City Girl Coffee Co.’s roasting roots and values-based mission is caffeinating its growth.

Alyza Bohbot founded City Girl Coffee Co. in November 2015. The brand sells coffee that it roasts in Minneapolis and sources primarily from women-owned and managed coffee farms and co-operatives from around the globe. City Girl also donates a portion of each sale to organizations that help women who work in the coffee industry, such as the Café Feminino Foundation and the Internal Women’s Coffee Alliance.

Alyza Bohbot, founder

While the retailer sells online at citygirlcoffee.com, the main thrust of its business is selling its coffee in grocery stores. City Girl Coffee is in more than 500 stores.

City Girl Coffee is a brand born out of Alakef Coffee Roasters, Bohbot’s parents’ business. Alakef also is Minnesota-based, which Nessim and Deborah Bohbot launched in the 1990s. Alakef is a fair-trade coffee roaster that uses organic, specialty-grade Arabica beans and produces small batches of coffee. At the time, these qualities were a differentiator for Alakef in the market, says Alyza Bohbot, who took over the family business in 2015.

“As time went on, the coffee market got more saturated,” Bohbot says. “Our differentiators really weren’t anymore. Everyone was doing those things.”

Bohbot attended a coffee conference where she learned about the coffee farming industry, including the significant share of women who depend on coffee production for their livelihood. She decided that, in addition to running Alakef, she would launch another brand with a social mission.

“I wanted to create something that was different and felt representative of a mission that I felt passion about and representative of me, and something that I created from scratch,” Bohbot says.

“I am honoring their company and building something that felt uniquely mine,” she adds.

City Girl Coffee’s target shopper is a consumer 40 and younger, Bohbot says. On its home page, the retailer touts that its coffee is from women-managed farms and in its “about” section, City Girl Coffee details the retailer’s mission, and shoppers can read about who the women coffee growers are.

“Millennials in general tend to purchase brands or products based on if they identify with a large piece of the mission,” Bohbot says.

Bohbot runs the two companies together and has about 15 employees that work on both brands. Together, the coffee companies generate around $2.5 million in total sales, which is largely wholesale to independent coffee shops, grocery stores, hotels, universities and hospitals. Roughly 10-15% of the brand’s sales are online via its two e-commerce sites.

While e-commerce isn’t a huge part of the business, it has helped City Girl reach new consumers, Bohbot says. “Online is a big added value of allowing us to reach a larger audience at a quicker pace,” she says.

Plus, online sales have been “consistently increasing” for the past five years, and as a category has the potential to generate more, she says.

Next, City Girl Coffee is trying to create more brand awareness on social media, such as on Instagram and Facebook. The retailer hired a firm to manage its campaigns and to work on ensuring that its campaigns not only drive traffic but also translate into sales. Bohbot also is working to expand into more retail chains, such as Target Corp. (No. 20 in the Internet Retailer 2017 Top 1000).