Coffee Uplifts People Opens at Harlem's Africa Center, Funding Fair Trade Expansion
When you buy a coffee at CUP @ The Africa Center, your money goes somewhere specific: toward increasing the number of fair-trade certified cooperatives in Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Rwanda. That’s not a vague promise. It’s the explicit mission built into this new cafe on Fifth Avenue.
The partnership between Coffee Uplifts People and the Africa Center opened on January 28, 2026, on the ground floor of the cultural institution at 1280 Fifth Avenue — the northern end of Manhattan’s Museum Mile. The cafe serves freshly roasted coffee, cold brew, loose-leaf teas, and specialty baked goods, with revenue channeled toward expanding fair-trade infrastructure across East Africa’s arabica-producing regions.
From Bed-Stuy to Museum Mile
Coffee Uplifts People launched in 2020, founded by radio personality Angela Yee (co-host of The Breakfast Club), Tony Forte, and LaRon Batchelor. Their flagship location in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, established a model that combines specialty coffee with explicit social justice goals.
The company operates what it calls a 100% People of Color supply chain, with direct-trade relationships connecting Brooklyn to farms in Ethiopia, Peru, Indonesia, Mexico, Kenya, and Brazil. Everything is roasted in-house in Brooklyn, with sourcing guided by what the founders call their D.I.R.E. principles: Diversity, Inclusion, Representation, and Equity.
The Africa Center location extends this model into a cultural institution designed to foster connections between the African continent and its diaspora. The center, which opened to the public in 2019, sits in a Robert A.M. Stern-designed building that was the first museum constructed on the Mile since the Guggenheim in 1959.
The Fair-Trade Pipeline
What distinguishes CUP from other mission-driven coffee companies is the specificity of its commitment. The partnership with the Africa Center isn’t just about visibility — it creates a direct financial pipeline between a Fifth Avenue cafe and cooperatives across five African nations.
Fair-trade certification isn’t a perfect system. Critics point to certification costs that can burden small producers, price premiums that don’t always reach farmers, and standards that sometimes favor larger, more established operations. But growing the number of certified cooperatives expands options for farmers and creates more infrastructure for transparent, accountable trade.
The specialty coffee industry talks constantly about “direct relationships” and “transparency,” but those concepts can be vague. CUP’s approach ties cafe revenue to a measurable outcome: more cooperatives, in specific countries, gaining fair-trade certification.
The Sourcing Model
Coffee Uplifts People sources single-origin beans from six countries, with a focus on premium lots that meet specialty standards. The Ethiopia and Kenya connections are particularly relevant given the Africa Center partnership — both countries produce some of the world’s most distinctive arabica, and both face ongoing challenges around farmer compensation and market access.
Ethiopian coffee, grown at elevations between 1,500 and 2,200 meters across regions like Yirgacheffe and Sidamo, produces the bright, fruit-forward profiles that define specialty African coffee. Kenya’s SL28 and SL34 varietals, developed in the 1930s, deliver the blackcurrant and tomato notes that make Kenyan lots some of the most sought-after in the industry.
By directing cafe profits toward cooperative development in these regions, CUP creates a feedback loop: better infrastructure for farmers leads to better access to specialty markets, which generates the premiums that make fair-trade certification worthwhile.
Why This Matters
The specialty coffee industry is full of companies that talk about ethics and sustainability. What separates genuine commitment from marketing is specificity: who benefits, how much, and through what mechanism?
CUP’s Africa Center location answers those questions. Revenue goes toward fair-trade cooperative expansion in five named countries. The company’s supply chain is documented. The founders have been explicit about their principles since 2020.
A cafe on Fifth Avenue won’t transform coffee production in East Africa. But a cafe that demonstrates how urban coffee consumption can directly fund rural cooperative development — that’s a model worth paying attention to. If it works in Harlem, it can work elsewhere.
The cafe is open Wednesday through Friday, 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM, and Saturday through Sunday, 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM.