THANKSGIVING COFFEE FIRE ONLY DAMAGED BUILDING
--- SPIRIT SURVIVES

 by Richard Johnson

    In the evening of Monday, July  5, a brutal inferno engulfed the Thanksgiving Coffee Company factory on South Harbor Drive in Fort Bragg. A total of 50 firefighters from three different companies responded, including a 75-foot aerial ladder truck pumping 1,500 gallons per minute onto the roof from the hillside to the west. 

    “It just wouldn’t go out,” said one fire chief. The reason is the roof was comprised of many layers of hot-mopped tar and paper. The firefighters worked from 9pm to 3am the next morning. The 50-year old building with characteristic North Coast style architecture mixed with modern steel wall warehouse additions was 85% destroyed.

    The roaster and afterburner, the company archives and history room, the warehouse with green bean inventory worth a half million dollars and 5 coffee trees in the employee break room were all saved.

     Lost were the entire production and packaging room, the tasting lab and administrative offices. It took 850,000 gallons of water to extinguish the conflagration.

Company officials were confident the facility was adequately insured and predicted it would be substantially rebuilt by November of this year.

    They also said they were implementing a backup plan that included use of admin facilities at a local retail business and trucking beans back and forth from Equator Coffee and Taylor Made Coffee who were eager to help by roasting coffee for Thanksgiving under their specifications. By July 14, no delivery dates had been missed.

    The company’s 25 employees were all back to work by then.

    The state Fire Marshall’s office has ruled the cause of the blaze was arson.  The Mendocino County sheriff’s office is seeking information from the public concerning this incident.

Decades of Dedication:

    Thanksgiving Coffee is a success story for the principles of sustainability and value added economic development. Headquartered in Mendocino County, the firm distributes benefits to their international green coffee suppliers. This is a reversal of the traditional role of  processors vis a vis raw material suppliers in which countries in the economic South were exploited by the North.

    Forty years ago, Paul and Joan Katzeff were East Coast urban refugees when they met in Mendocino and set up a 25-lb coffee roaster in the Mendocino Hotel. Then, their objective was to produce and locally market hand crafted coffees of exceptional quality at time when most Americans were used to stale coffee in a can.

     From there, they grew a company that today produces 600,000 lbs of coffee annually, markets nationwide by retail and mail order, and employs 25 people who get good salaries, paid health plans and stock shares.

    In 1996, Thanksgiving went public by offering shares of stock, raising $1.2 million.

    From 1985 to 1998, Thanksgiving focused on Fair Trade relationships, setting up coffee buying contracts with small producer coops in Latin America and Africa. In return for quality and dependable production, Thanksgiving paid above standard prices and returned a percent of sales bonus that the coops could use to invest in improvements.

    In the next phase of the company’s development, Thanksgiving promoted sustainability by educating consumers about the ecological benefits of shade grown Arabica coffee versus plantation grown varieties.

    As a result of these initiatives, Paul Katzeff was eventually named president of the Specialty Coffee Association of America, giving national prominence to Fair Trade, shade grown, organic and craft-roasted coffees.

    In the last five years, Thanksgiving has promoted best practices and interconnections among small coffee exporting coops in Nicaragua, Uganda, Rwanda, and Ethiopia, helping those cooperatives to thrive and enhancing biological diversity.

      In 2008, Katzeff was awarded the Specialty Coffee Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award.  In that same year, Thanksgiving and several of its producer coops, the Peace Kawomera Cooperative, and Kulanu,  were honored with the prestigious Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award from The Tufts Institute for Global Leadership.

    Paul bought the first full page ad in MENDOCINO COUNTRY MAGAZINE in 1982 after I contacted him at the urging of Ukiah Community Center’s Buddy Eller. This marked the beginning of a sometimes rocky friendship and business relationship that has persisted through the decades.

     The theme of the publication at that time was Food Self Sufficiency -- a cause in which Paul has never ceased to toil. He wrote articles for the magazine promoting value added export and local economic development. In addition he has promoted Farmers Markets throughout the county, and donated an orchard and a garden plot south of the Thanksgiving factory to Noyo Foodshed, a l   ocal organization promoting community gardens and gardening education.

PAUL KATZEFF

So Much for Retirement

    Paul and Joan recently retired from the company, confident the institution they built would continue to grow --  inspired by the same consciousness of social justice and ecological sustainability that had shaped its development up until now. They appointed Ben Corey-Moran whom Paul remembers coaching for baseball to be the new president and director of coffee.

    But the Katzeffs’ retirement ended early on July 5 when Paul rushed to the factory to advise firefighters what to save first. “Go to the back,” he said. As a result many crucial assets survived. Since then, Paul, Joan and Ben have been working together to set up alternative facilities in Fort Bragg from which to operate, contacting cooperating specialty roasters to custom process their beans, and coordinating with customers to make sure orders are filled. In the first few days after the incident, Paul himself got behind the wheel of a local fisheries truck to deliver coffee to a roaster.

    Paul wrote to me recently, “Joan and I are doing fine. We have not faced such a tragedy before but we were prepared with insurances of all sorts that will enable us to carry on . Know for certain that although we lost some history, we are not depressed or overwhelmed.  Life continues. And no one was hurt. We will rise from these ashes.”

An Attack on Ideals

    Barn burning has a long history in America. A vital, complex institution like a farm or a factory is not just a pile of boards, bricks and equipment but an investment of effort and intention and intelligence -- often over decades. At night, it can be vulnerable to anyone harboring ill will toward the builders of such an enterprise.

    In a community such as ours, this should not happen, but sometimes it does. And it has before in Fort Bragg.

    Regardless of the motives of the perpetrators of this crime, it was a cowardly and despicable attack not just on the Katzeffs, but also on their employees, their international producer coops and their customers across the country – the community they strove to build for 38 years. Moreover it was an attack on the ideals of justice and sustainability they advanced.

    Along with the Katzeffs, I am confident Thanksgiving Coffee will not only survive but transform its physical plant to be “a sight to behold.”

    I also look forward to those responsible for this reprehensible act being brought to justice.   •