Skylark Coffee roasts on a Probat at the foot of the South Downs, on the edge of Brighton. Its first roastery was in the horse stables at Buncton Manor Farm, which the Stable Blend is named after. Skylark is a registered non-profit: it buys and roasts coffee like any other roastery, then gives away all its profits at the end of the year. It sits under OCB Initiatives, the trading arm of One Church Brighton, which works with marginalised people across Sussex, and it shares its annual financials openly.

Skylark pays twice the Fair Trade rate or more for its coffee and donates another £1 per kilo to conservation and to producer projects. Beneficiaries include the Knepp Wildland Foundation, Technoserve’s Stumping Project for Ethiopian coffee farmers, Pro Baristas, a Sussex charity that trains unemployed people for coffee jobs, and Bette Buna, the Ethiopian farm, mill and exporter behind several of its coffees. It buys through importers such as Falcon Coffees and Raw Material, and every coffee is sold with its cup score and the price paid per kilo. Brazil Futures, a core coffee from smallholder farmers, was built around financial security for its growers.

Ben Szobody oversees Skylark. A former journalist, he helped run the coffee magazine Longberry and founded Pro Baristas; Micah Sherer manages the project. The birds on the bags are painted by Jackie Morris, and the poetry is by Robert Macfarlane, whose book with Morris, The Lost Words, inspired the name.

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: Skylark Coffee