Boss Barista

It’s hard not to picture it, once you hear the name: little waves lapping on the sand. Water rushing in between your toes. The warmth of the sun on your shoulders. An abiding feeling of calm.

Areli Barrera de Grodski came up with the name Little Waves in a text message. She’s the co-owner and founder of the roastery and its accompanying retail locations, Cocoa Cinnamon, in Durham, North Carolina. She’s admittedly shy, someone who describes herself as quiet and reserved, but she relishes moments of awareness and noticing—she describes herself as “being comfortable in the meta.”

When I think of Little Waves, I also think of a number: 230. That’s the number of retail coffee bags the roastery needs to sell every day to keep the doors open. After the novel coronavirus shut down coffee shops across the globe, Areli and her partner, Leon, went immediately into planning and preservation mode. They figured out exactly how much business they needed to do, down to the day, to keep their business going without laying off any employees.

In this conversation, we oscillate between the meta and the concrete. Some of the topics we discuss are straightforward, some are weird and obscure, and most land somewhere in the middle. Just to get a little meta here myself, breaking down assumptions is why I love interviewing people and asking questions—there’s always more behind every story. And in this interview, we do just that: we break down assumptions and learn more behind the story of Little Waves.

You can read a transcription of this interview here. 

‘Sonder’ is one of those words you don’t hear often. It’s a noun, and it means, “The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries, and inherited craziness.” And it feels sort of right that this word would be used to describe the experience of going to a coffee shop. Coffee shops are universal meeting places, places you can sit, watch people come in and out, meet new friends, and contemplate the pace of life.  

Shanita Nicholas and Amanda-Jane Thomas are the co-owners of Sip & Sonder in Inglewood in Los Angeles. They chose to incorporate the word ‘sonder’ into the name of their coffee shop because their space is SO MUCH more than just a place to get coffee. It’s a neighborhood meeting zone, a shop that residents can claim as their own. It’s meant to reflect the needs of the community they’re in.  

I first chatted with Shanita and Amanda in 2018, where they shared their initial mission for Sip & Sonder. Shanita and Amanda met in New York, working as lawyers at a firm in Manhattan. Quickly they discovered that their dreams, although seemingly dissimilar, actually aligned perfectly. Together, they dreamed big and decided to combine their visions and open up a coffee shop in California.  

Before they ever opened or served coffee, Shanita and Amanda focused on community and place-making. They started the LA Black Investors Club, bridging the gap between Black creators and access to capital. They partnered with local businesses, folks who later become their neighbors. And they continue to operate their space with an ever-evolving lens, focusing on what they need, what their community needs, right now, in real-time.  

In a way, ‘sonder’ is the perfect word to attribute to them. They’re always looking outward, always discovering something new—even in this conversation. This is an interview to listen to that’ll make you feel rejuvenated and motivated. Hopefully, it’ll encourage you to look outward and wonder about the complex lives of others. Here are Shanita and Amanda:

Hi friends, this is part two of a conversation with Rachel Northrop, freelance writer and PhD student about coffee markets. If you haven’t listened to part one, I highly suggest you do since a lot of this won’t make sense. 

But just a quick recap—in part one, we talked about how coffee is traded, how contracts for trading coffee work, and what a coffee futures market looks like. Most of what we talked about was foundational, explaining the history of commodity markets and their original intent. In part two, we now talk about their application: how do coffee markets affect the actual price of coffee? Why is the commodity price for coffee far, far below the cost of producing coffee? Coffee is traded at around $1 per pound, but the cost to produce coffee is often two to three times that amount—how does that work? This is where we move past the theoretical and move to impact and talk about the way markets are designed to exploit the labor of others, oftentimes exploiting the labor of people in countries that have been colonized by those in power. 

Rachel mentions this a few times during our conversation, but she’s not a coffee trader, rather a writer and inquisitive member of the coffee industry, and she spends a long time breaking down really, really complex ideas. I hope you learn as much as I did from her candid discussion. Here’s Rachel. 

I’ve been in the coffee industry for almost ten years. For most of that time, very pompously, I had this idea that I had seen it all—I’ve been a barista, I’ve been a manager, I’ve trained people how to make coffee, I’ve written about coffee. But there’s a part of the industry that I really, really don’t know much about—how coffee is bought and sold. 

Coffee is in crisis. It’s been in crisis for years—the commodity market price of coffee hovers around a dollar per pound, which is significantly under the price it costs to grow and harvest coffee—and that’s not even taking into account seasonal dips in production or investment in infrastructure, let alone any sort of profit to actually pay the farmers and people who pick coffee. That’d be like a restaurant selling a plate of food and taking a loss on the labor of the cooks, the people who work in the restaurant, and the price that the food costs to begin with. 

We point to the commodity price of coffee a lot—it’s easy to find, you can google it, but what I wanted to understand is why this number matters. Where does it come from, and why is it so important? So I asked someone who I thought might know. 

Rachel Northrop is a freelance writer pursuing a PhD at the University of Miami. When we recorded this episode, she was working as the content manager for Ally Coffee, an importing company based in Greenville, South Carolina. Rachel, who lives in Miami, is a curious person, first and foremost. In 2012, she published a book called When Coffee Speaks, chronicling the stories of coffee workers in Central and South America. At the time, she had just left her job as a teacher in New York, and when she told the folks she was interviewing that she lived in New York, they asked her about coffee prices. Coffee is traded in New York, so what could she tell them? 

At the time, not a lot—but Rachel, being a curious reporter, decided to try to find out. And in a way, this has been a project of hers for the last eight years. Rachel is incredibly knowledgeable, and she explains so much about how coffee markets work, what prices mean that we had to break it up into two episodes. So you’re gonna hear part one, where Rachel talks about the history of the commodities exchange market and what it was meant to do. 

Something that Rachel clarifies is that her explanation of how markets work isn’t a defense of markets, or a claim of their moral value—which we get way more into in part two of this episode—but she notes that to understand why markets work the way they do, we have to understand why they were created, and perhaps contemplate that, for as ill-equipped as market prices are for valuing coffee at a fair price, we have to understand who markets were designed for before we can begin to break them apart. Here’s Rachel. 

Coffee workers—or really anyone who has ever worked in service or earned tips as part of their wages—has likely been told a number of conflicting things about taxes. Declare your cash tips. Don’t declare your cash tips. Your tips cannot be taxed. You owe a tax liability at the end of the year. The varying narratives we’ve been told about taxes can be confusing at best, and financially harmful at worst.

My guest today is Tiani Wright, a tax professional and founder of the group Coffee and Tax. Tiani wants to help coffee folks get financially literate, and a lot of that has to do with being open about talking about money. Tiani encourages people to get to know their pay stubs, ask questions about their W2’s, make sure their bosses are deducting the right amount of money from their wages. Being financially literate means being in control of your financial future, and knowing where your money is going. 

In this episode, I’m talking to Korie Pickett. Korie is a creative in the coffee world and finds ways to uplift and support other creatives. She’s the founder of Queen Spirit Magazine, which is described as for creatives, by creatives, and she’s also the guest editor of Issue Ten of Coffee People Zine.

Coffee People Zine has always been a place for coffee folks to express their creativity. It was born out of a desire to showcase the other work coffee people do outside of their jobs. This issue features solely the work of Black creatives. This issue highlights work from Black coffee professionals along with spotlighting Black-owned businesses. There have been Instagram lives with some of the people profiled, and there’s a collaboration between Coffee People and Cxffeeblack—who were guests on the show a few months ago. To put it simply, there’s a ton of amazing work and creative projects attached to this issue, and Korie has been at the forefront, pushing forward.

You’ll hear from Korie what working on this project was like. For her, it was a balance. There was so much energizing creative inspiration, but there’s also the weight of putting together such an emotionally charged issue. What Korie wants you to take away, as you’ll hear in this episode, is the joy and vibrancy that comes through the work. That’ll come through on the page for sure, as you’re holding this issue, flipping through the pages. But there’s also a creative spirit, a connection, that happens when you’re behind the scenes, putting something together that’s meant to be shared with others. Korie felt that deeply, and I hope by listening to this episode you feel that same energy emanating from Korie, and can connect even more thoroughly to this latest issue.

If there’s ever been a wild wild west of podcast interviews on this show, this might be the one.

I’m recording with my friend, Ian Williams. He’s the owner of Deadstock Coffee in Portland, Oregon, which is a coffee and sneaker-theme shop. There’s no other feeling like walking into Deadstock—you’re always greeted by the baristas, customers and staff clearly know each other well, and the space invites a lot of discussions, a lot of back and forth. “Yes, this is a sneaker-themed coffee shop, no the shoes are not for sale, yes we will put a stencil of a sneaker in your hot chocolate.”

Ian has been roasting coffee for Deadstock for a few years and recently kicked off a campaign called “Coffee Should Do Better,” which we get into, but for the most part, this interview is two friends shooting the shit. Ian’s computer keeps beeping, I’m eating stale bread for some reason, we make fun of each other a few times, there’s a rotating cast of characters. It’s fun, but it’s also illuminating, and grounded in the current moment. We recorded this episode about five months after COVID-19 forced many coffee shops to close, but Ian’s business is different. It’s thriving. And people are asking him why. There’s no one answer, but it starts with breaking away from the cookie-cutter model of what a coffee shop needs to be. Here’s Ian.

In her new book, COFFEEMILKBOOK, Vava Angwenyi tells the stories of coffee producers. Stories about coffee are often told by importers, roasters, and consumers—the narrative is about "the foreigner looking in." Vava is going to change that. 

COFFEEMILKBLOOD uses Vava's own personal history and the stories of others living in coffee-producing countries. Brilliantly told alongside stunning photographs, Vava challenges you not just to question the stories you hear, but question who gets to tell them. 

Pre-order the book here! 

Listen all the way to the end to hear about Vava's experiences with the Specialty Coffee Association, and read her open letter to the organization here. You can listen Vava's last interview on Boss Barista by scrolling through the archives for Episode 048—Vava Angwenyi is Deconolizng Empowerment. 

In this special episode, T. Ben Grimm and I walk through the Glitter Cat application process! IF YOU LOVE COFFEE AND WANT TO LEARN MORE, YOU SHOULD APPLY!

Smayah Uwajeneza has a story like many of us do. She wanted to save money for school, so she began working in a cafe, and then found her passion for coffee through connecting coffee drinkers in Rwanda, where she’s from and is currently based, with the women who grow their coffee. Along with being the Head Barista at Question Coffee in Kigali, Smayah leads tours of co-ops and helps folks make connections between what’s in their cup and the people that make drinking coffee possible.

Along with her work at Question Coffee, Smayah is a LEAD Scholar, a program led by the Specialty Coffee Association to increase diversity in leadership in coffee, also a full-time law student, and is passionate about promoting coffees from Rwanda and generating that same passion she has amongst coffee drinkers in the country. In this episode, we weave both Smayah’s journey in coffee with the history of coffee in Rwanda, and Smayah shows how powerful it is to bring these moments of connection closer.