This Coffee Startup Wants to Change How Ethiopian Coffee is Sourced, Processed, & Consumed

The Goat Cafe is an integrated coffee company based in Addis Ababa. It was launched in 2019 by Nahom Michael & Alexander Hizkias with hopes to revitalize the Ethiopian coffee sector.

The Goat Cafe was inspired by the story of Kaldi. Kaldi was a 9th-century Ethiopian goatherd who is believed to have discovered coffee after watching how excited his goat became after consuming coffee beans. Hence its name ‘The Goat’, a representation of the dancing goat and an abbreviation to the saying ‘The Greatest of All Time”.

Nahom & Alexander established The Goat Cafe to address three gaps in the Ethiopian coffee industry.

The first gap is farmers being under-compensated for the coffee they provide to processors. By paying farmers an additional 5% for their coffee, The Goat ensures they are fairly compensated.

Second is the struggle of millennials in the city to find an ideal coffee shop. The Goat Cafe addresses this through its uniquely set up coffee shop that offers consistent, standardized, and creative coffee products.

The third and final is concerns of international consumers regarding the sustainability of the coffee they consume. The Goat is working to establish an innovative, sustainable, and traceable value chain to put these concerns to rest.

The company aims to address these problems through its coffee shop and upcoming roasting facility.

The first GOAT Cafe was opened in 2019. The cafe serves regular Arabica espresso and other creative coffee-infused beverages. It has also introduced a vanilla-flavored coffee that has now become the cafe’s signature drink.

Besides serving coffee drinks, the cafe sells its packaged coffee products that are roasted and packed by the company. Another product the cafe has introduced is a coffee-infused honey-based skincare product.

With its products, the cafe targets the conscious millennials who are concerned about where & how their coffee sourced and processed.

“We at The Goat Café intend to make an impact by enabling women to participate in the coffee value addition chain as well as applying innovation through creative coffee-infused products,’‘ Nahom told Shega.

In addition to the cafe, the company is building a coffee roasting facility. The roastery is being established to serve as a product development and experiment center that creates custom roast profiles for users.

The roastery aims to ensure sustainable & traceable coffee sourcing through a backward linkage with farmers.

The GOAT is a bootstrapped company. It was part of The Good Business accelerator program that featured 10 other local startups. On a virtual pitch event of the program, Nahom said “We are looking for a seed investment amounting to $50,000 to facilitate implementations.”

At the moment the GOAT cafe can be found in three locations in Addis Ababa with a plan to expand to 5 East African countries by 2023. Nahom told us, “Our current traction varies through our different channels. Our cafe locations serve 300+ foot traffickers per day on average, while our Deliver Addis orders amount to 500-1000 orders per month.”

Speaking of the expansion plan, Nahom mentioned, “We plan to become one of the largest value-added coffee exporters in Ethiopia by 2025“. He added, “The company is looking to form strategic partnerships in order to establish its international branches.”