Yirgacheffe Ethiopia is notable for small family farms, growing coffee in small garden plots or farms averaging less than 3 hectares (about 7 acres). Coffee washing stations and natural coffee processing sites like Aricha provide a critical service to these farmers, allowing them to sell their cherries locally and access to quality measures like a local agronomist. Mebrahtu Aynalem, who founded Aricha along with Abyote Ageze and local farmers, describes it best:

Before the harvest, we train them [the farmers] and explain the standards of cherry collection for specialty coffee and the premiums that come with it. We have a quality supervisor at the washing stations looking into who is bringing good quality and who isn’t.

This is no small undertaking. Aricha has over 220 raised African beds to manage coffee drying from more than 1500 growers who sell their coffee to the enterprise.

Mebrahtu provides not just technical expertise and the means to dry and process the coffee, but also export services. This vertical integration gives goodboybob a fully traceable coffee from Ethiopia, and farmers a means of direct export without their coffee being sold anonymously through the Ethiopian Coffee Exchange (ECX). Mebrahtu explains, "If I were to get a good coffee at the ECX I wouldn't necessarily be able to do it again in the future. There is no transparency. For consistency, I must have an agreement directly with the washing station.”

• Farm: A collaboration of 1,500 neighboring farmers of Aricha Washing Station
• Region: SNNPR District, Gedeo Zone, Yirgacheffe Woreda, Aricha Kebele
• Variety: Heirloom
• Processing: Sun Dried Natural (Fruit Dried)
• Altitude: 1,950 to 2,150 meters