On reducing reoffending through coffee with Ted Rosner
Redemption Roasters are on a mission to reduce reoffending rates through coffee. They believe exceptional coffee can come from people and places you wouldn’t expect; at their roastery in HMP The Mount, they train offenders in coffee industry skills with the aim of reducing reoffending in the UK (people leaving prison are 50% more likely to reoffend if they leave without skills or a job). Upon release, they help our graduates find work in our own coffee shops, or within our network. As a social enterprise, RR think differently to other specialty coffee companies; they strive for profit in order to achieve our purpose. Every member of the Redemption Roasters team has a role to play in achieving that purpose; to challenge perceptions and change lives through Speciality coffee.
To Ted Rosner and Max Dubiel, coffee means opportunity. They began building a successful sourcing and roasting business after meeting at St Andrew’s University, Scotland, and saw a gap in the market for a coffee company that does things simply and fairly.
This begins with the people they buy their beans from and ends with a carbon-neutral roasting process. Along the way, they have uncovered a way to give new skills to a group often left behind in society. A chance meeting with a prison executive at a coffee festival led them to offer barista training classes in Aylesbury Prison, England. This evolved to creating eight in-custody barista academies and five penitentiary-based roasting facilities. Redemption Roasters is now six years old and is being rolled out in prisons up and down the UK.
WHEN: Tuesday 29 November
5.30-6 PM drinks
6.00pm-6.50 PM talk
WHERE: King's College, University of Cambridge
TICKETS: Book your ticket here.