National Coffee Day 2025: Choose Impact Over Discounts

By TechnoServe

National Coffee Day is celebrated in the United States each year on September 29. This year, learn how your daily cup of coffee can transform the lives and livelihoods of smallholder farmers around the world.

Coffee is one of the world’s most widely consumed beverages. More than just a morning pick-me-up, it serves as a way for people to connect. Each year on September 29, people across the United States celebrate National Coffee Day with their favorite coffee drink. But beyond the lattes, espresso shots, and cold brews lies a deeper story, one of hard work, resilience, and impact. This year, celebrate National Coffee Day 2025 by learning how your daily cup can transform lives and livelihoods. 

Why Do We Celebrate National Coffee Day?

National Coffee Day is a time to honor the beverage that fuels our mornings and brings people together. It also provides an opportunity to recognize the people who make coffee possible: smallholder farmers across Latin America, Africa, and Asia. While many use this day to get free coffee deals, TechnoServe believes it’s also a day to reflect on how coffee connects us across the globe, from small farms to bustling coffee shops. 

The History of National Coffee Day

Coffee has long held cultural and economic significance in the United States and around the world. National Coffee Day first emerged as a way for retailers and coffee enthusiasts to celebrate the beverage and its global roots. Since then, it’s become a tradition marked by discounts, giveaways, and special events. But it also serves as a powerful opportunity to spotlight the millions of smallholder farmers who grow coffee despite challenging conditions. 

Where Your Coffee Comes From

Most people don’t know that 60% of the world’s coffee is produced by smallholder farmers with less than five hectares of land. These farmers face challenges from rising temperatures, unpredictable rainfall, and limited market access. TechnoServe has spent decades working with coffee farmers to improve quality, increase incomes, and access markets. 

What Makes TechnoServe’s Coffee Work Different?

TechnoServe’s approach focuses on four key areas:

• Better farming – Increasing the use of best farming practices by providing farmers with field-based agronomy and business training using local trainers
• Better processing – improving the quality of farmers’ coffee at the processing level by supporting the establishment and management of processing businesses
• Better supply chains – Developing lasting market linkages and advancing sector growth by engaging with industry players to share learnings and align priorities
• Better environmental and social standards – Pioneering simple, cost-effective solutions for an environmentally sustainable and financially transparent coffee sector. 

Eight years ago, Fedila Hussein struggled to earn a living from coffee in Ethiopia. Her coffee trees were old and were not producing enough to cover the living expenses of her family of six. After participating in a TechnoServe program, Fedila learned essential techniques like stumping old, unproductive trees to improve her coffee yields. She took on that advice and has seen a 23-fold increase in her coffee production. Now others are coming to her for advice. 

“Nuredin, one of my husband’s friends who lives in a neighboring district, came to our house and was very much impressed by our changes,” Fedila said. “He asked us the secret behind our success. We told him it was the training we received from TechnoServe that changed our lives. Now prosperity is flowing into our life like a river, and he decided to stump his old coffee trees like ours.”

How Coffee Farming Changes Lives

When you support specialty coffee, you’re helping families send their children to school, invest in healthcare, improve their living conditions, and weather economic shocks. Coffee income can transform families and communities.

Meet Lubaba Mekonen, one of over 500,000 smallholder coffee farmers in East Africa who improved their coffee, incomes, and lives after working with TechnoServe—with impact lasting more than 10 years later. Since learning better coffee farming and business skills, Lubaba is one of the many TechnoServe program participants who have increased their income, scaled their business, and forged a pathway out of poverty, attracting the attention of leading brands like Nespresso, JDE Peet’s, and Stumptown along the way. 

“The day I started training in coffee agronomy practices, I felt the weight of my life’s concerns instantly lift off my shoulders,” Lubaba explained. 

The Real Story Behind Your Cup

Your morning latte is the result of years of labor, planning, and hope. From preparing the land to processing cherries, coffee farmers invest enormous effort into every harvest. Yet too often, they remain invisible in the global supply chain. TechnoServe’s work helps bring these farmers into the spotlight, ensuring they benefit from the coffee economy they help sustain.

Celebrate with Impact This National Coffee Day

This year, commit to brewing a better future.

Here’s how you can celebrate National Coffee Day 2025 with purpose:

• Choose high-quality coffee that compensates farmers fairly 
• Donate to organizations that help coffee farmers thrive 
• Share stories of impact to raise awareness of the effort that goes into your morning brew
  

Learn more about TechnoServe’s coffee work