Zarah Lawless and Daniel Boobier met in 2014 while working at a coffee roastery in London. They noticed that coffee usually tasted at its peak when it had been freshly picked, and wanted a roastery of their own that treated coffee as a seasonal product while putting its environmental and social impact first. In 2017, after more than a year of planning and saving, they moved to Zarah’s hometown of Galway and started Calendar.

Calendar roasts light, to order, every week, and ships to homes, offices, restaurants and coffee shops. Each coffee is roasted for either espresso or filter. Its goal is a future where all coffee farmers are profitable. For each coffee it names the producer, the harvest, the price it paid, the FOB and farmgate prices, the weight bought, the years of buying and the importer, and an annual impact report breaks down the prices it pays, its environmental footprint and its finances. A donation from every kilo of the Teamwork seasonal espresso goes to World Coffee Research.

Calendar is based in Galway and roasts in Oughterard, County Galway, where the roastery has started opening to visitors for ticketed tours that finish with a cupping of the whole range, for up to ten people at a time. Zarah heads wholesale and Daniel heads coffee and production.

Coffee on the shelf