Neovida: Seeking Sustainability by Turning Coffee Cherry Waste into Superfood

The case focuses on key challenges facing Simon Roca, the founder of Neovida, a social impact start-up selling cascara-based superfood products. The overarching challenge facing Roca was how to bring about a growth trajectory that would provide the resources required to achieve the environmental and social aspirations of the company’s mission and vision. The company’s mission was to be a sustainable social enterprise providing people with a remarkable superfood product through upcycling coffee cherries, thereby reducing methane emissions and, at the same time, providing an additional revenue stream for small-scale coffee farmers in developing countries. Neovida’s vision was to be a global leader in the cascara industry. Through sustainable direct trade sourcing methods, Neovida would benefit customers and those directly involved in farming and cascara processing. Roca was beginning to realize that some compromises had to be made before Neovida could become the type of social enterprise that he envisioned. He imagined a future in which the Internet of Things (IOT), machine vision, and artificial intelligence (AI) would create transparency in his cascara supply chain and offer fair and rapid payment to small farmers.