Taferi Kela, Sidama, Ethiopia
Bette Buna
Bette Buna is an Ethiopian coffee producer working across Taferi Kela in Sidama and Megadu in Guji. Run by Hester and Dawit Syoum, it matters to Glass because it combines two things that do not always sit together easily in Ethiopia: strong coffee quality and a supply chain that remains visible enough to verify.
That visibility is the reason we started here. We had held back from buying Ethiopian coffee not because the cup quality was in doubt, but because the chain behind it often was. In many cases, regional blending, inconsistent records, and long movement between farm and export make it hard to know whether the coffee contracted is truly the coffee received. With Bette Buna, the path was clearer. The records held, the handoffs were easier to follow, and the practice matched the story.
The business itself grew out of a family farm and became a broader operating model. Hester and Dawit took over the farm in Sidama and built Bette Buna around direct production, processing, and export. Today, the work spans farms and mills in both Taferi Kela and Megadu. That matters because it shows they are not only managing one successful site; they are building a repeatable system across different coffee-growing areas.
In practice, Bette Buna is organised with more structure than most producer profiles tend to show. Their farms and mills are used as working sites for production, but also as demonstration spaces where farming methods, processing standards, and quality expectations can be taught and observed. Training, seedling distribution, agronomic support, and quality-linked premiums are part of how they work with neighbouring growers. The point is not simply to buy cherry and move volume. It is to improve how coffee is grown and handled across the communities around them.
That operating model is reflected in the coffee. Under Sisay Tadesse’s lead, picking windows, fermentation choices, drying conditions, and moisture targets are set, checked, and recorded. On more classic lots, that may mean careful cherry selection, slower drying on raised beds, and resting before milling to preserve sweetness and structure. On more experimental lots, it can mean extended natural anaerobic fermentation led by native yeasts rather than commercial inoculation. The common thread is control. Processing is used to clarify the coffee, not to obscure weak raw material.
This is why the cups from Bette Buna feel coherent even when the profiles differ. The Sidama lots we have seen can show lifted florals, citrus, and berry fruit, while the Guji coffees can lean more towards stone fruit, jasmine, bergamot, chocolate, or vanilla depending on the lot and process. What links them is definition: high sweetness, clear flavour separation, and the sense that the coffee has been handled with intention from harvest through drying and milling.
Traceability is equally important. For the lots we buy, Bette Buna maintains a documented chain through the key handoffs, and in some cases that trail goes as far back as picker-level records. That should not be overstated, but it is meaningful in Ethiopia, where identity can easily blur once coffee starts moving through the system. For Glass, this is not an administrative detail. It is part of the product. It lets us stand behind the coffee with more confidence and explain it to customers with more precision.
There is also a wider logic to how Bette Buna works. The business is not built only around farm output. It is built around capability: better farming practice, better process discipline, better market understanding, and stronger local earning potential. Their use of demonstration plots, training, and shared standards is meant to raise the level of production around them, not only on their own land. They also put effort into creating local work and widening access to opportunity in areas where formal agricultural roles can be limited. Those details matter because they help explain why their system is more resilient, and why the quality is more repeatable.
Our relationship with Bette Buna began cautiously. We did not want to buy Ethiopian coffee on reputation alone, and we were not looking for a producer who simply spoke the language of transparency well. What built trust here was the consistency between the cup, the records, and the way the operation was run. Hester’s visit to our shop in London added a direct, practical layer to that relationship, but it was the alignment between what we saw, what was documented, and what arrived that mattered most. That is why we started with them, and why we continue to pay attention to what they are building.
Bette Buna matters to Glass because it offers a credible model for sourcing in an origin where clarity is often difficult to maintain. The coffees are good enough to justify attention on taste alone. The system behind them is what makes them hold up under closer scrutiny. For us, that is the standard: coffee that is worth drinking, and clear enough to understand.