Boss Barista

What it means to want to do things differently—and actually do them. With David Lalonde, co-founder of Rabbit Hole Roasters in Montreal, Quebec. 

A full transcript of this episode can be found here. 

In the last episode of our December Rewind series, Rachel Northrop digs into the coffee commodities market, and asks who this antiquated system serves. Spoiler alert: You probably know the answer. 

A full transcript of this episode can be found here. 

The commodities market, or c-market, is how most coffee is bought and sold. It's a complicated, antiquated system that's persisted for years. Rachel Northrop explains how this system came to be. 

A full transcript of this episode can be found here. 

Today, we're re-releasing our episode with Maggy Nyamumbo. Maggy is the founder of Kahawa 1893, a social enterprise aimed at connecting farmers directly to consumers in an attempt to get more money back to farmers. There is so much money in coffee — with farmers making less money than it costs to produce coffee, Maggy tells us where all that money goes. 

This episode was originally released in November 2019. Find a full transcript of this episode here. 

In 2018, the internet lit up with debates about plastic straw bans. Disabled activist Alice Wong talks about how these kinds of conversations silence the voices of disabled people. 

This episode was originally released in August 2018. 

At 13 years old, Frankie Volkema became the world's youngest Q grader. While she received her certification, she also learned that the average coffee farmer is in their mid-50s, and if we don’t make farming viable for young people to pursue, the future of coffee is in jeopardy.

So she decided to take action. Learn more about Joven Coffee here. 

This episode is brought to you by Urnex. 

Today, I’m chatting with Jose Uechi, co-founder of Compadre, a coffee brand based in Peru. Jose—or Pepe, as he goes by—is an industrial designer by trade, and got into coffee because of his friend, Juan Pablo. Juan Pablo invented a solar roaster, a machine that could roast coffee without electricity. Initially, Compadre’s founders worked to get these roasters into the hands of farmers.

A few years later, and Compadre is still working on raising wages for farmers—albeit in a slightly different way. In this episode, we talk about the shifts and pivots that Pepe and his team have made as they got deeper into the economics of coffee-buying and -selling.

The broad goal of Compadre is still the same—to shift value down to farmers—but it does so now by removing barriers that farmers face (like unpredictable weather conditions) and building a brand that connects farmers to consumers.

This episode is brought to you by Urnex. 

Neichelle Guidry is a storyteller. Neichelle is a college administrator and the founder of Black Girl Black Coffee. The brand began as an Instagram account, as a way for Neichelle to document her journey through coffee, and her passion for the subject, during the upheaval of the pandemic. Since then, it’s evolved into a coffee brand that reclaims the Black history of coffee.

We about staying inspired, filling your cup, and giving yourself permission to seek joy in the things you love—that will hopefully leave you feeling uplifted and inspired after listening. 

This episode is brought to you by Urnex.

If you've ever asked yourself, “Is this real? Or am I imagining it? Did I take something the wrong way on purpose? Did my boss really do that thing that I now feel so angry about?” then this is the episode for you. 

Sierra Yeo of The Kore Directive and Alpro UK get real vulnerable.

This episode is brought to you by Urnex. 

Rachel Faller is one of the co-founders of tonlé, a zero-waste clothing company that believes in promoting equal value across the supply chain. Like coffee, most of the clothing we wear goes through hundreds of hands and relies on a system of manufacture and exchange that is a relic of colonialism.

In this episode, Rachel explains some of the parallels between how coffee is bought and sold and how clothes are made. We talk about who gains and who loses in a world that relies on fast fashion: the production of cheap clothing with quick turnaround times for garment factories.

This episode is brought to you by Urnex.