SVI Alumnus Mickey Mcleod of Saltspring Coffee featured in The Tyee
By Rebecca Cuttler on December 6, 2012 - 11:00amLongtime Social Venture Institute alumnus Mickey McLeod, CEO of Saltspring Coffee, was recently featured in The Tyee. Please read on for the article.
Beautiful Relationships: How Five Local Enterprises Thrive Together
Regional roots link coffee beans to greener fuel to sprouting lawns. First in an occasional series.
By Luke Brocki, TheTyee.ca
December 5, 2012
The setting is a warehouse in an industrial park in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond. We're surrounded by big burlap sacks of green coffee beans, stacked several pallets high. The air warms up and sweetens as we approach the roaring roaster. Now and then a circular cooling tray spits hot brown beans into buckets while the machine's young operators consult nearby computer screens. My tour guide is Salt Spring Coffee president and CEO Mickey McLeod. He's wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a dark grey sweater over a blue shirt. His upper lip is hidden by a bushy Movember handlebar moustache. He says his company's sales were up 12 per cent to some $9 million last fiscal year. And that it couldn't have happened without nurturing local business connections.
McLeod is hardly the first to plant his flag in the "go local" camp. In recent years, I've heard this mantra from entrepreneurs and investors, consumers and politicians, not-for-profits and academics. Supporting local businesses is a good way to kick-start innovative and resilient local economies, the story goes. Advocates insist localism creates jobs and piles up tax dollars, builds communities and protects the environment. It could even -- no big deal or anything -- lay the groundwork for world peace. And here I am still buying Christmas presents at Wal-Mart like a jerk.
"All of this sounds great, but..."
"Does the do-gooder part actually make business sense?" McLeod interrupts, sensing my skepticism.
"Exactly," I say as we move away from the heat and noise of the roaster.
"At the end of the day, you're building a family. And when you have a family, they're gonna help you," he says. "It's about keeping as much of the economy as we can here."
"Except coffee doesn't grow here," I murmur.
"Yes, we're buying our coffee abroad," McLeod says with a shrug. "But the value of coffee does spread quite wide, and it's a great vehicle for messaging community value, social value. And we really want to work with people that have similar values."
McLeod's value checklist includes ethical sourcing, running modern equipment, auditing energy use, buying carbon offsets and recycling. As such, he buys his shipping boxes from Great Little Box, a packaging producer on nearby Mitchell Island; his branded promotional schwag from Fairware, a supplier based in Vancouver's Kitsilano neighbourhood; and his composting and recycling services from Vancouver's Recycling Alternative. They're pricier than national or multinational brands, but McLeod trusts them because they audit their supply chains to make sure their businesses are not only profitable, but also ethical and sustainable.
"You want to get good value but you also want to make sure you're getting support and partnerships," he says. "If you go away, you're giving your money to some large shareholder in another part of the world." READ THE FULL ARTICLE>>