Campos Coffee

Campos Coffee was founded in Sydney in 2002 by Will Young, who opened the original café in a Newtown laneway before building it into one of Australia's larger specialty roasters with a strong Melbourne presence. The company states its aim is to purchase all of its coffee direct from individual farmers or cooperatives, structuring that buying around five stated principles: sustainability, quality, long-term relationships, traceability, and transparency. Its key sourcing partner for Colombia, Peru, and Central America is Caravela Coffee, a green bean exporter with more than two decades working with smallholder farmers in the region; Campos has also commissioned an independent third-party impact study of its direct trade model with Caravela, publishing that transparency as part of its sourcing case. Paying above-market prices under contracts that extend past a single harvest season is the mechanism the company points to for helping farmers reach economic sustainability, rather than relying on a general fair-trade label. That combination — a named 2002 Newtown origin story plus a specific, externally audited direct-trade partnership — separates Campos from roasters that describe themselves as "ethically sourced" without naming a sourcing partner or commissioning outside verification.