Where It Starts — 2009 - 2021
A Brazilian, far from Brazil
In 2009, Ransdorf left Brazil for New Zealand and stayed three years — and the place changed him for reasons that went beyond coffee. He fell for Māori culture, and for a way of seeing life it carries that stayed with him long after he came home. It was also there that he first watched a country treat coffee as a craft, not a commodity — and found out the coffee behind that whole culture had come from Brazil. He came back in 2012 carrying a question he didn’t have an answer for yet: why wasn’t Brazil doing this with its own coffee?
He didn’t act on it right away. In 2013, he committed to years of mission-driven work that carried him through Latin America before Africa became the center of it — two intense years there. He came home for good in 2021, in the middle of the pandemic, with the question and the answer arriving together: build something on purpose, the same way he’d spent the last nine years living. That became KIAORA.
Coffee Behind
The Mission
2021–2024
A small cloud
KIAORA ROASTERS was founded in 2021 as its own company — It grew steadily through 2022, roasting at a scale bigger than one man’s workshop.
By 2023, the plan had already changed. The decision was made to move to the United States — and that year became one long stretch of preparation: logistics, paperwork, figuring out how to stand fully on its own, this time without a guaranteed buyer next door.
In 2024, that guaranteed buyer disappeared — the rest of the companies were sold. KIAORA, already its own company, had to prove it could stand without one. What came next is its own story.
The Origin
More than one farm
Every KIAORA label starts on the ground, in Brazil — not with one farm, but a handful of them we’ve called partners since 2021: Fazenda Sonho Meu, run by João Pedro, in the Sul de Minas region; Fazenda Pântano, run by Fernando Naimeg, in the Cerrado Mineiro region; Sítio Forquilha do Rio, run by Fábio Protázio de Abreu and his father, Manoel Protásio, in the Caparaó mountains; and Sítio Capoeira, run by Bruna and Barbara Malta, in the Alta Mogiana region of São Paulo.
Different soils, different altitudes, different hands — but the same care, the same patience, the same refusal to rush what the land does in its own time. Coffee doesn’t start at a roaster. It starts here, on a hillside, inside someone’s family, long before it ever becomes a cup.
That’s the part of KIAORA that was never up for negotiation — not the fastest way to get coffee, but the truest one.
The Surfer coffee lover
Miguel Pupo
Miguel is the partner who believed in what KIAORA could become before there was much proof to point to.
Years riding with the Brazilian Storm on the elite World Surf League tour taught him to trust a read on something long before it’s confirmed — a swell, a line, a moment to commit. He saw that same potential in a small Brazilian roastery, and he stayed in.
His arrival changed more than the partnership. It’s the reason KIAORA rebuilt itself almost from zero — a full rebrand, a new identity, the decision to reinvent rather than just keep coasting on what already existed.
The Roaster
Felipe Guimarães
Believing in the new version of KIAORA was one thing. Building it was another — and that part fell to the third partner Felipe Guimarães. He was on the ground for nearly every detail of the renovation, and he went back to studying like it was day one: sourcing, process, roast profiles, the craft itself, so the new chapter would be built on more than good intentions.
He leads KIAORA’s operations in Brazil today — the counterpart to the work happening from the Florida side — and he’s also the founder of Celeiro Missões, a Brazilian organization focused on training and connecting people to mission-driven work.
The coffee guy
Fernando Ferreira
Ferreira and Ransdorf go back to 2021, working together at another company in the same group. When KIAORA rebuilt in 2024, he came — as the resident coffee specialist and the coffee shop partner, building it from scratch and developing nearly every drink on it, cup by cup, until each one earned its place.
What sets him apart isn’t just the talent — it’s that he shows up with it every single day, no matter the hour, in whatever part of the business needs him. He’s humble about it, disciplined about it, the kind of person who never makes you ask twice. The kind you end up bringing everywhere, until one day he’s not just part of the team anymore — he’s part of the family.
Off the clock, he surfs and trains jiu-jitsu — two disciplines that don’t reward shortcuts, which tells you a lot about how he works.
2024 · United States
A Base for the Future
Moving to the United States wasn’t the easy version of anything. By then, the sense of being drawn outward had returned — toward new challenges, new cultures, the same restlessness that first sent Ransdorf to New Zealand fifteen years earlier.
This is where it needs to be said plainly, not disguised: KIAORA is business as mission. Not a metaphor, not a marketing angle — the actual model. Coffee is Ransdorf’s passion, and it’s the vehicle. But it was never the point. It’s in service of something bigger than him, bigger than coffee: people matter, and that’s who he’s here for.
If KIAORA only existed to sell coffee, it wouldn’t exist at all.