Catracha Coffee Company and Uplifting Santa Elena Through Specialty Coffee

Mayra Orellana-Powell was born and raised in the remote community of Santa Elena in Honduras. Marcala, the closest large city, is about an hour’s drive away and is known for producing specialty coffee. In Santa Elena, coffee is a cash crop, and years ago most farmers simply picked their cherries and sold them to middlemen, who then sold them to larger companies in Marcala to create regional lots. In general, Santa Elena farmers had little opportunity for growth in coffee; every year, the process was the same: harvest cherries, sell them unprocessed at whatever low price buyers would pay, and find another source of income to help make ends meet.

Mayra and Lowell with with Catracha coffees being prepared for export in 2017.

While living in the US, Mayra saw the opportunities that specialty coffee could provide to the people of her hometown. Inspired by her grandmother Adelina–a coffee grower, teacher, and community leader–Mayra founded Catracha Coffee Company in 2010 to help farmers in Santa Elena access the specialty coffee market. Together with her husband, Lowell, their small operation of exporting traceable, specialty microlots from 13 smallholder producers has grown into a much larger operation that, in 2024, exported 500 bags (that’s two shipping containers!) from 56 coffee producers in Santa Elena. In 2017, they decided to live in Santa Elena full-time to keep growing the company and contribute to the Santa Elena community.

Picking ripe coffee cherries at Maria Adela's farm.

Every Catracha farmer manages their own farm and processes coffee in their own wet mill. They can attend monthly training sessions offered by Catracha, where they learn how to properly prune trees, improve their soil composition, and increase crop production through organic inputs like bokashi compost and homemade biofertilizers. Rather than invest in organic certifications (which are cost-prohibitive for the company's size), Catracha focuses more on relationships with roasters and coffee buyers to provide meaningful context and directs funds back into the community. 

Sorting out unripe and defective cherries with Adela during our visit in 2019. From left to right: Adela, Adela’s cousin, Mayra, Lowell, and Kai, our Head Roaster.

Catracha uses a profit-sharing model in which it pays coffee producers twice: first when farmers deliver their coffee to Catracha in parchment, and second when the coffee has been sold to roasters, about 6 months later. With the sale of green coffee, Catracha can also collect funds for Catracha Community, a non-profit Mayra and Lowell established to provide the Santa Elena community with long-term opportunities without taking resources from a farmer’s bottom line. Catracha community projects include an annual youth conference, public art workshops, seed trading and gardening, and handmade crafts that folks can choose to sell. 

Placing sorted red cherries into Adela’s mechanical coffee pulper.

When we started working with Catracha Coffee in 2016, we fell in love with Maria Adela’s coffee and have been buying it ever since. Under Catracha’s guidance, Adela honed her farm management skills and improved her wet mill. Over the years, she’s resurfaced the fermentation tank, added a washing channel to help lower the risk of coffee damage, resurfaced her drying patio, built raised drying beds, and purchased a motor to run her coffee depulper. In recent years, she’s put more effort into tending to her trees and using natural fungicide to protect her plants from leaf rust. Her farm now serves as a model farm for others looking to improve their farms. Each improvement Adela has made in her coffee operations has steadily increased her production. Her first export in 2016 was four bags, and since 2021, it has grown to over 10 bags.

Adela rotating coffees inside her parabolic coffee dryer.

In 2025, the incredibly volatile coffee market made it difficult for Catracha Coffee to compete with commodity market prices, which were significantly higher than in previous years. Catracha has paid coffee producers higher prices since the beginning, and it works hard to keep its business model equitable and sustainable. They struggled to compete with other buyers that generally pay less and only increase payments when they need to fill their quota. With financial risk too high and knowing that farmers could make their margins by selling their cherries to middlemen, Catracha decided not to purchase any coffee for 2025–including Adela’s coffee. 

Portrait of Maria Adela by Nahún Rodríguez

We’re delighted that Catracha was able to resume operations this year, and even more excited to share Adela’s 2026 harvest. This year, her coffee shows more acidity while retaining a sweet, soothing body. We taste plum, green grape, and pecan praline. Add a splash of cream to accentuate the pecan praline notes. When brewed on a coarser grind, Adela’s coffee becomes lighter and floral, reminding us of white tea and hibiscus. Adela’s coffee is a house favorite, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we do!