In an era marked by growing scrutiny of global supply chains, the specialty coffee industry has found itself at the crossroads of ethics and economics. While consumers demand quality and traceability, producers—especially smallholder farmers—face rising production costs, climate instability, and market volatility. Despite the “third wave” coffee movement’s emphasis on quality and craft, many coffee growers remain underpaid and overlooked, with the true cost of production often concealed behind opaque trade practices. Addressing this systemic imbalance requires more than sustainability slogans—it calls for radical transparency and restructured relationships between producers and roasters.
Chicago-based Metric Coffee was founded in 2013 by Xavier Alexander and Darko Arandjelovic with the intent to bridge this gap. Built without outside investors, the company has rooted itself in a sourcing model that prioritizes direct trade, traceability, and producer equity. The aim is not simply to source premium beans, but to honor the people and labor behind each cup. “Coffee can’t be cheap,” says Alexander, pointing to the physical demands and risks producers bear across the supply chain. Through site visits, direct dialogue, and above-market premiums, Metric aims to ensure that producers—especially the least visible, such as coffee pickers—are fairly compensated and able to sustain their livelihoods.
This commitment is reflected in Metric’s publication of regular transparency reports, (2024 here) where they share detailed supply chain pricing data and discuss challenges faced by producers, including sociopolitical instability and climate-related threats. The goal is to demystify the cost structure of coffee and invite customers into a conversation about fairness and accountability. In a market where branding often substitutes for substance, price transparency is an important form of consumer education and a tool for equity. Alexander the company’s B Corp certification as further solidifying its public accountability, and an external validation of their long-standing values—and a guidepost for continuous improvement.
The company is also expanding its impact through its new “Milli by Metric” café in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood. Alexander told me how this move isn’t just about scaling operations, but deepening engagement—both with the community and within their growing team. The café is envisioned as a space for storytelling, flavor discovery, and staff education, bringing the value chain full circle from farm to cup.
Metric Coffee’s story exemplifies how small-scale roasters can challenge extractive norms in the global food system. By making visible what is often hidden—producer costs, sourcing realities, labor conditions—they push the industry toward a more just and accountable future. For more details about their work, please read my interview with Alexander below.
Christopher Marquis: In the recent season of The Bear, I saw Metric coffee in one scene, and I understand one episode was filmed at your location. How did that come about?
Xavier Alexander: From what I can remember, it all started with a visit from our friend Eric “Wally” Frankel, who is a set decorator for film and television. He had stopped a few years back to pick up a few bags of coffee for a TV show he was working on. Not long after, we started to get tagged by folks on social media who took notice of our white retail bag next to The Bear’s star Jeremy Allen White, and that was the beginning of our relationship with the TV show. In the years since, we have served as their on-site coffee caterer, and in this last season, they used our soon-to-be open All Day Cafe and Roastery concept in one of their scenes, which has no doubt been really cool and helpful in reaching audiences we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to reach.
Marquis: Can you say a bit about why you founded Metric Coffee and also focused on transparency as a core value?
Alexander: Metric was founded by myself and business partner Darko Arandjelovic in 2013 here in Chicago, IL and served as our vehicle for self-expressing our ideas of quality coffee and hospitality, along with sourcing ethically from small producers around the world. The challenges with our industry—and really just about any industry—is that any one company can make bold claims about sustainability, supply chain equity, and transparency, and most often, it goes unchecked. I know for Metric, we started out small, with no outside investors (and still no investors today), with the goal of chasing flavor and doing so in a way that allows those discerning customers that are interested in knowing what a living wage is for coffee to become a part of our conversation.
To sum this up, managing coffee farms and picking coffee for a living is extremely hard work, and for producers, they end up being the most disenfranchised actors in the supply chain with the biggest risk—which is why coffee can’t be cheap. It can’t be treated as a pathway for roasters and cafés to earn high margins off the backs of producers and can, in my opinion, be just as revered and respected as, say, a biodynamic French wine producer.
Marquis: How do you ensure transparency and connection to producers as a small roaster?
Alexander: Ultimately, it is by paying them a visit, sitting down with them, sharing a delicious farm-fresh meal, and asking them the very important questions such as, “Are the prices we’re paying in this harvest equitable?” With each harvest, there is a new host of challenges, which include: sociopolitical, environmental—which includes climate and plant diseases—and also lack of human labor. Within the context of coffee producing, farmers are often the most talked-about actors on that side of the supply chain, with the least being the coffee pickers—the humans who collect the ripe cherries from the tree—and so, it is vital not only to the success of the farmer in terms of dollars but also to the pickers collecting the cherries to be paid a fair price for their product so that their wages, and that of the coffee producers, can be viable and worth their time out in their farms.
Marquis: Why did you decide to become a B Corp?
Alexander: Pursuing B Corp status was vital for Metric because—#1 to my knowledge—there is no more rigorous vetting system than B Corp in the sense that they aren’t set up to just take your money so anyone can slap their logo on their cups or bags. But more importantly—for me, for us—it validated that the work we do is good and fair, along with providing new goals and benchmarks for better business practices. We still have a ways to go.
Marquis: You are currently expanding the business to include a restaurant. Can you say a bit about that and how you will ensure the values and culture from Metric are transferred to it?
Alexander: It’s no surprise that in order to attract good people, they have to provide the environment for them to succeed, be inspired, along with wages that allow them to also benefit from our mission to exercise equity from seed to cup. As a decade-old company, we started with just two guys—a roaster and a bag of coffee—and today we have 22 staff members, which will in the coming weeks expand to double that rate due to the opening of our latest café: Milli by Metric. For us, Milli will serve as our All Day Cafe, which lives inside our 100-year-old barrel-roofed warehouse located in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood. And so, with more people comes more opportunities to introduce ourselves to our new staff members and customers—which means educating everyone in our orbit about our values and non-negotiables, which, in essence, is the spirit of who we are as people.
Marquis: What are your goals regarding your social mission moving forward? For example, possible ways of expanding knowledge of the power of smaller producers and/or further developing producer transparency systems?
Alexander: As we embark on this new journey here at our new roastery and All Day Cafe, I am excited to utilize our spaces to create more synergy and excitement about the art of coffee brewing. What we’ve learned over the last decade is—we should aim to educate consumers on the endless flavor possibilities in coffee and bolster that narrative with educating our staff and customers on the transformative power of a fair price to coffee producers. For me, for us, this is a mission that has no end—it will be our mission and goal until Metric is no more. And so for now, we source, we roast, we educate, we enjoy, and we celebrate the beauty and intricacies of the wonderful industry that we call coffee.