For coffee snobs
who love the planet
We are brothers and first cousins - Daniel, Oliver and Lulu - who come from a tight-knit family of French Mauritian descent. We are self-confessed coffee snobs who, having all grown up on farms, also share a very deep love for Nature.
Believing in business as a force of good, we wanted to be part of the shift that takes society and us into the future: A better, kinder future for people and for the planet. This is the reason we started 4WKS.
Every year, over 60 billion pods are consumed globally. The overwhelming majority end up in landfill, where they will remain for 450-500 years.
We recognised the brilliance of Nespresso® and how it meets the need for convenience: to enjoy an espresso anywhere, anytime and at the push of a button — at home, on holiday, in the office. But single-use plastic and aluminium pods are wasteful, unsustainable, and killing the only home we have.
With millions of Nespresso® machines in use around the world, we wanted to use them for good — and to shift coffee, habits + culture, 4WKS at a time.
We launched 4WKS with the ambition to challenge two things: 1) waste and 2) the coffee inside pods (otherwise known as capsules). We asked ourselves: Why isn’t the coffee local, artisanal and freshly-roasted? Why is it so often considered second-rate, and is mostly imported, mass-produced, with an expiry date of up to 2 years? And, if we're going to have pod coffee, why can't we enjoy our favourite local roasters at the push of a button?
So we approached the real experts: incredible local roasters (and our favourites) and invited them to be a part of our 4WKS Collective — bringing them together to do better and to make great coffee available in a way that's kind, fuss-free + fresh.
The result? SA's best coffees — freshly-roasted, ground and packed every WK — in a pod that's better for the planet and for the people!
In addition to celebrating SA's thriving coffee scene, our main mission at 4WKS is to use something as small as a pod and as habitual as your morning coffee to draw attention to what we use and where/how we throw things away. In this way, we can not only become more conscious of our habits but also start new ones (like composting) to do our bit to shift the planet, 4WKS at a time.
With a core business pillar of having the least possible impact on the planet while having the greatest possible impact on people, we try our level-best to thread real sustainability through every element of our business: from our zero-waste, refillable and compostable packaging, to setting up various Compost Collection Points across the country, and ensuring we walk the talk by properly managing (and reducing) all waste in our company.
Perfectly imperfect and ever-evolving, it is only through the collaboration with and support of our incredible roaster partners as well as planet-loving community of coffee snobs that we can achieve our mission, and we thank each and every one of you for being on this delicious, green ride with us.