If you attended Taste of GW at Colonials Weekend 2017, you had the pleasure of meeting Laura Cruz, ESIA BA ’92. From a booth to the left of the entrance she served farm-to-table coffee and honey from her family farm in El Salvador.
The coffee is good. Really good.
If you were lucky, you got to hear the story of how her products made their way to Foggy Bottom—a story which is central to the beans’ flavor and Cruz’s success.
“’Who are you? What is the name of your farm? How did you harvest these beans?’ That’s the reason why it tastes so delicious. So you tell the story. There’s the story that doesn’t die, isn’t forgotten, doesn’t get buried in the ground. People need to know that.”
Part of the story is Cruz herself. Laura Cruz came to GW because of its acclaimed international affairs program. The war in El Salvador was coming to an end, and Cruz recalls the interest of students and professors in the peace accord process.
“I majored in International Affairs because of all the things going on in the world,” says Cruz. “Some of my best years were the years I spent at GW because I finally met people I could talk to and who were interested in things I could talk about.”
Her father had and continues to have an influence.
“He was working at the embassy in Washington, D.C.,” she explains. “I always wanted to pursue that field, somehow. Diplomacy, international relations, something related to public policy at the international level.”
Shortly thereafter, her father retired and started Tierra Bendita, a farm which now produces and exports small batches of specialty coffee, cacao, and honey.
While traveling for the International Trademark Association in New York, Cruz noticed an absence of origin labels from countries like her native El Salvador.
“This is not new,” says Cruz, “but what has changed is that consumers nowadays want to know about the journey the products travel and, most importantly, the impact in our societies and on the environment. Little by little, one idea led to another and, in the end, I thought it is possible—not easy, but possible—to bring the products directly from the farm.”
In 2014 Cruz moved back to El Salvador intent on producing cacao and reforesting the land. In 2015 Cruz, with the help of Catholic Relief Services, started planting, grafting, and duplicating cacao trees. It takes at least three years to harvest cacao, so while she is starting to see fruits of the first harvest she remains focused on grafting trees.
“Unlike coffee, cacao is an ancestral crop going back to pre-Columbian times,” says Cruz. “The idea of re-creating a forest while at the same time being able to recover an almost lost crop was truly appealing.”
Cruz convinced her father to lend her an acre of land and got to work.
“I’m connecting specialty farm food products: cacao, coffee, honey, tea to tell a story—a good story—that people can relate to. Everybody drinks coffee in the morning. Everybody loves chocolate,” she laughs. “So when people start to hear these stories, I think they look at origins very differently.”
Cruz recently relocated to Alexandria, Virginia, and came to campus for Colonials Weekend in 2016 where she attended many events, including Taste of GW. That visit inspired her to participate the following year.
“When you walk through these sessions and you see what’s going on, you say, ‘How can I get myself there?’” says Cruz. And she’s already looking forward to bringing her first crop of cacao to Colonials Weekend 2018.
If you can’t wait that long, you can buy Tierra Bendita coffee at Streets Market & Café and Glen’s Garden Market in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., and Cruz is always looking to expand. “Ideally,” she says, “I would like to introduce the products to more grocery gourmet stores.”
She’s also looking to partner more closely with GW.
Cruz would like to organize a study abroad program for GW students to learn about farming, coffee, and cacao in El Salvador. “I personally see there is room for many other activities we can work through the university which may have experts and researchers interested in running a study on sustainable farming projects in tropical forests,” she says.
Her return to campus for Colonials Weekend two years ago opened her eyes to the perks of being an alumna of the George Washington University.
“I can see there’s an opportunity to do something, even if you’re not a student anymore,” explains Cruz. “I felt like I was missing out all these years, but I was very busy. I was in New York City and traveling at least one week a month for eight years. Now that I’m back, I can see there is room for alumni to work with the university. I see there are projects out there that perhaps I can collaborate with. So why not?”
Save the dates: Colonials Weekend 2018 is October 26-28. Meet Laura and sample her coffee, chocolate, and honey at the Taste of GW on Saturday, October 27.
