size, our sweet spot is medium; too small and we'd have to charge double the price to pay the bills, too large and we'd have to lower the quality to charge the low prices we do.
We always pay well above the Fair Trade price. The Fair Trade company is a multi-billion dollar megatrain, it does have more of a positive than negative impact, but it's definitely nothing to strive for in our humble opinion there are 4 major flaws with the "Fair Trade" certification:
1) There is no correlation between quality and price
2) I believe there is a 1 month advanced warning before auditing a farm, which means anything dodgy like slave labour is far too easy to hide
3) The Fair Trade company charges farms a certification fee. The vast majority of farms are generational family run small 1-2 acre plots in 3rd world locations, they're focus is feeding their family and taking care of their farm. I believe any ethical certification fees should only be paid by exporters, importers and Governments
4) The Fair Trade price is a % above the C Market (coffee commodity price on Wall St), which means if the C price is below cost of production (which happens), then the certain % (I believe it's 25%) the FTC pay about the C price could still mean "Fair Trade" certified coffee costs less than productions costs. The FT price should be tied to cost of production and cost of living in a given region, not what Wall St Traders who never actually touch coffee think the price should be.
In our experience, you pay peanuts you get monkeys/there's no point cutting your nose off despite your face...We don't give handouts and pay more than we have to just because. We pay more than the Fair Trade price because it's the right thing to do and it's smart business, if farmer's get screwed on price four things happen:
1) quality will drop as the farmer's will cut corners to make a bit extra profit to eat
2) when farmers really get screwed over they give a return serve just to survive, I know some companies, which shall remain nameless, advertising they do all the right things in reality they pay less than half the cost we do and so sometimes they open up a 70kg jute bag of "coffee" filled with rocks and bolts
3) quality and size of the crop will not improve/increase, know this seems like this is cover in point 1, but if a farmer is talented and in a good growing region, it's smart business to pay them more than enough money to just survive because we want them investing in their farm to get better equipment, expand their crop, experiment to create amazing new crops...
4) when farmers can't feed their families, they stop growing coffee and start growing drugs for cartels just to make enough money to survive, this leads to global coffee supply reductions
I could also mention we're good people and have a lot of family who are farmers..., but someone saying that truthfully and someone fibbing would sound the same, which is why I choose to go over why we source "ethically" from a selfish smart business perspective.
