(From L to R) Kathleen Wilcox (Honesta Coffee Partner), Erin Pless Maciel, Lauren Davis Neulander, and Mateus Maciel (Erin’s son).

Alumni Spotlight: Honesta Coffee

04/13/2023

Erin Pless Maciel 
Major: Landscape Architecture
Class of ’06

Lauren Davis Neulander 
Major: Environmental Forest Biology (Now Environmental Biology)
Class of ’05

As ESF is considered the nation’s premier college focused on the science, design, engineering, and management of natural resources and the environment, it’s fitting that two graduates have come together to brew up a coffee business with a mission to uplift a small subset of eco-conscious, small-scale family farmers in Brazil.

It all began when alumnae Erin Pless Maciel (Landscape Architecture, ’06) and Lauren Davis Neulander (Environmental Biology, ’05) met in 2002 in a sustainability class taught by Distinguished Professor Dr. Charlie Hall during their sophomore year at ESF.

They hit it off immediately and decided to room together, spending much of their free time hiking around the Adirondacks and going to concerts. A lot of coffee was consumed and brewed during their adventures and they both developed a palate for what they loved.

Lauren, an inveterate coffee-lover, worked as a barista at Coffee Pavilion in Downtown Syracuse while Erin completed her off-campus semester in Brazil with the LA department, two coincidental decisions that would again lay the groundwork for their future.

Erin met her now-husband and fellow architect, Fabio, during her study at the University of  Brasilia. The school, set in Brazil’s iconic modernist capital, exposed Erin to the surrounding coffee-producing landscapes of Minas Gerais, Bahia, and Goias while traveling between Brasilia and the coastal cities of Salvador and Rio de Janeiro during her off-campus stay. 

Upon graduation from ESF, Erin spent years traveling back and forth between Brazil and the U.S., and eventually, she and Fabio settled in New York City, where they lived for more than ten years. Ready for a change of pace, they moved Upstate to Saratoga Springs, where Lauren lived since graduating from ESF.  

But Erin and Fabio wanted to maintain their roots in Brazil, and they have made many trips back together over the years. During the pandemic, nervous to cross borders but eager to see their loved ones, they packed up the family and flew back to join their Brazilian pod for an extended stay while work and school were online. Erin reconnected with old friends, and learned that one of their best friends, also a fellow architect, had launched Cafe Honesta, a curatorship of women roasters and farmers dedicated to sustainable, ethical, and specialty-grade coffee. She connected with the concept immediately, tried the coffee, and fell for the farm-fresh beans, grown and roasted by small, sustainably minded female family farmers in Brazil.

Intrigued, she began exploring the roots of the business and joined the Cafe Honesta team at meetings and calls around Brazil. Erin had a lightbulb moment while learning about and witnessing the production of coffee in Brazil. Here in the U.S., she knew there is little understanding of coffee production, particularly sustainable coffee production. Considering most people drink coffee every day—and many people’s increased interest in sustainability— she saw an opportunity. She returned from that trip and made a call to Lauren, who was as intrigued as she was.

Erin reached out to the owners of Cafe Honesta and offered to be the American arm, Honesta Coffee. Within a few months, she was owner, operator, importer, and distributor of single-origin coffee grown and roasted by women farmers in Brazil.

Almost two years later, Erin is running the day-to-day operation, with Lauren and a few other local friends helping with sales, marketing, and promotion.

Being a small importer/distributor and offering a personal connection to the farmers and roasters in Brazil allows them to provide an unusual level of quality and transparency to their customers. One that’s often not possible to find in large, mass-produced coffees that you find in a grocery store.

Erin and Lauren are both passionate about sustainability and draw upon their education at ESF to inform people about coffee and connect with their local food community.

“Globally, we consume about 2 billion cups of coffee per day, but for those of us living in climates that don’t produce coffee, it’s hard to connect or understand what it even is really,” said Erin. “It’s a seed, a plant, that has climatic requirements.”

Sustainably cultivating such a popular crop requires a lot of highly specialized labor and knowledge, not dissimilar from wine-making. Altitude, shade, region, and post-production practices like drying and roasting, all affect the way the final coffee bean tastes. It’s difficult to understand for those who don’t live near a coffee-producing region, which unfortunately leads to coffee being deemed as a commodity, rather than an ecologically sensitive crop. Honesta farmers are pushing the limits of what it means to be a sustainable coffee farm.  With a wide range of microclimates, from high-desert (Cerrado) to lush subtropical rainforest (Mata Atlantica), each farmer adapts their methods of agriculture to maintain a successful farm and local ecosystem.  From rainwater harvesting in the high desert of the Cerrado to protect local water sources, native habitat restoration, and apiary efforts to revive native pollinators in farming regions and integrated pest management, all of these methods are evaluated to be considered an Honesta grower.

Erin and Lauren believe that the small decision for an individual to choose sustainable coffee and know the supply chain is one that has a big impact. There are very few regions in the United States that can produce coffee, so options like Honesta are, as Erin and Lauren like to say, “as local as it gets.”

As far as business is concerned, Erin and Lauren are a natural match. While at ESF, they made handmade purses together and sold them on the quad and at local concerts. They love to talk fondly about their time at ESF and call themselves proud alumnae.

Erin is also a practicing landscape architect and Lauren is an administrator at the Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs.

Learn more about Honesta Coffee.