THE PLACES — OPEN CALL

This Open Call grew out of the Coffee People Finale.

Over the summer, 26 coffee people answered our questions about work, dignity, power, money, and the future of coffee.

Those conversations are now published on Red Ink Coffee.

Coffee People: Put Something Behind the Words

Twenty-seven coffee people are putting their voices and reach behind three others. Three coffee people facing real problems will receive access to The Places at no cost. You can help make that happen.

Red Ink CoffeeKrzysztof Blinkiewicz

We want the next step to be practical.

Three people or organizations will receive a three-year license to The Places with the full €1,500 Sustainable-tier fee waived.

The aim is simple: turn some of what surfaced in Coffee People into relationships, cooperation, and work that can materially improve the conditions in which coffee people live and work.

WHAT THE PLACES IS

The Places is where The Better Coffee moves into everyday practice.

It connects autonomous people, businesses, initiatives, and organizations that want to work with one another around real needs.

That can mean finding support when a business relationship turns against you, reaching new clients or markets, sharing knowledge, building something together, solving a problem with people who have relevant experience, or simply having somewhere to turn when acting alone stops being enough.

Each participant becomes The Place.

You keep control over your own work, decisions, identity, and legal structure.

The cooperative structure exists around that autonomy: people helping one another, relationships developing across the network, and The Better Coffee Office coordinating support when coordination is useful.

The license lasts three years.

WHO CAN APPLY

You can apply as an individual or on behalf of an organization.

INDIVIDUALS

You may work directly in coffee or in work connected to the lives and working conditions of coffee people.

You might be a barista, farm worker, picker, roastery worker, educator, researcher, technician, consultant, independent contractor, or someone whose role does not fit neatly into one of those categories.

You do not need to own a business or hold a management position.

If the license is awarded to you, you become The Place in your own capacity.

ORGANIZATIONS

A company, cooperative, farm, roastery, café, school, laboratory, initiative, organization, or another eligible entity can also apply.

The application must come through someone authorized to represent the organization and enter into the license agreement on its behalf.

That may be an owner, founder, CEO, director, board member, or another formally authorized representative.

If selected, the organization holds the license.

WHAT THE THREE SELECTED APPLICANTS RECEIVE

Each selected applicant receives:

— a three-year The Places license,

— the full €1,500 Sustainable-tier fee waived,

— onboarding into The Places,

— full autonomy over their own work and decisions,

— unlimited consultation throughout the license period,

— collective support from people across The Places,

— coordination through The Better Coffee Office when support needs to be organized,

— access to relationships, knowledge, contacts, cooperation, and shared work across the structure.

The value of that access will depend on what you actually need.

Maybe you are dealing with a buyer, employer, client, competitor, or market condition that is costing you income, dignity, or room to act.

Maybe you need new relationships, clients, knowledge, or leverage.

Maybe you have something you want to build with other coffee people.

Maybe the problem has not appeared yet.

The Places gives you a cooperative structure you can work through for the next three years.

BEFORE YOU APPLY

Get to know The Better Coffee first.

Read The Better Coffee Standard or one of the available Abstracts.

Then read about The Places:

The Places – The Better Coffee

The Places is a formalized structure for coffee people who choose to work within shared frameworks of responsibility, equality, and mutual aid. Enter The Endeavour.

The Better Coffee – For Coffee People

We want applicants to understand the structure they are asking to join and the values that shape the work inside it.

HOW TO APPLY

Send a text-only application in English.

Paste it directly into the email or attach a .txt file.

We want three things from you.

1. TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF OR YOUR ORGANIZATION

If you are applying as an individual, tell us what you do, where you work, what your experience is, and what the conditions around your work look like.

If you are applying for an organization, tell us what it does, where it works, who it works with, and what your own role is.

2. WHY DO YOU WANT THE LICENSE?

Tell us why three years inside The Places would matter to you.

What could it help you protect, change, strengthen, solve, or make possible?

3. WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH IT?

Tell us how you imagine working within The Places.

You may already have a project, a problem, a relationship, a need, or a direction in mind.

You may want to build new relationships, reach clients or markets, find support, collaborate with other coffee people, or develop something that does not exist yet.

There is no required word count.

Tell us what we actually need to know.

THE PROCESS

There are four stages.

1. APPLICATIONS

Applications close on October 7, 2026, at 11:59 PM in Pago Pago, American Samoa (UTC−11).

Everyone who applies will receive a reply. Selected applicants will move on to The Better Coffee Blueprint.

THE PROCESS

There are four stages.

1. APPLICATIONS

Applications close on October 7, 2026, at 11:59 PM in Pago Pago, American Samoa (UTC−11).

Everyone who applies will receive a reply.

Selected applicants will move on to The Better Coffee Blueprint.

2. THE BETTER COFFEE BLUEPRINT

October 17, 2026, at 12:00 PM BST (Cambridge, UK).

Attendance is required to continue in the Open Call.

The session gives everyone the same starting point: the coffee system we are working inside, The Better Coffee, its values, structures, mechanisms, and the work already taking place across The Better Coffee Endeavour.

Please apply only if you can attend.

3. ONE-TO-ONE CONVERSATIONS

October 19–22, 2026.

Applicants moving forward meet individually with The Better Coffee Office.

We’ll talk about your work, your application, what you want from The Places, and what you imagine contributing to the structure.

For organizations, we’ll also discuss who will hold responsibility for the relationship with The Places and how the license would function inside the organization.

You will also have time to question us before making any commitment.

4. THE PLACES ONBOARDING

October 23, 2026, at 12:00 PM BST (Cambridge, UK).

The three selected applicants join a dedicated onboarding session.

We’ll go through how The Places works in practice, how participants work with one another, how The Better Coffee Office coordinates the structure, what the license involves, how naming works, how Matrix + Element is used, and what the three-year relationship looks like.

Onboarding also begins the initial recognition process described in The Better Coffee Standard.

After that, we complete the license agreement and begin working together.

WHO MAY BECOME THE PLACE?

The Better Coffee Standard deliberately keeps The Places open across professions, roles, organizations, forms of work, and different parts of the coffee world.

Examples of participants in The Places may include, among others:

• agronomists, botanists, and climatologists

• baristas, and participants and champions of coffee competitions

• bloggers, podcasters, and coffee content creators

• coffee laboratories, sensory lab technicians, and food chemists

• coffee plantations, smallholders, and coffee agribusinesses

• coffee researchers, scientists, and research teams

• coffee roasteries, cafés, and mobile coffee points

• coffee shops, retailers, and e-commerce

• consumer cooperatives

• cooperatives producing green coffee

• dry mills hulling, sorting, and preparing coffee for shipment

• entities outside the coffee sector whose activity remains related to the life, work, and dignity of coffee people

• exporters, importers, traders, and coffee brokers

• individual coffee people, including pickers, seasonal workers, and roastery workers

• judges of cuppings, auctions, and coffee competitions

• magazine editors, authors of books, and coffee newsletters

• manufacturers of machinery for agriculture, processing, and coffee brewing

• manual green coffee sorters

• marketing teams and designers of labels and communication materials

• mobile coffee points

• organizations and individuals providing medical and psychological support

• people’s universities

• post-harvest coordinators

• quality controllers of coffee lots

• software developers and data systems used in coffee

• trainers, instructors, and coffee consultants operating across different systems and programs

• universities and academies conducting coffee research

• volunteers and social initiatives operating in coffee regions

• wet mills processing coffee berries

Eligibility depends on readiness to work in alignment with The Better Coffee Standard, take responsibility for the consequences of decisions, and participate in cooperative relationships within The Better Coffee Endeavour.

Legal form, size, market position, and job title do not decide whether someone belongs here.