How North Star Coffee Roasters is looking to lead the way on sustainability

Cafetieres were scarce in people’s homes, other specialist coffee brewing equipment even scarcer.

Holly and her husband Alex Kragiopoulos set out with the aim of bringing great tasting coffee that was ethically and sustainably sourced to Leeds.

Eight years on and Leeds is now home to a burgeoning specialty coffee scene with micro roasters following in North Star’s footsteps. Independent cafes serving specialty coffee have multiplied - North Star even has its own coffee shop to go with its roastery and bakery.

While an increasing number of people have brewing equipment to help them make their perfect cup of joe.

Sustainability is at the top of everyone’s agenda as world leaders pledge to get to grips with the climate crisis faced by the planet.

“I’ve always been quite obsessed with coffee,” says Mrs Kragiopoulos. “For me it probably started at the age of ten when my family moved to Sydney and I was introduced to flat whites in the year 2000.”

When her family moved back to Harrogate a couple of years later, she realised that the coffee scene here was lagging behind.

At the same time Mrs Kragiopoulos also became interested in sustainable development, a subject she would go on to study at Northumbria University, where she met her future husband and co-founder of North Star, Alex.

It was while at university that the seeds of setting up a business to make a positive impact in coffee were planted.

“I wanted to focus my final year dissertation on coffee and how it could be centred around the producer to lead to sustainable development for communities that grow it across the world,” Mrs Kragiopoulos says.

The research took her and Mr Kragiopoulos to Kenya, where they spent three months.

“That experience opened our eyes to the complexities of the coffee supply chain and also the possibilities for us to work within it as well,” she added.

When they left university, the couple knew exactly what they wanted to do, which was to work in coffee. However, they wanted to do more than just open a coffee shop, they wanted to make a difference in the supply chain.

Mrs Kragiopoulos said: “I don’t think we were arrogant enough to think we could single-handedly change what is the second most valued commodity in the world after oil.

“We felt responsible in a way to take that learning and bring it back to our home city and try to prove a different way of working. That’s why we started the roastery.”

The business today has 30 direct employees. Ten people work at the roastery, 15 at its coffee shop and five people at Nova Bakehouse, the bakery next door.

Dealing directly with coffee farmers, North Star gets to see the impact of sustainable practices thousands of miles away. To further solidify its credentials around sustainability, the business is currently in the evaluation queue to become a Certified B Corporation. It is working with Fiona Ras-Jones, founder of Hebden Bridge-based Make Impact, on the evaluation, which North Star hopes to secure by January.

B Corp certifications enable firms to benchmark themselves and track their progress on five areas – governance, workers, community, environment and customers.

The roaster first looked at the certification in 2017 but Mrs Kragiopoulos admits to being a bit “dubious about another certification scheme”, with the world of coffee already boasting a number of schemes. However, the couple came around to the idea and enlisted the help of Ms Ras-Jones earlier this year.

The pandemic saw a shift in coffee consumption. With coffee shops shut, it supercharged the drive towards home brewing and people turned to specialty coffee roasters such as North Star for their caffeine fix.

Mrs Kragiopoulos said: “In lockdown, our online business increased five-fold, which really did keep us going because we had lost all of our wholesale customers - who were having to close through the lockdown.”

It was quite a switch around , given that when they first started the business, the duo “didn’t even think that having a website to sell coffee on was going to be that important because there just wasn’t a demand for it”.

However, the downside of this online boom was the mountain of plastic waste that it resulted in.

Mrs Kragiopoulos said: “We were hit face on by how much plastic there was here in the roastery. Previously, we’d been packing into bigger bags - trade bags. We were less aware of it I suppose.

“We never thought we’d be selling that amount of retail coffee. Going through that process and being surrounded by a sea of plastic, we couldn’t ignore it.”

To counter this, North Star went on a 12 month journey to procure a more sustainable form of packaging and in September it launched new home compostable bags.

It has come at a considerable cost and a business advisor would usually bin such a proposal. But it is a move that is in keeping with North Star’s core values.

“We are a small business so the impact that we can have is always going to be restricted so I really feel our role is to be pioneering in these sorts of areas,” Mrs Kragiopoulos says.

If there is going to be impactful change in the coffee industry when it comes to sustainability, it will have to be driven by the consumer.

Mrs Kragiopoulos said: “If we look at wine for instance, people understand the concept of paying much more for a better quality wine.

“A similar kind of change needs to happen with coffee to give companies the ability to do better on the sustainability front.

The new packaging also presented the coffee roaster with the opportunity to rebrand.

With all of this in place, Mrs Kragiopoulos says the business is “ready to unleash”.

Collaborative coffee city

Ever since North Star launched in Leeds, there has been a cluster of specialty coffee roasters that have opened in its wake.

While that may increase competition, Holly Kragiopoulos believes its a welcome trend as it spreads awareness of specialty coffee amongst the public.

“We were almost delighted in the sense that it felt like our job was going to be easier because we were going to sound less weird,” she says.

She added: “My only regret is that the last two years have really interrupted a key stage in Leeds’ development as a coffee city. We would have loved to have run more events - collaborative tastings and things like that.”

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James Mitchinson