The Better Coffee Endeavour | Global Coffee Movement

The Better Coffee Glossary

A guide to the language of change. This isn’t about brew ratios or botanical terms.

It’s about the words we use to think differently.

Use it when something on Red Ink Coffee feels unfamiliar, loaded, or quietly radical.

Here, you’ll find the cues — and clues — to a better system.

A shared vocabulary for reclaiming meaning, dignity, and direction.

If you're just arriving, this glossary will help you find your footing — and know what’s really being said.

Use it like a set of flashcards.

The First Five

The Better Coffee

Core pathway

It combines the strengths of methods, tools, and systems. It is a way of thinking with proto-paradigm traits—an antithesis to the current model. A provocation that opens a path toward a world without exploitation or inequality. It affirms the dignity of people working with coffee, proposes economic self-defense and mutual aid. It engages and educates—by changing, protesting, and condemning—the logic of the “coffee market.”

The Endeavour

Overall approache

The collective undertaking to explore and build a new coffee paradigm. It is a living system of projects, practices, and proposals — where The Better Coffee Standard is put into action and Matrix + Element serves as the shared space for communication and coordination.

Standard

The Better Coffee Standard

A set of principles and practical guidelines for living according to a possible new coffee paradigm — before it fully arrives, one that may never fully arrive, or may take a different shape. By working with the Standard, we act as if a better future is possible, and we make that possibility visible.

The Places

Structure of The Better Coffee

The real-world structure of The Better Coffee. Independent, real entities — physical, organizational, or digital — where The Better Coffee Standard is practiced, shared, and implemented in everyday work. This is where The Better Coffee Endeavour takes practical form.

The Curriculum

The Better Coffee Curriculum

A non-linear learning system designed to support the shift toward better coffee. It offers 10 equal courses, not ranked or tiered, available online and in person. The Curriculum invites exploration, challenges assumptions, and builds the skills to act with care and clarity.

Red Ink.

A symbol of the moment when we begin to realize that something is wrong. It stands for freedom, equality, and the courage to change what we have been told.

Paradigm

A shared way of thinking so accepted we stop seeing it — until it fails. Shifts begin with small anomalies, then everything starts to change.

Needs

Coffee workers must be able to meet their real needs — not just survive, but live. That means fair income, education, peace, and family stability.

Specialty Coffee

A mutation of capitalism in the coffee market. Built on stories, scores, and scarcity. We work within it — while waiting for it to collapse.

Krzysztof Blinkiewicz, author of The Better Coffee

“We thought we were living the dream of specialty coffee — until we woke up and realized it was someone else’s. The Better Coffee begins with waking.”

Sometimes we talk about politics

Because changing coffee means changing systems — and systems are political. The Better Coffee isn’t neutral; it defends dignity, equality, and self-determination. If we want a better future, we can’t ignore the structures that stand in its way.

equal and free

Equality is the right to dignity, voice, and opportunity. Freedom means resisting what silences or punishes. Everyone deserves both.

human dignity

The right to exist with worth, safety, and voice — no matter your job, origin, or status. Dignity is the beginning, not a reward.

mutual aid

Helping each other because we choose to — not for charity or profit. It builds survival, trust, and strength in broken systems.

self-defence

Not aggression — protection. The right to resist economic harm, and defend what matters when systems are built to extract.

The Ranking Method

A way to evaluate coffee without collapsing it into one score. Looks at context, impact, and value — not just flavor and defects on a table.

Pointwashing

Using high scores to hide low ethics. A way to make bad systems look good. When marketing covers exploitation, we call it pointwashing.

Exploitation

Taking much more than you give. Of land, time, labor, or lives. It’s how much of the coffee world still works — and what we refuse to repeat.

Cooperative

An ideal model for The Places. Shared power, shared risk, shared reward. Not just an organization — but a way to live and work together.

People_farmer-coffee-is-harvesting-coffee-berries-in-coff_Envato.webp

colonialism

A system of domination that extracts land, labor, and value—leaving wounds that still shape today’s inequalities.

patriarchy

A social order where power, status, and opportunity are shaped by gender — upholding systems that limit, divide, and silence.

adaptive liberalism

An ideology that promises freedom, but adapts to protect privilege and profit—absorbing criticism and resisting real change.

degrowth

Choosing well-being and sustainability over profit, freeing people and planet from the logic of endless growth.

Interested in the vision?

Inside, you’ll find a vision of a world where better coffee doesn’t cost the future — or lives those who labor to create it.

Read The Vision