Dean Cycon was turning 70 and knew it was time for succession. He started his fair trade coffee business in 1993 as an experiment to show it’s possible to support indigenous coffee farmers, pay them higher prices for beans, sell them in the US and compete, and stay in business. Dean’s Beans showed it is possible. Over the years Dean’s experiment has grown to include thousands of farmers, and US coffee drinkers, and 16 full-time workers with good jobs.
When it was time to decide what was next for Dean, he received offers from many businesses. Cycon wanted to ensure the farmers and workers remained central to Dean’s Beans. So he decided to turn down the offers from outsiders and sell it to the buyer who knew Dean’s Beans best: His 16 employees. For $5000 a piece, each worker purchased a portion of the business–it became a worker-owned cooperative- 1 person, 1 vote.
As Dana Gerber writes in the Boston Globe, “As the ‘silver tsunami’ hits small businesses, could worker co-ops be a solution?” Dean Cycon said, “The workers know Dean’s Beans. They’ve been working it and running it for years…They’re going to carry on.” LEAF joined Coop Fund of the Northeast to support the conversion of this local fair trade coffee roaster so it becomes a worker-owned cooperative and the worker and small-scale farmers remain central to its mission.
