ORANGE — Dean Cycon of Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee is widely recognized in the coffee industry for his company’s approach toward bringing a staple of morning routines to the table while keeping an eye out for the rights of the farmers who produce it.
Now, he’s taking his love of the famously caffeinated beverage to the big screen as the host of the Public Broadcasting Service’s new documentary film, “Coffee: The Drink That Changed America.”
At first, he said, he was surprised the producers wanted him for the job. “They called me up and asked if I wanted to do it, and I said ‘Why me?’”
He said the producers, British film company Pilot Productions, told him they felt he is a good personality for television and has a lot of credibility within the industry.
Cycon has built his business on fair treatment of the indigenous workers who produce the coffee he sells. As an indigenous rights lawyer, he helped found Coffee Kids, the first development organization dedicated to improving the lives of coffee workers. Dean’s Beans rose from that effort.
“After a number of years doing that, I realized that we weren’t really bringing change. We were just doing charitable work, but nothing would really change because we weren’t attacking the underlying cause of poverty,” he said.
He founded Dean’s Beans in 1993 to see if it was possible for a for-profit business to bring positive change to the industry.
Since then, he’s traveled the world to locate and vet coffee cooperatives that operate in a manner that’s in keeping with the company’s values, and he’s helped coffee workers learn to set up programs in their own communities.
In 2013, Cycon was the recipient of an Oslo Business for Peace Award, given to business owners who make a difference ethically, socially and economically in the world — a core tenet of his business model. He was the only American among 80 nominees.
Filming of the new documentary started at his beanery on R.W. Moore Avenue in Orange, then continued in Boston, where the crew shot sections about coffee’s impact on the American Revolution.
Cycon described how the British East India Co., one of the world’s first multinational corporations, was bailed out of financial trouble by the British government through the Tea Act, which led to the infamous Boston Tea Party.
After that, Americans took to coffee much more readily.
He said he found that sequence particularly interesting because the company and events like that had a lot to do with the rise of globalization, which he said led to the poor working conditions for farmers of coffee and other crops that his company is dedicated to fighting.
From Boston, he flew to Seattle to catch a glimpse of the new wave of artisanal coffee and the story of how specialty coffee was born, then to the Kona Coast of Hawaii.
“Unfortunately, I never stuck my feet in the water there even once,” he said. “It was just night and day filming.”
Cycon said he didn’t have much trouble stepping into the role, since he’s been giving talks and TV interviews regularly over the past 30 years in the coffee industry.
The difference this time, he said, is that it was heavily scripted, requiring him to memorize long passages very quickly, and since the producers were British, the language usage was different than what he was accustomed to as an American.
“I had to rewrite substantial portions of the script so that it sounded like it would if an American was speaking,” he said. “They allowed me to ad-lib and joke, so it’s a really personable documentary.”
This film isn’t the first time Cycon’s been on screen, either. He’s a lifelong lover of the ocean and sailing, and he studied modern day piracy in his former career as an environmental and indigenous rights lawyer. He put all that together when he applied and was accepted as an extra in Disney’s third “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie.
The hour-long documentary airs on PBS today at 3:30 p.m.
You can reach Tom Relihan at: trelihan@recorder.com
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