Black Kite Coffee

This article was written using content taken from Black Kite Coffee blog posts written by Varsha and Chris.

Black Kite Coffee is a social enterprise in Pokhara, Nepal, which encompasses a coffee house, roastery and shop. After experimenting with a tiny home roaster for a couple of years and getting feedback from friends and customers within the local community, a grant from Passion Ventures allowed founder Varsha to professionalise and expand. She is now supported in the business by her husband, a group of Nepali women and Chris who is serving with SIM.

The core values at the heart of the business are quality coffee, faith, female empowerment and opportunity, openness and compassion. It’s a great example of a kingdom business – serving the local community with the support of international resources and prayer.

Black Kite Coffee cafe and roastery opened in November 2024.

Here are some insights from Chris and founder Varsha:

Roasting coffee brings coffee enthusiasts together

‘As the gas burner on full-blast heats the revolving coffee drum, everyone listens attentively for the sign of a critical stage in coffee roasting: first crack! The green beans first dry, then yellow and then start to brown. Eventually, the internal heat is sufficient to cause the bean to crack open, with a popcorn-like crack! From that point on, the skill of the roaster helps develop the degree of roast: light to dark.’

Roasting coffee is at the heart of our business. Coffee brings people from different backgrounds and life experiences together. People who may not have met otherwise. Our regular customers include local office workers, shopkeepers from our neighbourhood, and health care workers from the local hospital. Many of these are Christian doctors, medical staff and teachers who come from all over the world to work here. One of the joys of starting a small family business in a busy part of Pokhara city, is the ebb and flow of friends, passers-by, neighbours and contacts that frequent our micro-cafe and coffee roastery.

Varsha’s vision - Empowering vulnerable women

One of the core goals of Black Kite Coffee is to empower women in Nepal. Women in Nepal can be particularly vulnerable due to a patriarchal society and discrimination against ethnic groups and different castes. Varsha’s vision for Black Kite Coffee started in 2022 when she decided to sell coffee beans from a small plantation at a rural Christian school, in order to raise money for local families that could not afford school fees.

Varsha is determined to provide access to education for poorer families in the Syangja district and to empower women in difficult circumstances.

Now in addition to roasting excellent Nepali coffee, the business vision includes training marginalised Nepali women and living out our faith.

Challenges and Hope

Politically things feel unstable in Nepal and we wonder if the café will survive through all of the changes but we have a lot of hope for the future of Nepal.

The coffee business is growing and we are using our new round of funding from Passion Ventures to buy coffee parchment processing and grading machines and set up a processing space. We will be setting this up in Kathmandu in the spring, giving another female family member the opportunity to become part of the Black Kite enterprise. The move should also substantially reduce our costs as ‘parchment’ coffee is considerably cheaper than fully processed green beans. The worldwide price of coffee, continues to present many challenges. However, we are hopeful as we have lots of interest from other cafes and hotels in forming partnerships with us.

We have been working with an international Nepali/ Australian coffee expert to rate our coffee and improve our service. It turns out that we are roasting international-grade ‘speciality’ coffee, on a par with other, more famous, countries of origin e.g. Columbia.

We have continued to market our brand and last year two international female students from Australia and Norway spent a day helping us develop our social media content. You can check out our latest content on Instagram @blackkitecoffeenepal.

We have continued to develop relationships with new customers, developed our own business ideas (baked goods following a month’s baking course) and trained two Nepali women, one of whom was from a very difficult background. In February 2026 we will be employing one female barista to help manage the cafe - one of the women that we helped train in 2025.

Our hope is that, in being part of the Black Kite community, our customers will have experienced something of the kingdom, whether it be a kind word or interaction, or a longer conversation with someone for whom we have given time and interest.

“For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” Matthew 18:20.