Midhurst woman's coffee company is a hit with major national firms

Her life-changing venture had strapped 41-year-old Martina Gruppo into a roller coaster ride.

She was on the steepest learning curve of her life at her Bepton Road home in Midhurst, but giving up was never an option.

Now the former office manager with no business experience finds herself a two-star winner in the Great Taste awards, supplying the National Trust and having caught the eye of Harvey Nichols.

In the next few weeks, Whittards of Chelsea will be featuring her coffee as their speciality of the month.

And she has kept her promise to the coffee farmers.

With the help of fundraising in a Hampshire school, she has taken resources to schoolchildren in remote communities of Nicaragua's Miraflor nature reserve.

Volunteers from Midhurst joined her in giving one school a complete facelift, she has paid for 16 adults and children to undertake a computer course, and through further fundraising new toilets, desks and teaching aids have been provided.

"I am proud of what I have done and I am living proof that anyone can do anything if they put their minds to it.

"I have really struggled '“ at first I had no idea what I was doing.

"There have been problems and setbacks. I thought it would take years before I could make a difference, but this shows how much power there is in passion."

The story of the Coffee Fairy Ltd began two years ago when Martina rented out her home, sold her car, left her job and found herself in third world conditions teaching in Miraflor.

She helped bring backpacking to the area and tourists fell in love with the coffee.

So the women began roasting, packing and selling it to bars and hostels and making enough money to upgrade their homes.

Then Martina realised they could do more. She decided to buy the coffee from the farmers and sell it in England.

She set about teaching children in England where it came from, the work that went into producing it and how they could help improve the lives of the farmers who grew it and their children.

She received her first shipment of coffee in May last year: "The initial euphoria died off fairly quickly as I realised I now had to sell it," she said.

She started at fairs around the southeast but the going was hard.

"By the time I got to the Christmas fairs I had cottoned on to the fact that people needed to be able to taste the coffee before they bought and I started giving samples.

"They loved it and finally the money started to come in, but it was all going back into the business."

In January this year Martina had to return to Miraflor and pay for more coffee. "I had no money and three days before I left the bank turned down my loan request.

"I had never felt so broken.So I maxed out on about three credit cards, I was absolutely desperate.

"Then I sat in Miraflor with about 14 farmers and told them I could not afford to ship the coffee out and I would have to come back after more fairs in England."

They gave her their whole-hearted support and Martina returned to another round of fairs.

Then out of the blue came her first break.

Whittards, with some 80 stores across the country, announced Martina's coffee was to be their speciality of the month.

"The cash injection kept me going through the summer," she said.

She attended the Harrogate trade fair organised by the Guild of Fine Foods and was given the chance to sell her coffee, Dragon's Den-style, to three of the country's biggest retailers.

"Immediately the National Trust placed an order for their Polesden Lacey farm shop, sold out in a month and doubled their order. I am also talking to Harvey Nichols."

A month later she heard she had won two stars in the Great Taste awards. With this great news she returned to Miraflor last month.

"This time the visit was completely different. I took my friend Jo Hunter from Midhurst and her two children, Maddie, 14, and Will, 17, who wanted to see what I had been talking about.

"They decided to hold a fundraising Pink Party in Midhurst and arrived in Nicaragua armed with 400.

"We bought paint, cleaned and redecorated one of the schools inside and out. We bought sports equipment and teaching aids for the kindergartens."

Now Martina wants to create scholarship funds for the children and install solar panels at the schools to power computers.

She wants to carry on funding computer courses so these students can go back to Miraflor and teach the children.

She is daring to believe coffee drinkers will do just what it says on her Coffee Fairy label: "Buy this coffee and help spread the magic."

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