Sustainability
A purpose-led business for people & planet
Our Shared Values
At Spring Valley Coffee, we are dedicated to fighting for economic sovereignty at origin, ensuring a greater share of value stays with Kenyan producers, and guaranteeing a safe, dignified, and fair workplace across all our cafés. These commitments apply consistently across our operations, our relationships with customers, and the communities in which we work. Recognising that farmers and supply chain workers face distinct structural barriers, we provide tailored support—whether through transparency of sourcing (where available), targeted training, or clear professional growth paths that empower our local workforce to transition into leadership.
We actively cultivate a rich mosaic of identities, genders, backgrounds, and lived experiences across our leadership, roastery, and café teams, believing that a diverse workforce honours the deeply collaborative nature of Kenyan coffee culture and drives our global innovation. We regularly gather feedback and data from our employees, customers, suppliers, and the communities we operate in and use these insights to directly inform and prioritize the actions we take across our policies and practices.
Ultimately, our goal is to create welcoming, safe, and vibrant spaces where our baristas, roasters, and partners feel truly valued, respected, and possess clear, retaliation-free mechanisms to shape company policies and express their authentic selves.
Lobbying & Governance
At Spring Valley Coffee, we commit to using our voice, market presence, and systemic influence exclusively to drive positive social and environmental outcomes. Any public advocacy or policy engagement we undertake must align with our core mission: protecting coffee-growing ecosystems, championing the economic sovereignty of Kenyan smallholder farmers, and guaranteeing safe, dignified workplaces across our roastery and cafés.
Our approach to public advocacy is strictly grounded in objective, reliable empirical data and peer-reviewed agricultural science. To preserve corporate integrity, we enforce a strict zero-political-spending policy, prohibiting financial or in-kind contributions to political entities or campaigns. We operate with a zero-tolerance stance on corruption and bribery in compliance with the Kenyan Bribery Act. This ethical framework extends to our industry networks and trade associations; we review our memberships annually and will formally withdraw from any intermediary organization that engages in regressive lobbying contradictory to our values.
Ultimate accountability for enforcing this policy rests with our CEO and Leadership Team, which formally reviews and approves this policy on an annual basis. We put this policy into practice by embedding it within our standard Employee Handbook, conducting mandatory onboarding and annual refresher training for all staff, and contractually binding any external representatives to these terms.
To proactively manage compliance, our Marketing team maintains an internal risk register and conducts pre-engagement screenings before participating in any public policy forum. We evaluate this control framework through an annual internal audit of our advocacy logs and association memberships. If any stakeholder — including our baristas, roasters, smallholder farmers, or community members — suspects a violation of this policy, they are empowered to report it safely and anonymously through our grievance procedure, where every report is thoroughly and independently investigated.
Our Commitment to Human Rights
At Spring Valley Coffee Roasters, we believe that great coffee should never come at the cost of people’s dignity or rights. We are committed to working with suppliers and partners who share our respect for fundamental human rights, guided by internationally recognised frameworks including the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the International Bill of Human Rights, and the International Labour Organization’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.
This means we expect everyone in our supply chain to uphold fair wages, safe working conditions, freedom from discrimination and forced or child labour, and the right to be treated with dignity and respect. We work closely with our suppliers and partners to encourage continuous improvement, and we take any concerns about these standards seriously.