We're a group of Harvard students who met through the University's Innovation Lab. We would like to import and market Yemen's impressive Mokha coffee, thus encouraging the country's development and stability,

Have you heard of Mokha? It's not only a Starbucks drink but the name of the port, Al Mokha, from which Yemen exported coffee 500 years ago. They were the first place in the world to cultivate and trade beans. Back in the day, Mokha was associated with Yemeni coffee, which is known for chocolate undertones. Times change, Mokha loses the Yemen connection but not that of chocolate. Thus, you have the misleading Starbucks beverage of today.

This is where we need you! We have an idea, namely reclaim Mokha for the authentic product. But doing so is a large marketing challenge. At the moment, we are getting our coffee on the shelves of Whole Foods, a premium grocery store in the US. This will be our first store, and if we are successful at this, we will be ready to scale bigger.

For this grocery story process, we are on track doing the paperwork. But we need funding to hone our marketing and create a product design that we can use for a national product. We have fortunately found a team of three designers from the Harvard School of Design who are doing this work for low cost. But once they are done, we need to custom print small runs of coffee bags and marketing material. This is where your funding would come in. Additionally, we will do tastings at Whole Foods to develop our brand and customers who shop at this Whole Foods Market River location. This process will be at a loss but part of building momentum.

Tying into our larger goals, this first grocery store is the initial step to growing first regionally in Boston and then to 100 and then 1000 stores across the country. Then we will have a national product and be on track to see Yemen's coffee sector double in size in ten years. Accomplishing this means job opportunities supporting 650,000 people in Yemen.