Description

San Jose – Peru

San José de Lourdes, in San Ignacio, Cajamarca, is a highland district of smallholder farms strung along ridges and humid valleys near the Ecuadorian border. Elevation, regular rainfall and mixed agroforestry (with plenty of native shade) support slow ripening and the sweet, clean profiles for which the area is known.

We receive small, day-to-day parchment deliveries from communities across San José de Lourdes into our Falcon Coffees warehouse in Jaén. Every delivery is put through physical analysis and a cupping. As soon as a lot is cupped, we make a same-day price offer and pay the producer by instant bank transfer. Keeping the loop between delivery, evaluation and payment this tight supports on-farm cash flow and ensures quality—on both physicals and cup score—sets the price.

Where volumes and profiles align, we assemble single-producer and community lots from San José de Lourdes and move quickly to milling and shipment. It’s the same direct-sourcing approach we apply across northern Peru: local warehousing, rapid QC, transparent pricing and ongoing relationships with producers in the region.

Falcon Coffees Peru (FCP) was set up in 2019 to work directly with farmers in the northern producing region. FCP was one of the first exporters in the region to pay quality-differentiated prices at the farm gate level. In 2022 we added exports via producer cooperatives to give buyers more reliable access to third-party certified coffees. We now operate two northern warehouses—Jaén and Moyobamba—with a 20+ person team sourcing and exporting coffee from 500+ farmers and eight cooperatives. Our sustainability team runs farmer training and productivity work alongside sourcing.

On specialty sourcing, we identify interested farmers, run on-farm baseline surveys (captured digitally via a Copera-built app), provide training workshops, and give ongoing agronomy support. We commit to buy from programme farmers and pay premiums over the local price according to the quality delivered.

When working with cooperatives, we do pre-harvest due diligence and cupping calibration, approve samples before delivery and at every ~50-bag tranche, directly monitor milling, analyse and cup processed-lot samples, and typically ship within five days of milling. Most coops are within two hours of our Jaén/Moyobamba offices, enabling quick troubleshooting.

We also run multi-year projects: Falcon Specialty Plus (with responsAbility) to lift cup quality and premiums—showing a +1.32 average score gain, a peak of 88, and 107 producers enrolled to date—and a Soil Health Initiative targeting 600 farmers to improve soils, reduce chemical use, achieve GCP-equivalent certification, and generate farm-level carbon data.

Try San Jose at our coffee shop or order through our website to have it delivered!

Try our other specialty coffee beans!

Additional Information