62 local female-made goods, stores to consider for holiday shopping

Blake Boyd and Margaret Gibbs, the business partners and women behind Incite Coffee, are relative newcomers to the industry. But it didn’t take them long to realize how infrequently women are appropriately honored in the male-dominated field of coffee.

Founded in 2017 at the height of the #metoo movement, Boyd and Gibbs wanted to embrace high ethical standards in coffee while lifting up the women behind it. 

“We wanted to draw attention to the genuine inequality in the coffee business,” Boyd said. “Particularly in farms in places where a lot of women aren’t allowed to own land, yet are doing the majority of the work and not getting paid for it.”

More:The Times Bar at S&W reopens after 260 days, serving craft coffee, no booze

To try to reverse that narrative, the coffee company works to keep women front and center. Incite’s owners achieve that visually on coffee packaging with Asheville artist Nicolette Yates‘ portraits of women behind the beans. You might see the face of Alba Rosa, whose shade-grown Honduran coffee has hints of hibiscus.

One of the women behind the coffee beans featured in Incite Coffee.

Or you might see the face of Ibu Rahmah, a social justice warrior who founded the Ketiara Cooperative in North Sumatra, Indonesia. Rahmah’s work to improve health care, education and gender equality throughout the Gayonese community, is immortalized on the label of Ibu’s North Sumatran coffee.

“Women are the cornerstone of taking care of the community as a whole,” Boyd said.