Bob Marley’s Son and His Coffee Company

February 8, 2014February 8, 2014 Alan Cross 0 Comments

Rohan Marley, one of Bob’s many children, has had an interesting life. After a successful college football career at the University of Miami, he moved on to the Ottawa Rough Riders.

In 2009, he co-founded a Marley Coffee, a coffee plantation–all-organic, of course–up in Jamaica’s Blue Mountains. If you’ve ever had Blue Mountain coffee, you’ll know that it’s worth the expense.

The company went public in 2011 under the name Jammin’ Java Corp. Rohan is also behind the House of Marley headphones.

But back to the coffee plantation. Business Insider recently profiled Rohan’s coffee empire.

The son of legendary late musician Bob Marley started a coffee company in 2009 with only 52 acres of farmland in Jamaica and a stern warning to his farmers against using pesticides.”I said to them, ‘If you use any chemicals on this property, I will come and cut every tree down and you won’t have a farm,'” Rohan Marley, the founder and chairman of Marley Coffee, told Business Insider in an interview.Today, Marley Coffee is sold in thousands of stores worldwide. In North America, its biggest market, more than 8,800 stores will sell Marley Coffee this year, up from 300 stores a year ago, according to CEO Brent Toevs.

The company is still small, however, with revenue of just $4.6 million in the nine months ending Oct. 31, 2013. That’s up from $1.4 million during the same period a year earlier.

Marley attributes the company’s recent growth to its sustainable farming practices, which he says were inspired by his father and his Rastafarian beliefs.

Read on.