What direct trade actually means for the people growing the coffee.

Intelligentsia Coffee approached The Chocolate Barista to anchor their Origin Stories campaign — a content initiative designed to foreground the human relationships behind their direct trade sourcing model. The brief: tell the stories the brand couldn't tell about itself.

The result was a four-part editorial series published across Intelligentsia's digital platforms and The Chocolate Barista's journal, each piece profiling a Black barista or roaster whose work had directly shaped Intelligentsia's sourcing relationships — and asking hard questions about what "direct trade" means when the people growing the coffee rarely appear in the marketing around it.

The series ran across four months and included both long-form editorial and short-form social content. Each installment included original photography (placeholder — replace with campaign assets), a personal essay by the featured subject, and a reported sidebar by Michelle R. Johnson-Strickland situating the subject's work in the broader context of race and representation in specialty coffee sourcing.