Ethiopia - Tariku Kare Bombe | Natural

About the Coffee

Tariku Kare started in coffee at age 15, sorting cherry for a local cooperative in Bombe, Ethiopia. From there he worked up through washing channels, then managed a station opened by an outside investor in Nensebo. When that investor went bankrupt, Tariku and 17 colleagues pooled resources and opened a new washing station together. He later built a mill in Arsi to reach international buyers, and once that operation was running steadily, came back to Bombe to build the station this coffee comes from.

The Bombe station sits in Nensebo woreda, part of the SNNPR (Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples) region in southern Ethiopia. It draws cherry from 500 registered smallholder outgrowers farming at elevations between 2,000 and 2,200 meters above sea level. Average farm size in the area is about two hectares. Farmers grow a mix of local varieties, mainly 74158, 74110, and 74112, alongside wild varietals collected from nearby forests. Nensebo is a relatively new coffee-growing area, which means fewer established buyers competing for cherry and more room for producers like Tariku to build direct relationships with farmers.

Tariku pays above local market prices for ripe red cherry, which gives farmers a concrete reason to deliver to his station rather than sell to lower-paying buyers. For a natural process coffee, cherry selection matters more than almost anything else: the fruit stays on the bean through drying, so anything underripe or overripe shows up in the cup. His premium pricing is a direct investment in the consistency of what ends up in the bag.