Ground Zero Coffee

My name is Nate Araya and I'm co-founder of Ground Zero Coffee. Ground Zero Coffee is a black-owned East African coffee company and podcast service focused on community impact, through storytelling, and social enterprise. My business partner Dagmawi Tessphai and I started Ground Zero Coffee and podcast because we saw a need for black and brown representation on the other side of the counter within the coffee industry. Our initial goal in starting Ground Zero Coffee was to start a coffee shop and park a lot in a space kind of But due to COVID-19 and the shutting down of all these small businesses, we had to pivot to a more viable option. So what we did was we turned our coffee company into a online home delivery coffee format that is focused on home delivery and corporate partnerships so we can handle distribution and wholesale. We believe that representation and ownership are powerful avenues to create new narratives and close the wealth gap within our community. Our social impact business model funds and fuels our global commitment to improving black lives and underrepresented communities by providing access to educational resources through impactful content and programming. Access is the cornerstone of power. Access to ownership of our coffee brand allows us to control our own quality coffee, our own narratives, our own wealth, and our own community-based initiatives for sustainable impact. I just want to thank everyone that's been able to support Ground Zero so far and it's been a crazy journey, a journey of pivoting, but we've managed to be able to not just get this business up and running but have some very successful partnerships along the way. So big shout out to all of you that's been able to support Ground Zero up to this point and look forward to greater days ahead.