Tucked away on the corner of Roosevelt and 1st Avenue in Phoenix is a small cafe filled with coffee, treats, art and inspiration as many community members gather daily to enjoy the drinks and ambiance of Fair Trade Cafe.
A former middle school science teacher from the Maryvale area, owner Stephanie Vasquez took over the retail space to create Fair Trade Cafe in 2007. It is now the longest-standing Latina-owned cafe in the city of Phoenix.
“When a person is driven by a passion, nothing can stop them,” Vasquez said.
Fair Trade Cafe’s mission is sustainable coffee, meaning the cafe only buys and sells coffee that has been grown and harvested by farms that uphold certain working conditions.
These conditions include paying their employees a living wage, providing access to clean water, and otherwise promoting a safe working environment that allows for breaks, paid time off, and other things that many American workers take for granted.
Vasquez explained that she wasn’t aware that coffee was a plant until she visited Costa Rica and saw it farmed. As she learned more about sustainable practices and the working conditions of many coffee farmers, she learned more about what fair trade coffee really was.
“I wanted to put at the forefront what our purchases could do,” she said.
Currently, the cafe has partnered with a female-owned farm in Guatemala, whose beans make up 40% of the coffee sold at the cafe. Additionally, the coffee is shade-grown, with no deforestation, making the farm a sustainable partner.
But the cafe doesn’t stop there in its sustainable practices. The business is one of many Certified Green Businesses of Phoenix and holds a Platinum rating, with over 40 sustainable actions tracked by the city.
These actions include recycling, energy saving and socially sustainable practices like mandatory volunteering, buying in bulk and following a diversity and equity framework project. The cafe makes sustainability fun, even finding compostable straws shaped like hearts to complement its rose-themed February drinks.
Like all businesses, Fair Trade Cafe has seen various challenges, setbacks and losses. The company used to have two storefronts, but one location had to close due to construction on the light rail and the economic peril after the pandemic.
Valley Metro’s Public Information Officer Juliana Vasquez-Keating released a statement that the team “proactively connects with businesses along construction corridors to provide construction updates, assist with concerns, and share information about resources and assistance available to them.”
The ultimate customer becomes a friend. After being a customer at the Cafe, Elyssa Bustamante, also known as “The Funky Latina,” began collaborating with Mujeres Mercado, an all-Latina market owned and managed by Vasquez.
Bustamante came to Fair Trade Cafe looking for a cold brew and a place to work and found a Latina-owned business that would later sponsor The Funky Latina Music Festival.
This year’s festival, which was hosted on March 30th at Crescent Ballroom, was sponsored by OneAZ Credit Union, a large organization that helped make this year’s festival the biggest of the past three years.
But Vasquez also has fans right around the corner. Fair Trade’s front-of-house leader, Jessica Bailey, enjoys working at the cafe for the community and the culture that the cafe represents.
“Her aura is so badass,” Bailey said about Vasquez.
After moving from Arizona to Colorado, Bailey had worked in corporate coffee chains and wanted a change of pace. After being a customer, she applied for a position as she enjoyed the local feel of a small business.
Vasquez will continue to work with other artists and creators in the community to maintain the culture and community cherished by so many.
You can follow Fair Trade @fairtradecafeaz on Instagram or visit their website azfairtrade.com
