Marlene Drack visits the Nussbaumer School in Guatemala, built in 2019

For over a year now, the finest highland Arabica varieties from Nussbaumer in the traditional cups of the Konditorei ZaunerUsing a gentle drum roasting process, the beans are roasted and refined by hand by Marlene Drack, Austria's youngest coffee roaster, in the heart of the Salzkammergut.

In 2019, the traditional Gmunden family business also built a school in Guatemala, thereby contributing to the development of the region from which the finest Nussbaumer blends originate.

Visit to the "Nussbaumer School" in Guatemala

The “Nussbaumer School” was completely built in the summer of 2019 in the small mountain village of Lampocoy in Guatemala by the Nussbaumer company financed and built by local coffee farmers and parents of the children who now attend the school.

The Guatemalan government continues to give education and health a low priority. The Ministry of Education does provide computers and learning programs, trains teachers and pays them, but only if school buildings are available. Unfortunately, the government does not take care of building them.

So some time ago, the team around Marlene Drack decided to take care of the construction of a school in Lampocoy, which was so urgently needed for the children in the region.
Now Marlene had the opportunity to see the school for the first time. The school also has a small kitchen where meals are cooked for 280 schoolchildren every day. For many children in Guatemala, the school often offers the only hot meal of the day.

Many components influence the quality in the cup

For Marlene Drack, in addition to the highest quality of the beans, their origin, the people behind them and their fate are also important. At the end of February, the young roaster therefore set off on a trip to the countries of origin, Guatemala and Costa Rica. The highlands of Central America have ideal geographical and climatic conditions for growing first-class coffee.

When she visited various coffee farms, which are also green coffee suppliers to the Gmunden company, she was able to gain interesting insights into their daily work and the difficulties that the farmers have to contend with. Strongly fluctuating coffee prices on the world market, pests and bad weather presented the coffee farmers with major challenges during this year's harvest. Nevertheless, they were able to achieve first-class quality again this year and are already confident about the next harvest.

Not only does Marlene Drack benefit from trips to the origins such as these as a roaster, who can thus ensure the quality of her products and at the same time deepen her knowledge of coffee cultivation and processing, but also the producers, who, through personal contact, get an impression of the appreciation that their product is given in Europe.

The coffee farmers were particularly pleased with the Zaunerstollen that Marlene had brought with her.

The aromatic Nussbaumer coffee is available as an exclusive Zauner house blend for home use: To the shop