By Melissa Welsh
“I don’t drink coffee.”
The room is silent in slight apprehension. This shocking statement coming from the man who just announced the beginning of a new organic coffee company. It’s only a moment later when Rohan Marley, son of late reggae music icon and revolutionist Bob Marley, adds with a slow smirk, “I drink Marley coffee.”
He sits relaxed, slightly slumped in his chair in the dressing room of the small photography studio. His long-time friend and Chief Executive Officer for Marley Coffee Shane Whittle beside him. With that contagious smile and the occasional hair toss of dreads, the father-son resemblance is striking. He speaks slowly in that all-too familiar Jamaican accent, that makes any listener add a mental ‘ya man’ in addition to an attentive head nod.
Rohan Marley is no stranger to the word celebrity. He comes from a family whose name is still internationally linked to hit music with brothers Ziggy, Stephen, Damian, Ky-Mani and Julian all in the recording business. But now Rohan is taking the Marley name back to its roots, way back to Jamaica, a legend full-circle.
This past May, Rohan along with partner Whittle announced the launch of Marley Coffee, a gourmet organic coffee consisting of five different blends with beans sourced internationally from Central and South America, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Ethiopia. The brand stays true to the ITAL and rastifarianism movement that the Marley offspring grew up with, aligning itself with the philosophy of all that is pure, true and vital.
A past football player for the Ottawa Rough Riders, and owner of a clothing line Tuff Gong Clothing, Rohan can relate to the label sportsman or entrepreneur. But a coffee connoisseur?
“I didn’t drink coffee,” said Rohan, dressed in jeans and a white and navy checkered button-up shirt.
“But what I do know about coffee is that it is the second most sought after commodity outside of oil. So in my mind I’m like, ‘wait a minute, I just discovered black gold.’”
In 1999, Rohan bought a piece of farmland in Chepstowe, Portland Jamaica – fifty-two acres that sit atop the Jamaican Blue Mountains, a region that is prized as the best in the world to grow coffee. In the U.S. a pound of blue mountain coffee beans sells for close to $50 per pound, in Canada the price doubles to $100.
In 2006, Rohan and Whittle’s idea for a coffee company originated.
“We were on our first plane ride out there a week later,” Whittle said.
Currently, Marley Coffee’s five blends are comprised solely from beans that they have sourced from some of the finest coffee regions in the world. Blends that Rohan and Whittle boast have chocolaty, fruity notes, all with a smooth finish.
The names for each blend were inspired by songs from the late Bob Marley.
As Rohan goes through the list he stops to sing just one word, ‘Jammin’ after mentioning the brand’s strongest dark roast blend Jammin Java.
“And then from Jammin, my father wrote this song in the early ’60s because of the violence in the ghetto. So he told the ghetto people ‘you know listen man, simmer down’ so since its decaf you know it keeps you cool,” Rohan said smiling.
“We call that one simmer down.”
The brand’s five blends also include one purely comprised from Ethiopian beans, a tribute to the birthplace of coffee Rohan says.
When Marley Coffee first introduced its coffee venture, the Jamaican newspaper the Gleaner was quick to point fingers, stating that Marley Coffee was trying to sell their farm’s coffee beans as blue mountain coffee without certification, while Marley Coffee was only stating that they hope to sell their blue mountain coffee from their private reserve in the future.
They are currently in the process of getting their Jamaican Coffee Industry Board (CIB) license approvals in order to add their own organic blue mountain coffee beans to the list.
“Blue mountain is one of the most sought after coffees in the world obviously, and the Coffee Industry Board of Jamaica (CIB) hold a very tight grip on the control of that coffee, because it is their second biggest export of the country next to sugarcane,” Whittle said.
“We’ve applied for our licensing and its taking a little longer but we are working with them now hand-in-hand.”
The Marley Coffee company will be the first organic blue mountain coffee, once volumes are high enough to sell after getting certification.
After buying the land, Rohan was adamant that it be made over to become organic, a process that took just over five years to completely eradicate any existing chemicals. No herbicides or pesticides have been used since. The focus is to create a sustainable farm, one that maximizes what already exists on the property.
Today, the farm employs eight regular farmers, with the number increasing to 15 during harvest time in August to October/November. Rohan’s face lights up when talking about two specific farmers who oversee the land.
When Rohan first bought the land, the previous owners told him not to hire a man whose name was Renort Walters aka Painta, they called him a thief.
“I said, ‘Painta why are they calling you a thief?’
“He said ‘mister Marley, when we were hungry we would take a coconut from the tree.’
“I said, ‘you see every coconut tree on my land, every mango tree, every banana tree, you see the banana there, you take them and eat them, don’t let them waste because if the food waste, then you have a problem with me.’”
Charles Willis, aka Mr. Willis, is also among the eight farmers on the Marley Coffee property, working the land for 10 years. Mr. Willis is 82 years old.
“He’s not young, but no other man is as strong as Mr. Willis,” Rohan said. “The man is a lion.”
Marley Coffee doubled the salary for their farmers from $6,000 per year to now $12,000 per year. Mr. Willis can now afford to send his six children to school.
Chepstowe, Portland Jamaica is an area where rural poverty is apparent. Shanty shacks house families, and often the lack of running water or adequate food are common problems.
“We came to uplift the community, not come to take away but to build and build,” Rohan said.
Rohan and Whittle are both committed to starting a foundation in the future to help out the youth in these rural poverty-stricken communities by means of a soccer academy.
“My father was a soccer fanatic and I think he left some of that in me,” Rohan said.
But being an avid soccer player isn’t the only correlation of the father-son relationship. Bob Marley grew up in Nine Mile, in St. Ann Jamaica, and was from a family of farmers. Returning to the farmland is something he always wanted to do, but a young death at the age of 36 years old, robbed him of the chance.
Rohan recounts a story his grandmother told him about his father as a child.
“He would have to go way out in nine mile you know and dig yam [Cassava]. My father would dig the yam and then put the yam on his back and walk the yam back so they can eat you know,” Rohan said.
It was his family’s history of farming that first got him inspired to come back to the earth and fulfill his father’s dream.
“You know cause I don’t sing you know, I try to at times alone (chuckles) but I can dance a little.”
But getting into the coffee business has proved trying for both Rohan and Whittle.
While some of the initial struggles are over including researching the market, coming up with their own specific coffee recipes, and getting the various certifications, the struggle now lies with meeting demand and staying competitive.
“I think the challenge of the business is that we are already a global brand, we already have awareness worldwide. Now how do we cope with that in a way that we are still growing our business and not getting to big too fast,” Whittle said.
“Our farm is a boutique farm in the coffee world, other farms may be a thousand or ten thousand acres. You know, countries produce coffee.”
Rohan and Whittle have also received flack for marrying the name Marley to the brand. A choice that may lead some to think their coffee company is just another exploitation of a famous name. But given the ten years it has taken this far to get their beans on shelves, a true observer would conclude that Marley Coffee is not just a get rich quick endeavor.
“My name is on there for a reason, because we stand behind it,” Rohan said. “My name is Rohan Marley. Why reinvent the wheel?”
Marley Coffee is currently sold throughout western Canada at 80 different locations, including stores like London Drugs or IGM. To find out more information on the company or to buy online visit www.marleycoffee.com
