It has now been more than ten years since Sara Nuru became the first “Person of Color” to win the fourth season of the casting show “Germany’s Next Topmodel”. That was the start of her career as a model, but it was never the end for Sara Nuru: As the daughter of Ethiopian immigrants, her heart has always beaten for her parents’ home country. She began volunteering and collecting donations, and a little later she and her sister Sali founded the social business nuruCoffee and the non-profit association nuruWomen, with which the two want to give people in Ethiopia new perspectives.
Sara Nuru is a model, writer and entrepreneur. With her two companies nuruCoffee and nuruWomen, which she founded in 2016 together with her sister Sali, she wants to open up new perspectives for smallholder farmers in particular and women in general.
The smell of coffee had accompanied the two sisters since childhood: every Wednesday it would have smelled of coffee beans in their home. According to Ethiopian tradition, her mother roasted the green beans over the fire before grinding them before the coffee was infused in a clay jug and served. The beans for her start-up are roasted using a similar process – in a roastery in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district. The coffee packages will be sold online and, from autumn 2023, in the Poggenpohl Studios Poggenpohl dealers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
“I don’t like this to-go mentality and would therefore offer a lot of books and magazines from all over the world in my dream café.”
The two sisters Sara and Sali see their project as a so-called social business: part of the money they earn from the sale of the coffee is intended to benefit the women in the countries of origin of the coffee. “That’s why we are all the more pleased that Poggenpohl is supporting us with the sale of our coffee so that we can continue to support women’s projects in Ethiopia with
nuruCoffee
,” says Sara Nuru. Around 50 percent of the profits, but at least one euro per kilo of coffee sold, go to the nuruWomen association. This association supports women who do not have access to the coffee trade by granting microcredits to help them build up an independent existence.
EDITOR’S PICK:
Sara Nuru thinks open kitchens are great and also very communicative. She would love to have a kitchen (from Poggenpohl?) with a large kitchen island where you can cook, sit and talk to friends and family. Her absolute dream kitchen, for example, is in the apartment of the artist Michelle Elie – be sure to check it out on Instagram !
