BusinessTN

Some people are pulled into the ministry by a call from above. For Ugly Mug Coffee Co. owner Mark Ottinger, answering his true calling meant leaving the ministry.

Working with college students in the 1990s, Ottinger spent a lot of time hanging out in coffee shops. “I loved the atmosphere and loved connecting with people,” Ottinger says.

While still working at his church, Ottinger started a small coffee shop near the University of Memphis in 1999. As he began to learn more and more about the coffee business, he had a crisis of conscience—and felt he was being called to do something about it through his business.

He heard stories of how coffee bean farmers were not getting a fair price from buyers and that many lived on the edge of poverty. One story from Nicaragua detailed how some coffee farmers were struggling so hard financially that they had resorted to opium farming to make ends meet.

“They couldn’t take care of their families or their own health care or send their kids to school,” Ottinger, 33, says. “So I could not in good conscience charge $4 for a latte and know that the coffee farmer who picked these beans could not care for his kids.”

And so the true path of Ugly Mug Coffee was revealed. The Memphis-based coffee retailer now deals solely in coffee that is certified as organic and labeled as “fair trade” by independent agencies such as TransFair.

Fair trade cooperatives, which link participating farmers and buyers who want their coffee, help the farmer earn three to five times more than they would by selling through conventional channels. The extra income produced by the co-ops is invested in building schools and health care centers for workers, training in organic farming techniques and improving the coffee quality.

In America, sales of fair trade coffee—while still less than one percent of the market—have doubled in recent years. Fair trade marketers say about 30 million pounds of fair trade coffee were imported in 2004—compared to 18 million in 2003.

While fair trade is important to him for moral reasons, Ottinger says it’s the quality of the bean produced that makes the extra expense worth it.

“We’re not asking people to buy our coffee just because it is fair trade—we say it’s the best coffee out there,” says Ottinger, who runs the company with longtime friend Tim Burleson, 34, a former minister and ex-IBM executive.

And it appears to be catching on. In Memphis, the brand is sold in all 14 Schnuck’s grocery stores and statewide at Davis-Kidd Booksellers & Café. Also, it was chosen as the sole coffee vendor for FedExForum.

Ugly Mug’s highly visible kiosk in the Forum is the company’s only “coffee shop” currently, and Ottinger jokes that “it’s a coffee shop with a basketball court and seating for 19,000.” The original shop closed in 2002 when the company began focusing on roasting and selling beans and other coffee products.

Plans for another store are on tap for later this year, and this month, shopping network QVC will invite Ottinger on-air to sell the brand.

Ugly Mug scored another coup when it became the only coffee served at 6,000-member Hope Presbyterian in Cordova. The church can go through 200-250 gallons of coffee a week.

“It was the right decision to go with them,” says Jennifer Young, the Hope Presbyterian cafeteria director. “When we took into account the fair trade issues and the passion they have for helping the coffee farmer, it was a win-win situation.”

Partnering with Ugly Mug also has resulted in a coffee-based fundraiser for the church’s adopted inner-city Memphis community of Caldwell. Ugly Mug designed a coffee, Caldwell Blend, that is sold to church members with the proceeds going back into the Caldwell ministry.

Being involved in the local community was important for Ottinger, and he sees the commitment to sell only fair trade coffee as another way to use his business as a ministry.

"We needed to have a complete chain,” he says. “We didn’t want to be another company who exploited the workers but worked hard to have a good image of being community-minded. It has to all start with the farmer who is growing our bean.”