From Flemington to Cocagi - Race Season, Full Circle
Spring racing in Melbourne is loud, bright and busy. Thousands of racegoers, long days on track, and a coffee in nearly every hand from the first race to the last. This season St Remio is back on track at Caulfield and Flemington. And every one of those cups leads somewhere most racegoers never think about: a hillside in Rwanda, and the women who farm it.
Back on track at Caulfield
This year the St Remio container set up at Caulfield, pouring for the Melbourne Racing Club crowd. As proud members of the Melbourne Racing Club family, it's a stretch of the year we look forward to. Last year's Caulfield carnival set the bar, and this year was just as big. Big day, big crowd, and every cup still connecting back to the growers of the Cocagi Cooperative.
Where your race-day coffee goes
80% of the world's coffee farmers live below the poverty line. It's one of the hardest ways to make a living, and most people drinking the coffee never see that side of it.
Since 2017, St Remio has worked with the Cocagi Women's Coffee Farming Cooperative in Rwanda, a women-led cooperative of more than 1,100 members, in a region where women rarely hold land or business ownership. Not a one-off donation. A long-term investment in growers, year after year, because real change takes time.
Fund the land it grew on
Land is where it starts. St Remio has funded 8 hectares for the cooperative, nearly 20 acres, and that land now belongs to the women of Cocagi. It gives them real assets, income security and commercial viability in coffee. New land takes three years to establish before it can be harvested, which is why this was always a multi-year commitment, never a quick win.
Alongside the land, St Remio has funded agronomists, a coffee nursery for seedlings, training in intercropping and erosion control, and ongoing land maintenance from compost to mulching and pruning. The impact spreads further than the plantation itself: the project has now provided work for more than 16,000 additional people in the surrounding community. You can follow every project, year by year, from the first land purchase to the first 4 hectares and 12,000 trees.
Your cup, full circle
The women of Cocagi grow the coffee. St Remio sources it, roasts it and brings it to you, at the track, in your local café or at home. You buy it, and the funds go back to grow their land. That's what coffee that gives back actually looks like: your coffee, full circle.
Want to meet the people behind it? Start with Patricia, the agronomist behind Cocagi's coffee, and Dafrose, one of the cooperative's growers.
Not making it to the track this year? Bring race season home with St Remio whole beans and be the impact, one coffee at a time.
