Our Company

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About Us

Reunion Island Coffee was founded in 1995. Its president, Peter Pesce, is a past Chairman of the Coffee Association of Canada and has played a key role in the development of the national specialty coffee market. In a recent feature article, the Toronto Star referred to Peter as “reputedly the best ‘cupper’ in Canada… Not only is Pesce a cupper (taster) par excellence, he is a walking encyclopedia of coffee facts, figures and esoterica.”

Peter’s reputation is the result of over three decades of experience in sourcing, blending and roasting coffee for the high-end foodservice market. Building on this foundation, Reunion Island has expanded to serve the unique needs of hotel, retail and office coffee service operators.

We cultivate loyalty through consistency, flexibility, quick turnaround and virtually limitless variety. Our team of sales, marketing and operations professionals have decades of industry experience, allowing us to offer value-added services that secure long-term partnerships. Our coffees are proudly served in fine restaurants, hotels, cafés and are available for your home and office too.

Sustainability Report Card

Certifications and Technologies

  • Bullfrog Power

    Reunion Island Coffee Roasters is Canada’s largest coffee roaster to be bullfrogpowered and has been choosing 100% green, carbon-free power for its roastery and coffee bar since June 2008.

    http://bullfrogpower.com

  • Organic Certification

    For a coffee to be certified organic, it must be grown in a manner that excludes the use of fertilizers, pesticides, hormone treatments and steroids. Organic farmers instead must rely on superior growing practices, natural fertilizers and alternative methods of pest and disease control.

    http://www.usda.gov

  • B Corporation

    B Corporations are a new kind of company working toward one unifying goal: to incorporate social and environmental benefits into the definition of success in business.

    http://www.bcorporation.net/

  • Fair Trade USA

    Reunion Island is proud to offer coffees that are certified as both Fair Trade and organic. These double-certified coffees support economic stability for farmers in producing countries and environmentally sound farming techniques.

    http://www.fairtradeusa.org

  • Rainforest Alliance

    The Rainforest Alliance is an international non-profit organization that works to conserve biodiversity and promote the rights and well-being of workers, their families and communities.

    http://www.rainforest-alliance.org

  • TCO Cert

    Our roasting facility has been inspected and certified by TCO Cert for the processing of organic coffee.

    http://www.tcocert.ca

  • Coffee Kids

    Coffee Kids is committed to helping coffee-farming families improve the quality of their lives by partnering with local organizations in coffee-growing regions that work directly with farming communities and with companies around the world.

    http://www.coffeekids.org

  • Trees for the Future

    Through Trees for the Future, we plant two trees in a developing coffee-producing country for every pound of Sierra Verde coffee sold.

    With our customer's support, we have been able to help Trees for the Future plant over 800,000 trees in Haiti, Brazil and Tanzania so far.

    http://www.treesforthefuture.org/

Initiatives

  • FARM DEVELOPMENT FUND

    We introduced a new Farm Development Fund in 2013 to help the farms we work with to pay for the necessary, but unglamorous projects that are often more difficult to fund. With grants from the fund, farms can invest in natural pest control, certifications and other investments that support quality and sustainability. Our signature Sumatra Ketambe Dark will be the first coffee supporting the fund, with 15¢ per pound going towards these projects.

  • THE COLOMBIA LAS HERMOSAS PROJECT

    Our relationship with the Las Hermosas farmers started in 2004 when we discovered an exceptional Colombian coffee from a farming cooperative in the South Tolima region. In an effort to give back to this community, we donate funds each year to support projects including school renovations, computer labs and improved agricultural infrastructure.

    Thanks to our customers, we have been able to contribute tens of thousands of dollars to this small farming cooperative that supplies us with the best Colombian coffee in the world.

  • Papua New Guinea Tribal Coffee Project

    The highlands of Papua New Guinea are home to thousands of small family farms where 70% of the tribal population is dependent on subsistence agriculture. As a cash crop, coffee offers important access to revenue for subsistence farmers. Families within the tribe will each handpick a small crop from their own “coffee garden.”

    Due to poor infrastructure, including rural roads, the tribal farmers in PNG face significant challenges in order to bring their coffee to market. As a result, they often fall prey to “coyotes”—middlemen that will pick up coffee cherries, but pay the farmers well below market price. These coyotes pool the coffee from many small farms and sell them at a large profit to processing mills for exporting.

    Reunion Island, in conjunction with Portland Roasting and Aarlie Hull of Highlands Arabicas, have developed a project to help tribal farmers earn fair value for their coffee crops by arranging legitimate roadside auctions for the crops of small family farms. Competing bids allows farmers to increase their income. Quality buyers, such as Reunion Island, also pay a premium for cherries that have been picked when ripe, allowing farmers to enjoy a higher reward for attention to quality.

  • EcoTainer Compostable Cups

    In an effort to reduce our environmental footprint, we made the commitment back in 2010 to switch completely to compostable paper cups.

    Our Reunion Island ecotainer® cups are made with fully renewable resources. Wood fiber is harvested from forests certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative® (SFI®) and cups are lined with an Ingeo™ biopolymer — a plant-based PLA material. These cups are certified by the Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI) and meet ASTM D6400/D6868 standards for compostability.
    http://www.bpiworld.org

  • World Coffee Research

    Reunion Island recently became a member of World Coffee Research, a non-profit, collaborative research and development program of the global coffee industry to grow, protect, and enhance supplies of quality coffee while improving the livelihoods of the families who produce it. We’ve always acknowledged the fragility of the coffee supply chain, so we are proud to support an amazing organization that is tackling this issue head-on.
    http://worldcoffeeresearch.org/

  • Small Lot Series

    We are constantly traveling the world to source interesting, new coffees from emerging origins and innovative producers.

    To bring these exceptional coffees from origin, through our roastery, and into your mug, we’ve developed the Small Lot Series – a curated, monthly collection that offers the best of what specialty coffee should be: nuanced, complex, singular, yet still approachable.

    Thoughtfully roasted on our Loring Smart Roaster, we’ve worked hard to craft this coffee to reach it’s full potential. Yet we continue to approach every roast as an opportunity to further uncover what each coffee has to offer.

Reunion Island Coffee: Historical Timeline

1978 - Peter starts his first coffee company, Bourbon Coffee - Canada's first specialty coffee roaster.
1995 - Getting back to his roots after time in the corporate world, Reunion Island Coffee is founded in a 3000 sqft roastery in Mississauga.
2001 - After already outgrowing 2 buildings, we moved into our current home at 2421 Royal Windsor Drive in Oakville.
2002 - We our first Fairtrade & Organic certified beans, beginning a long and ever-lasting relationship with sustainably produced coffees.
2003 - Peter becomes the chairman of the Coffee Association of Canada, for a second time, cementing his position as a leader in the Canadian Coffee world.
2004 - The inception of our first "relationship coffee" - the Las Hermosas Project. Working in conjuction with the Colombian Coffee Federation, we created a relationship with the Cafisur Co-op that is still going on today. The project has generated over $40,000 in additional income for the co-op which they have used for improvements to both the quality of their coffee and their lives.
2005 - Adam Pesce joins the company, in the quality department. He'd eventually go on to become our Director of Coffee, traveling the world to find our coffees and develop our direct trade relationships.
2006 - We begin purchasing our Rainforest Alliance certified coffees. After a slow start over 50% of our coffees are certified RA ensuring a high standard of social, environmental, and economic benefits for producers of our coffees.
2006 - Adam establishes our first direct trade partnership on a trip to Guatemala, with the Perez family at Finca La Soledad. We are still buying the coffee 12 years later.
2009 - We begin our partnership with Bullfrog Power, becoming Canada's largest roaster that is completely powered by renewable energy.
2010 - Along with companies like Portland Roasting, Cafe Imports, RGC Coffee, CBI and others, we are founding members of the SCAA's START Database - part of the organization's commitment to achieving the UN's Millennium Development Goals.
2012 - Our Sierra Verde project begins, and through that project, we have planted over 800,000 trees in Haiti, Brazil, Tanzania, and more through our partnership with Trees for the Future.
2013 - Joining a small cohort of elite companies around the world, we achieve the high honor of B Corporation Certification - holding ourselves to a higher standard of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability.
2014 - As we continue to get bigger, we also continue to strive to get better, as demonstrated by the purchase of our brand new Loring Smar Roast. Its capacity is smaller than our other roasters, allowing for better batch control and flexibility and an event higher stand for quality. And it happens to be the most fuel-efficient roaster on the market.
2015 - Opened our first namesake cafè on Roncesvalles in Toronto, ON. The cafè opening coincided with the launch of our Small Lot Series line of coffees; seasonal, single origin coffees with an emphasis on different processing methods. The coffee bar is where we serve our coffees how we envisioned them being prepared.
2015 - We were named Roast Magazine's 2015 Marco Roaster of the Year.
2016 - Celebrating our 20th anniversary we launched our varietal series coffees focused on unique micro-lots available in limited quantities.
2017 - Named one of Canada's Greenest Employers because of our commitment to sustainability by being 100% bullfrog powered, focusing on buying practices to certified coffees and relationship building with our farmers.