BOSS BARISTA

Hey friends. For the rest of the year, we’re bringing back old episodes of Boss Barista. Part of the reason we’re doing this is because the community of listeners who are part of Boss Barista is so different than it was just a few years ago. But also, many of these episodes carry lessons and ideas that I still carry with me and are worth revisiting. If you haven’t subscribed to the newsletter yet, here’s a handy link to do so:

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. Maggy is a trained economist—she graduated from Smith College in 2011, went to the London School of Economics, got her MBA at Harvard, worked for the World Bank and on Wall Street ... and in this episode, she breaks down the economic dynamics of coffee pricing. Coffee is a global commodity that passes through hundreds of hands before getting to your cup, and Maggy illuminates how there's so much money in coffee, but rarely does that money go to farmers and workers. 

This is a really dense episode—when we first aired it in November of 2019, someone told me that they took out a pen and paper to write down many of Maggy's arguments. I hope you learn as much as I did from this conversation. Here's Maggy: 

Ashley: So if you're in an elevator with somebody, what would be your elevator pitch for what you do?

Maggy: Yeah, so Kahawa 1893 is a farm-to-cup coffee company. The way we define that is, I’m a third-generational coffee farmer. My family has a coffee farm in Western Kenya where we process our coffee together with other neighboring farms in the area in a cooperative. We then import the coffee into San Francisco. We roast the coffee locally here and we distribute it to specialty coffee shops, specialty grocery, offices, direct-to-consumer, Amazon … all of those channels.

I started Kahawa 1893 with a goal of essentially creating a better supply chain for farmers in Kenya to get a living wage for the coffee that they produce. The biggest issue with the coffee industry has been that farmers don't make enough money to live off of because the global coffee prices have been low-cost to production.

Kenya, where I'm from, has one of the highest costs of production, actually, because of the kind of coffee that they produce and how they've decided to produce it. So it's very expensive to produce, and farmers getting really low prices for that means that a lot of farmers are not making money growing coffee. So for me when I saw the specialty coffee movement growing, and Kenya having a really good profile in specialty coffee, I thought that I could help farmers get direct access to markets and hopefully be able to make a living wage out of a coffee.

Ashley: It's interesting [your background] because you grew up in Kenya, you've been on farms, you've picked coffee, but then you didn't grow up wanting to be a coffee farmer. You actually studied finance and economics. Can you talk a little bit about the trajectory that took you to this moment of starting Kahawa 1893?

Maggy: Yeah, so it's funny. Growing up in Kenya and around coffee … so coffee has always been known as a “poverty crop.” It's essentially a catch-22 almost: “Are coffee farmers poor because they grow coffee or do poor people grow coffee?”

Coffee is considered a poverty crop because for a long time it hasn’t really delivered for farmers. Before the ’60s, farmers were actually able to make money growing coffee. Coffee was a crop that middle-class coffee farmers in Kenya could grow and actually educate their children with, and this was because there was a fixed system. Essentially there was an international coffee cartel that controlled the price of coffee and was able to maintain that price in relation to cost of production. After that failed, the prices plunged and now the prices have been low [compared to the] cost of production for most farmers.

Growing up, instead of seeing how coffee farmers struggled, including my family, that was the last thing that I wanted to go back to. [It was] something that you did because you had nothing else to do. It was really the last thing that was available for you to do. When I moved to the U.S., I went to college, got my MBA, I worked at the World Bank, and worked on Wall Street. And when I was thinking about what I wanted to do next, I was funnily enough attracted to go back into coffee because of my background.

When I was working on Wall Street, I was looking at different industries, and I was very surprised to see what was happening in the coffee industry. First I saw that there was a lot of consolidation going on in the coffee industry, but I also saw that there was a lot of growth within [the specialty coffee industry], which means that farmers could differentiate themselves.

I was thinking that there actually could be a way for me to apply my skill set in the industry to be able to differentiate my farmers and also be able to help them get the gains from specialty coffee.

Ashley: So your focus is primarily on Kenya, which makes sense, because that's where you're from. I was wondering if you could provide some context about the specialty coffee market in Kenya in particular, because it is very unique both because of quality, but because of its history as well.

Maggy: Yeah, so a little bit on the history of coffee. As you know, coffee was first grown in East Africa, the original place [was] in present-day Ethiopia, but back then there were no borders. So where we are in Kenya, it's in that region of the world where coffee grows sort of naturally on its own.

And then, it was brought over to the Middle East in Yemen, and then it went to Europe and then Europeans brought it to Latin America, and Brazil was the largest coffee-growing country. During the slave trade, Brazil received, I think, five times the number of slaves that came to America, and that was because of coffee.

Coffee is an industry that is very labor-intensive and requires a lot of free labor. And so, for Brazil, coffee was such a big crop for them, and even when the New World abolished slave labor, Brazil would not let go because they really needed slave labor for the coffee industry. And that's why Brazil was the last country to abolish slave labor in 1888.

And so the reason we're actually named 1893 is because I like to go back to the history of where coffee started in Kenya, and kind of rethink how I could have built that system better if I’d existed. And so what happened is, in 1888, when the slave trade was actually abolished in Brazil, the European trading companies needed a new source of labor.

So then they came to Africa in, you know, starting in 1890. By 1893, they had set up plantations in Kenya, so Kenya was colonized by the British. The British came in and pushed the locals away from very fertile land, they set up estates and plantations there, and then employed the local people—well, not employed, but obviously used them as free labor.

And so we see that Kenya as a country is founded on producing coffee. It was coffee that Britain wanted out of Kenya—still wants out of Kenya, because Kenya still supplies a lot of its coffee to British companies. That's actually part of our independence deal that we made with Britain.

One thing that people don't realize is when African countries got their independence, it wasn't a freedom out of the blue. We made deals with our colonial countries, so Kenya made a deal with Britain. It's like, we're going to have the white settlers give up their power locally, but they need you to provide, to keep providing the free labor. They need all the people that have been working on the farms to keep providing free labor. And that's kind of the system that we see still right now that continues on the continent—in Kenya, especially.

And I'll touch on this a little bit, on a big question I get about Kenyan coffee, which, as you know, is the most expensive origin in the market in general. It's going for about $5 a pound versus the $1 market rate. But the average farmer out of that gets about 20 cents. A cooperative that's doing really well would get 80 cents a pound.

And why is that? A lot of that money is being captured by the colonial companies that are still in Kenya. That's something that's been going on since colonialism, and that's something that's continuing because Kenya is a neo-colonial state. So we have full freedom, but we're still canonically colonized by Europe.

Ashley: I think it's really important to talk about the pervasiveness of colonialism, because I think when you talk about the end of slavery in certain countries at different years, it seems like, ‘Oh, that's so far away,’ but at the same time, we're still seeing these effects really concretely. And it essentially translates into a different form of labor that's undervalued or free. Which I think is really, really important to remember.

Maggy: Yeah, and it's one thing that's sort of key to Kenya in particular because of how we produce our coffee. We produce our coffee in cooperatives, and we have to do it a certain way, and this way is codified in the law. It's like institutionalized racism in the law of things that we can and cannot do to make sure that we're getting British coffee companies the coffee that they need.

And so when I speak to the coffee industry people about, you know, “Why are we still not getting money to Kenyan families?” And then they're like, “Oh, Kenyan farmers are not productive enough.” And then I'm like, “Okay, so why are they not productive?” It’s because they have to produce coffee a certain way. It's the law of how they have to produce.

And it's one of those things where “Big Coffee” has put different countries into different buckets of what they should produce. They have Brazil producing a certain type of coffee. They have Vietnam producing a certain type of coffee. And they have different countries helping them develop their menu, but they want to pay a Kenyan farmer that's producing coffee manually the same price they're paying someone producing mechanical coffee in Brazil.

So that's part of the issue of where we have Kenyan farmers producing coffee in a way that essentially is producing a really high-quality cup of coffee. But they're still not getting compensated for that labor that goes into that. But then they actually can’t change it even if they want it because there's a law. So if you're a [multinational corporation] and you have a small country that you want to do something, you can just tell them that.

Farmers are not allowed to even stop growing coffee without a permit. So you need a permit to stop growing coffee. You'll be fined if you actually cut down your trees. There are a lot of ways that [multinational corporations], like Starbucks and Nestle, can force small countries to do things that serve them better than what small holders really need.

And the example where we see that really done well is in Kenya. Kenya is the exact opposite of Brazil. They’re really two opposite [countries]. Brazil [produces] high-volume, mechanized [coffee], and Kenya [produces] low-volume, really manual, higher-quality coffees. But Big Coffee wants to pay the same price for those two coffees.

So the farmer in Kenya with a small farm doesn't have the productivity of Brazil. And the way that we've been able to maintain this comes to how we legitimize it. Kenya has an auction system that legitimizes that kind of system. So it says that, “Okay, so we have an auction, which means this is fair.” But it's really not fair. When you go into the process of how the auction works, you realize that the auction makes that process of oppression legitimized.

Ashley: Right, and it goes back to the ideas that you were talking about, institutionalized racism and racism essentially being written into the laws and the way that coffee farmers can even interact with the things that they produce.

Maggy: Yes, they're forced to do things a certain way that don't serve them necessarily, but they serve the needs of Big Coffee. So when you think about it, right—and we'll talk about this a little bit more—which comes to the crux of the crisis, right? So especially when we think about the current coffee prices, the only two countries that can really survive at the current price point are Brazil and Vietnam. Those are the only two countries that can produce coffee.

So can you imagine what would happen to the specialty coffee industry, which is really the higher-value part of the industry? If all the other countries suddenly stopped producing coffee, what would happen to the specialty coffee industry, and what would happen to the value of coffee? So I think that's one of the questions that goes through my mind is, “How do we think about pricing the coffee in Brazil and Kenya in the same way, when they're really two very different products that we use?” Like, imagine a Blue Bottle or a Stumptown, just with Brazil and Vietnam coffee. How does that look?

Ashley: Right. Something that I think that you do really well is that you're able to break down these problems in a very succinct and understandable manner. I wonder, with the limitations in the Kenyan coffee market that you outlined, how does someone like you as an entrepreneur start to think, “Oh, these are ways we can start to solve these problems?”

Maggy: In the Kenya case, and in the discussion that you had with Vava [Angwenyi], she explained how, because of the way the system is set up, it's really institutionalized in a way that only European companies can export that coffee. And even to go an extra mile, in the law for a long time, you were not allowed to roast coffee independently. And that's why Kenyans didn’t drink coffee up until recently.

That was one way to make sure that Kenya was only for extracting green coffee. You could not roast it. And right now in Europe, they have prohibitive import taxes, which means that even if Kenyan farmers—they need to be like Hawaii, where they have their own brands. And that's what we're trying to do with Kahawa, is being able to roast [under] their own brands. That way they can capture the end value, which is where most of the value right now sits.

That to me is how I see farmers in Kenya who have really great coffee, delicious coffee that should still exist in the market, but the current pricing dynamics make it almost impossible for anyone to make a living out of coffee. But if there was a way for them to do direct-to-consumer, and be able to cut to that last mile—which is where most of the profits are—then we can actually start to think of a business model that fits. And so for us, my goal when I started Kahawa was, “How do we get money in their hands?”

So you know, how do we get money? We can’t change the system on Day 1, as, you know, it's institutionalized for a reason, so you can’t change it on Day 1. So what can you do? For me, [since I am in America], I actually have access to that end market, right? What if I could cut to that value of the end market and share it with the farmers?

So that's what Kahawa was. And specifically for me in Kenya, there's this statistic that you really should know about: Over 90% of the labor comes from women. The labor on the farm, the labor in processing … all of that labor-intensive work is done by women. And there's a reason for that, right? Because it's unpaid work.

The logic here is, think of a male person in Kenya. They're too proud to do work for free, men. Men of any color are too proud to do work for free. And so they're like, “Okay, I can get a dollar at the market. My coffee is worth $5, but the market is willing to pay [only] a dollar for it. I'm not willing to work for a dollar. But you know what I can do? I can push my wife, who I control, and my children, who I control ... I can put them to work and then get a dollar. So their work is worth $5. So I'm deploying $5 worth of work to get a dollar back.” 

And that's really what's happening. We're seeing the direction of race and gender, where we're seeing sort of marginalized groups along the racial lines, and then marginalized gender is being pushed by society to provide free labor.

In the U.S. we think of free labor as sort of the work that we women are doing for free at home, right? The cooking, the childcare that we're doing for free, and [we’re] not rewarded. But in coffee, the system has figured out how to actually mobilize that free labor at the farm level.

And also in Bangladesh, they also have done that in the sweatshops. It's a similar dynamic, but now at the farm level. So you're able to, without saying it, you're pushing men to put up the women to work for free or a pittance, for like a discount, obviously a 20% discount.

Ashley: That's such a powerful metaphor to use, especially when you equate it to the ways that we understand unpaid labor in the United States. We understand that as the cooking and the cleaning, but then you just spread it outward and that's exactly what's happening. And in a lot of coffee-producing countries, like Kenya.

Maggy: You hear the question a lot of, “Okay, the market will correct. The market will correct.” Because if farmers can’t sustain these prices, why do they keep producing? Right. That's the question you hear, right? That’s what the main defense from Big Coffee has been. “We're trying to correct the market, because if these prices aren't sustainable, then why are people producing?” But what they’re not understanding is that more and more marginalized people are being pushed to provide free labor. So the children, the women are being pushed to provide free labor.

Ashley: That's such a powerful point, and I wonder, as an economist, how do you take that perspective of using the market to both solve this problem, but also to really explain how the market is failing? Because what you just said about how marginalized people will often have to take up the brunt of the work that others don't or aren’t willing to do is super powerful. I've heard that before too, that, “The market will correct,” and, “Why would this happen if the market wasn't going to correct for it?” So how do you rectify that?

Maggy: Yeah, that's the [moral of the story]. If you push a Big Coffee person to the wall, that's kind of their moral standing of, “I'm paying market prices because that's what's good for us; because that's how the market will correct.” But they know that the market will not correct. It's going to be in oversupply for a long time. And so that's a really good question.

When I think about the current coffee crisis, which I think about all the time, and going back to [me being a] Black woman in coffee, [I am someone who embodies] the two things that the industry exploits for profitability: racial inequality and gender inequality. Those are the two kinds of elements that are holding coffee profitability intact. If we were suddenly to attain racial equality and gender equality, and we actually had to pay what it costs to produce coffee, do you think we would need a new business model for coffee or not?

Ashley: Absolutely, we would!

Maggy: So that’s really something for a lot of people to think about. As much as we're pushing equality, racial and gender equality, if we were to pay minimum wage for production to produce coffee, coffee would not be served the way that it's served today. So that's something for people to really think about.

But back to your question of what are the issues that are really affecting price—so there's three things, and I'm going to “bucket” them into three areas. The first one is that we hear a lot that there's an oversupply, so there's too much coffee being produced relative to demand. You've heard that one, right? And then the second one is, there is too much speculation on Wall Street. Wall Street is where the coffee prices are determined. [The theory is that] there are traders that are speculating on what the future prices are going to be and that's getting out of hand. It's becoming disconnected from the realities of the cost of production.

And to pause there a little bit, it makes sense because, remember, when the coffee business model was designed, labor was a non-issue because labor was considered to be free. So labor was either something that was going to be free from slaves—when you paid for your slaves at the slave market, you had already paid for your labor going forward, right? It's like buying a house—or in Africa, the labor was going to be free because you just forced the natives to work for free.

So the only two things that you were thinking about were diseases and climate change. And our market still behaves that way because that's the business model. Labor is still assumed to be free. So unless we change that idea that we need to specifically start paying for labor and change the business model, that's something that speculation will always be trading, like in the 1800s.

And the third point is that it's a fact that Big Coffee is unwilling to pay for Black and Brown labor. So those are the three elements. Do you agree with them? Are those three points you've heard people talk about?

Ashley: I don't think anyone has ever used the term “Big Coffee” before, which I find really fascinating because you use it a lot. And I think it is really helpful to think about how powerful actors, like the ones that you mentioned earlier, can influence the politics of an entire country.

Maggy: Yeah, I call them Big Coffee. And later on, I’ll tell you how Big Coffee behaves a lot like Big Tobacco and Big Pharma. And we have to start thinking about them that way.

But anyways, so three things: One is there's an oversupply, the second one is speculation is messing up the prices, and the third is that Big Coffee is unwilling to pay for Black and Brown labor under any circumstances, regardless of what else is going on. And so for me, when I think about those three things, they're all true. Those three things are all actually interacting. What we have again is Big Coffee being unwilling to pay for Black and Brown labor, which is essentially using the Wall Street market to legitimize, similar to how we use the auction in Kenya to legitimize that market.

You can think of Wall Street as a place where you legitimize. You don't want to pay for labor. So think of it: If there was no Wall Street and Nestle had to pay for coffee and they decided to pay a dollar now, people would complain. We'd be like, “Nestle, you cannot pay that. You need to pay the market price.” But now Nestle can pay a dollar and say, “The market has approved that I should pay that price.” And so I think the best way to think about it is that Big Coffee is now using the market to hide behind not wanting to pay for Black labor.

And then the third aspect, which is essentially what we're witnessing, is oversupply, and that oversupply is because we have false signals. We have people acting differently. The average person or the average family is looking at the market and trying to study it and saying, “Okay, this is how the market is, and I'm going to behave a certain way.”

But the reality is, however the market moves, the biggest thing that we can change is the willingness to pay. For me, I get back to what we're seeing in the market [which] is a consequence of three things interacting together. And we're going to be in oversupply for a long time, because as you know, in Brazil, because of the technology that they have, we can produce all the coffee that we need.

Jeffrey Sachs just released a report actually this month, and he said the same thing: Brazil and Vietnam can produce all the coffee that we need. All the other countries can stop producing. And those two countries can produce all the coffee that we need. So Brazil can respond to coffee shortages overnight. We're never going to be in a shortage. So we’re permanently in oversupply. Does that mean that we're going to constantly be at this $1 price point? This is the new $1 price point. So how do we think about that going forward?

Ashley: I don't know! But it is absolutely illuminating hearing you talk about the coffee supply crisis, because it seems like if you go into—

Maggy: It's not new. This is like, it's a new normal that we need to face that this is the price that a mechanized farmer can survive at. So what should we do?

Ashley: Right, exactly. So I wonder how you see yourself in that system. One of the things that you mentioned is that you cut out the middleman and you go directly from producer to consumer. Is that scalable at all? I wonder, is that a solution on a small scale or a large scale? Do you look at large-scale problems? How do you think about that?

Maggy: I think we need an industry reaction, obviously. Right? So ideally we need something that's scalable. And I think what Jeffrey Sachs proposed was [about] a $10 billion fund to support farmers over the next 10 years. He said that this is the new price. Going forward, we're not going to move away from a dollar.

And when I think about that, and I know that if it's a dollar, my farmers are getting—what, 10 cents or less? You can't even buy fertilizer with that, right? Essentially, how do we think about alternative markets? For us, how can we participate in this specialty market where we can [get] farmers a better price? But even more so, we invite consumers to basically send their tips directly.

We're thinking of this really as the way we think about waitresses. Their wages are below minimum wage. So when we pay for our bills, we add a 20% tip to make sure that they're getting the minimum wage. We understand the dynamics of the restaurant industry, and so as a consumer, we've chosen to support that.

So for us, Kahawa, we introduced a tipping mechanism where we have a code on the back of the bag. You can scan it and you can send a tip directly to the farmer. And we think that that's an almost 21st-century Fair Trade system.

With Fair Trade, their deal was you paid an extra dollar or more, and then some of that made it to the farmer. It's unclear how much of it made it to the farmer within a dollar. I think once everyone took out their share along the value chain, I think they said for each dollar, 5 cents is getting to the farmer. So we're saying, what if, instead of paying a dollar extra for your coffee, which you should be (people think it's expensive, but the prices are still on the lower side), you can send a tip directly to the farmer.

We see that as one way where consumers can be actively engaged with where their coffee is coming from and choose to support [the farmers] directly. So that's one approach.

The other approach is an industry-wide approach where as an industry, we actually start to think about what moves the needle. And so far the discussions that I've seen around how to solve them have just been really kneeling at the edges. And they've really been about supporting this oppressive system, like, “How do we hold this oppressive system in place so that we can also benefit?”

I can go a little bit into detail, but I don't know if you have any other questions around that.

Ashley: I mean, I have so many questions, but just touching back a little bit on the idea of value and who creates value: Before we got on this call, we were talking a little bit about some of the things that you wanted to talk about, and relating back to the idea of a dollar being the “new normal.” And then also thinking politically about the moment that we're in, and how both responsive coffee prices seem to be to the political climate, but also at the same time, when you say that a dollar is like the new normal, that also feels like, incredibly unresponsive. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that dichotomy, about what is actually influencing coffee prices and where can we expect to see prices fluctuate, or where do we actually expect to see change happen, as the politics around us change and interact with us.

Maggy: Yeah, that's actually a really good question. As you know, coffee is a political crop. I mentioned earlier that we used to have a cartel, which was an international coffee system that used to control the coffee prices. It acts a lot like our oil, which has a cartel. That's how they keep the prices sort of stabilized a little bit.

So coffee used to have something similar, and the way that that was kept in place was an agreement between the producing countries and the consuming countries; for example, the U.S. and Brazil. The U.S. is the major consuming country. So the U.S. really is the biggest driver of what happens in the world around coffee. The U.S. likes that system, likes to stabilize coffee prices because when coffee prices destabilize, they cause a lot of harm in the world.

So right now a lot of the immigration we're seeing on the border: That's coffee. [There are a] lot of people coming from Guatemala and Honduras that have been displaced. When we had the last coffee crisis is what produced the Rwanda genocide. That was the coffee crisis.

A lot of really bad things happen when coffee prices crash. Ethiopia had a green famine, and that was because of coffee. So you have these political things that can be put in place by looking at how to stabilize coffee.

Anyway, back during the Cold War, the U.S. was incentivized to stabilize economies so that they didn’t turn to Communism. The U.S. kind of led the movement of making sure that coffee-producing countries had stable pricing and a stable economy so that they didn't turn “red.”

But after we saw the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, since then, the U.S. has never been incentivized to stabilize those countries, because there's no Cold War going on yet. That's one area where it’s kind of coming down to, “How does that affect us?”

So currently Trump just essentially upheld that the U.S. doesn't want to stabilize the coffee prices. That just happened recently. Depending on the administration—if we have, let's say, Democrats in power—depending on their politics, they might be incentivized to look toward stabilizing the coffee economy. Maybe they will want to stem the immigration that's coming to the border. They might be incentivized to actually force Big Coffee to negotiate better prices. So that's how politics comes in.

For me personally, I've been actually following this current political climate very closely. And one of the most interesting solutions that I've seen put forward is, Andrew Yang, one of the candidates, has something called UBI, which is Universal Basic Income, and what I really like about that is he's acknowledging that technology is essentially making it harder for labor to catch up, or labor to be compensated accordingly.

And so, because a lot of the benefits of technology go to very few people, very few winners take all the benefits. So he's saying, how can we distribute those benefits to everyone? And we're seeing that with Big Coffee, they are taking all of the benefits of technology. So as Brazil gets better and more and more productive, Big Coffee’s able to take all those benefits, but it means a lot of the labor gets marginalized even more.

So I think for me, the reason I was thinking, “We need to figure out a way to get money directly in the hands of farmers,” is because that's where they need it the most. They need money in their hands directly. And if there was a way for me, a dream solution would be a place where as an industry, we agree that we need a stable market. We need diversity of regions, and the current speculative market is not a good vehicle for that.

We agree that we can provide a basic minimum wage for all the coffee producers in these countries, because we can. And then have them keep producing the coffee. And that's how we can keep deforestation low. We can reduce all of the problems that come with plantation coffee in Brazil. We can have farmers in Ethiopia still grow their coffee in the original place, but actually get some money growing it and be encouraged.

Because of climate change, we're going to lose a lot of varieties to climate change. If we only concentrate our risk in two areas, it means that in 10 years, if there's some kind of event, there won't be any coffee left. So as a sort of coffee collective, we have to think of ourselves as a country, and think of our producers as citizens, and think about, “How can we give each one of them a basic income for them to keep participating in the diversity of coffee?”

Which is what adds value to the coffee. When we think about coming back to value, when we think about how we market coffee, a lot of the marketing is attached to the production. It's attached to how carefully it was produced, the varieties, the farmer toil, all of that. And if we were suddenly to just have mechanized coffee, the narrative breaks down and suddenly no one spends $10 for mechanized coffee, right?

And in case of an outbreak of disease or a warming in Brazil, then coffee is going to be a luxury. And so I'm thinking that the industry would come together and figure out, “How do we get a basic income for all coffee producers to keep them growing coffee for the future?”

Ashley: That's really fascinating to think about the narrative that we create in coffee, where we talk about handpicked coffee and this process that's almost romanticized. And yet as technology moves forward, that's not going to be the narrative that we have. So we almost shoot ourselves in the foot a little bit, relying on this narrative for the addition of value. It’s also misleading because, as you mentioned earlier, although we almost co-opt the value that is created by producers, almost all the value, monetarily speaking, ends up in the hands of importers, roasters, the people who touch the end [of the process], which is a really interesting dichotomy.

Maggy: It is. And I think, Ashley, this is going to be so important, because as you know, fake coffee is coming, lab-grown coffee is coming. We already have lab-grown meat. We already have lab-grown diamonds. So as more and more people realize the cost to our environment of growing coffee, they're going to be convinced to buy coffee that's made in a lab.

And so how are we going to convince people? I guess it comes back to, is it worth it for a lot of people being put through a lot of pain in these developing countries to produce coffee that we can't pay them to produce when we can produce it in a lab? Ten years from now, you have a choice of coffee that is slave-free, grown in a lab, versus coffee that you don't know where it came from. How many children died to bring it to you? Like, what will you choose?

Ashley: I'm even thinking of the example of diamonds. When you talk about getting an engagement ring, for example, you want a cruelty-free diamond. In 10 years, are we going to end up in that same situation with coffee where traceability is going to be so important that we want to know that it was grown in a lab, or did it come from almost synthetic means because we can at least trace that really concretely? Which is wild. I have never thought of that.

Maggy: Now that I think about it, I think we're going to start to see more—and this is just the political side of me—there's been a lot of backlash now towards billionaires and towards the plutocracy. And we've seen that backlash. Have you seen that? A lot of articles coming out?

Ashley: Oh yeah! I mean, remember when Kylie Jenner was called the first self-made billionaire or first self-made female—or youngest [billionaire], and people were like, “Uhh, that's not correct.”

Maggy: Yeah. I know! So we’re starting to see a backlash in the billionaire class. To me, in a way, it's almost like we cherrypick which industries to backlash at any one time. It's fashionable to backlash. So when I think about the damage that Big Coffee is doing in terms of … so I think of earlier I said [there is a link between] Big Coffee, Big Tobacco, and Big Pharma. These are three kinds of companies that produce addictive substances. Coffee is addictive.

They kill. But the only difference is that coffee kills the producer in the long run, because they can’t feed themselves. They drown in the ocean trying to immigrate. So [Big] Coffee, Tobacco, and Pharma (which are essentially opioids), they kill the user. 

But coffee is still killing a lot of people, but it's killing producers. The reason we don't have the same outrage level is because it's killing people of color. Justice is not as swift when your victims are people of color. So I'm hoping that in the near future, the same backlash that we're seeing going towards Big Tobacco and Big Pharma, that people will start to see that the victims of the coffee also need justice. That's my hope. When you ask about the future, I think we need to start talking about how much human damage Big Coffee’s irresponsibility is causing in the world.

Ashley: So let's, let's talk just a little bit about Big Coffee, because recently Starbucks announced this initiative where they were going to give back $20 million to coffee producers. To me, that sounds kind of like a Band-Aid, or not even a Band-Aid. A Band-Aid is not even the right word because that implies some sort of healing. It sounds like a—what's the word for it—it's like a red herring almost, or just a distraction.

Maggy: They're covering their tracks. That's their brand. Their brand has always been about, “We're doing good for farmers.” And so there was so much outcry. I mean every day I was reading articles online from industry news. It's almost a one-sided conversation where the farmer and the people that are concerned with the farmer's livelihoods were having their own conversation. They're trying to tell Big Coffee to respond, and Big Coffee was not responding. And, for Starbucks, this was something that they had to respond to, I think, and that was one of their responses.

Ashley: So that, how do you see the role of Big Coffee answering responsibly? Because for better or for worse, Big Coffee is here. We have it. It's part of the market and it's influencing the market. So what, to you, would signal meaningful change?

Maggy: First, I don't know if you read the article on Sprudge about them reaching out to Starbucks to ask for actual pricing? Did you see that article?

Ashley: Yeah, I did. 

Maggy: Yeah. So that was one thing where I've always essentially had an issue with Starbucks claiming to be 99% ethically sourced yet won’t give us the figures. So how are we supposed to know? How are we supposed to check?

And then kind of knowing in the industry that they really were not lifting their weight based on the market. There was a disconnect between their marketing to consumers and essentially what we're doing in the back. And I think for me, one article that I thought was super interesting, and it was talking about someone that traced back a bag to Colombia, to meet a farmer that was part of the Starbucks cafe practices. And this farmer actually said they prefer selling their coffee to Nestle because Nestle paid more. I thought that was so funny.

But back to that. So I think that their article is really [interesting]. And I'm glad that the industry is—industry media in general [is starting to cover this topic], hopefully because they have other external sources of funding, as you know. The problem is we're not able to criticize Big Coffee because they fund everything. They fund the research, they fund the media. So there’s no place to criticize Big Coffee, so I was kind of happy that Sprudge is starting to go there. They talked about how 20 million essentially translated into less than 3 cents a pound for farmers.

But I think that for me, when I first saw it, when I saw this thing, I think it was early in the year, last year, my first thought was, “Oh my God, our problem right now in the world is that we have too much coffee. And that our solution is to give farmers more seedlings?” You know what I mean?

It's like, “Oh, we know we have an oversupply, but our contribution to you is, we want to stick you with more coffee.” Right? To me that was the reaction. And that kind of captures a lot of the sustainability programs because they're designed to make sure that we have an oversupply. All the programs that are designed to increase the amount of production, which is not the right thing to do.

That's why I'm very skeptical of sustainability programs because they're designed around, “How do we make sure that oversupply is the new normal so that the power dynamics are always in Big Coffee’s favor? and farmers are always taking the big risk?” Especially now, going into climate change.

The farmers that I work with, last year during the harvest season, our yield was down 40%. Can you imagine? Yield is down 40% when coffee prices are their lowest, and this is because of climate change. The rains were, you know, late, and we're going to see more and more of this. And who's going to take the blunt of this climate change risk? It's farmers, right?

I think for me, the thing that Big Coffee can do is work towards stabilizing prices. And I know there's criticisms around, “Okay, if you put up a high price, we're going to have too much coffee coming out of Brazil, because if you put a $3 price point, then everyone in Brazil is profitable and they're going to produce everything, right?

But I think there's a way that the industry can design a market, that's essentially fair to everyone. They can design a market that produces a minimum wage for Kenya producers, a minimum wage for Colombia, for Vietnam—that way you maintain that diversity, but at the same time, you also think about what's the environmental damage that's happening. How do we make sure we're taking not just price as the only input, but how are we thinking about the holistic humanity? Thinking about humanity and the environment, not just the bottom line.

I think for me, when I think about Big Coffee's role, Big Coffee first has to decide they want to pay for Black labor. That's one thing. I definitely want to understand why Big Coffee is unwilling to pay for Black people's labor. We're tired of giving you free labor. Okay? Like, start to pay us. I really want to see a Big Coffee person come out and say they want to make sure they’re paying for labor.

And I think when I say “Black labor,” people are confused, because people don't realize Brazilian manual labor is mostly coming from Black slaves and you know, Black people that are slaves in Brazil. One district that is 80% Black provides all of the labor that goes into coffee in Brazil. So when I say Black labor, people are like, “Oh, but most coffee is coming from Latin America.” But [my response is], “Yeah, by slaves that were in Latin America.”

So back to your question. I think for me, I'd love to see Big Coffee really figure out that they actually want to stop dehumanizing Black people and start to pay for Black labor. That's one thing I want.

I think that we will have to think about [the fact that] Big Coffee leaders are profiting from the same way that their predecessors profited, which was “How do you put free Black labor to use?” And I want to see them really come to terms with that and decide that they actually want to pay labor as a priority.

So that's one, and then the second one is, “How do we stabilize prices?” And then we need to stop hiding behind the market because we know Big Coffee controls the market, so that you can't hide behind Wall Street when you control Wall Street.

That brings me to my other point, which is, again, the composition of the market, which is when the biggest coffee company is also a private equity company that also can trade in coffee on Wall Street, then you get a lot of conflict of interest going on. But I'll stop there. I know that's a lot.

Ashley: I mean, it's a lot, but I feel like you need to write a book or something. I need all of these ideas!

Maggy: I've been meaning to write a blog post, but maybe after this discussion I will have my ideas a little bit more fleshed out. Make it more accessible. I might do an article to just kind of capture a lot of what we've spoken about so that more people can [learn about it]. But it's, it's a lot though, you're right.

Ashley: It's such a complex problem, but the way that you describe this problem feels so accessible. So I feel like you've really found a way to communicate the issues that you're seeing on the market in a very tangible manner, but still very much accepting that this is a complex issue with a lot of contextualization needed.

So just to wrap up, I was wondering with all of this information, what can a barista take from this? What can somebody at the very other end of the spectrum leave from this conversation and be like, “This is what I can do tomorrow,” or “This is what I should be able to bring attention to today.”

Maggy: Yeah, and I think that baristas are kind of at the point where the consumer interacts with the beverage, right? They're at the forefront of this war almost. And then we put them there and we don't give them all the information that they need. Sometimes when I go to a cafe, I feel bad, asking all the questions like, “Where is this coffee from? Do you know if it's direct trade?”

So baristas do a wonderful job of sort of articulating that information to consumers who sometimes don't even care as well. So making it interesting enough to care.

And I really liked the series—I don’t know who led it, but I think you were involved— the one, “Ask Me About Cost of Production.”

Ashley: I'm not part of it. I did record an episode for the show, but Caryn and Mike Nelson who own Junior's Roasted Coffee in Portland, Oregon organized that.

Maggy: I really liked that. I felt like [it would be beneficial to] see that at the coffee shop and a consumer that's interested [might] pick that up and ask questions. That's really one way that just having that information [in a way that’s] not overbearing—because I know some customers really just want to get their coffee and they don't want to talk.

So [you could] have that information maybe placed around the coffee shop so people can read and understand. And I think that for baristas, I think that because they're the first line of defense for their brand, they need to learn more about what actually matters. And I know in your previous podcasts, you've talked about some of the shortcomings of specialty coffee, which is a lot of the things that we care about at the cafe level may not be good enough for farmers, right?

Like the micro-lots, right? They may not translate. So just making sure that they are aware of what's going on, they're aware of how farmers can be helped. When they're having conversations with consumers, they can talk about, “Okay, this coffee may not be…” like the example that you use, which is, “This is an 84 point coffee, which is delicious, but we know where it came from. We know what’s happening with the farmers,” versus, “We're pushing 91 in your face because it's the best coffee we've ever had, but we know that the farmer didn't get paid.” Does that make sense?

I think baristas being informed that we can be nerdy about extraction, we can be nerdy about latte art, but also being able to tell consumers that you should care about the quality is not just about, “Okay, this is the best coffee that's ever been on the planet,” but also that we need to support brands that are doing the work that's needed on the ground. Not just talking, but they're “walking the talk.”

And as you know, I have sold green coffee to two companies. So I actually know what companies are saying versus what they're willing to do. So I think that baristas are the ones that can actually push their employers to either walk the talk or educate consumers about what brands they should care about.

Consumers don't always know what to look for in a brand, but [baristas] can tell them like, “This shop pays this amount,” or “This shop does something that's beneficial to the farmer.” But in a way that's genuine and authentic, so not using the things that sound good, but don't make a difference to the farmer, but making consumers care about these things. These are things we may not be putting in your face. 

This cafe could be beautiful and look the best, but you need to also look at what does this brand mean for farmers? And one—just to loop in this—we have to think about specialty coffee. We have Big Specialty, so the three or four major specialty coffee companies are owned by Big Coffee, right? When you go to like a Blue Bottle or Stumptown or Intelligentsia, you're really patronizing Nestle or [JEB Holdings], right?

And so for me, what I've actually struggled with, if our problem is trying to change the minds of JEB or Nestle (and as you know, Starbucks is also kind of owned by Nestle). As much as specialty coffee wants to have their own discussions, I want to see Big Specialty challenge their owners to change. Because one big decision, as you saw at JEB, one big decision on extending payment periods to 360 days, wreaked havoc on farmers.

So one coffee company can change the whole industry. In this case, they changed it for the worse, but that's the kind of decision where a Big Specialty [company] that's talking a lot can talk to their parent company about doing better things for farmers. And that can have a [more] major impact than some other programs that may not.

So that's my radical thing for today, which [might be] controversial. I don't want to hear Big Specialty brands lecture about all the good that they're doing when your parent company—where all your money is going—is wreaking havoc. So I want baristas to be brave.

And I think, Ashley, you've done such a wonderful job by the way. When I found your podcast, I cried because as you know, there aren't many people of color or women of color in the industry. And I was essentially again—as a Black woman and knowing that racial and gender inequality, are really what the industry exploits for profits, so knowing that my two identities were being exploited for profit and not being, not having someone to talk to or to even acknowledge that—I think finding your podcast that was smashing the patriarchy, I cried.

I was like, “Oh my God, I found my people.” So yeah, I've been a big fan from the beginning. And so this is such an honor to chat with you because you're doing wonderful work.

So if anyone hasn't told you, you made a difference in my life. I think you're making a difference in the lives of so many people by empowering baristas who are the first line of defense, who can influence culture, who can make brands cool or not cool.

And when you start talking about “pretend specialty” and “real specialty,” and pretend specialty is going to talk a big game about helping farmers when your parent companies are oppressing farmers.

So that's my controversial point today.

But I think I want to see more Big Specialty brands—where their parent companies are oppressing us—start to confront those instead of lecturing us about what they're paying for. Okay? So that’s my controversial point, which you can cut.

Ashley: No, I'm going to keep all of that. If you want to give a controversial take every day and I can tack them on to the end of all of my podcasts that'd be a delight. 

Maggy: When you [told me] this is one of your questions, I’m like, “What is happening in the industry?” I see people talking a lot about prices, about helping farmers. But I'm saying if you can just go to your parent company and tell them to even increase the price, which they can influence by 20 cents, you can change the industry. Right? You can change the industry.

So that to me is I want to see more baristas start to talk about their employers. Obviously the word “transparency” has been such an amazing way to let people see behind the scenes. So I want to see more baristas really tell us the truth of their brands doing what they're saying, and brands we can trust.

People use 1% of their purchases for marketing when 99% of their purchases are exploitation. So I want to talk about the 99% exploitation. I don't want to hear about the 1%. That's really what I'm tired of. I’m tired of the 1% marketing. I want the 99% exploitation, and how can we move the needle on that?

Ashley: I don't think I've ever had a conversation that has challenged my thinking and really opened up the way that I understand the coffee world as much as this conversation with you. Thank you so much for lending your insights. I'm already thinking about what a part-two conversation between the two of us would look like. You're just, you're amazing. Like, you're, you're just incredible and you need to write 800 books or something.

Maggy: I hope I don't get into trouble, you know what I mean? I don't have anything to lose.

Ashley: Right, and that's a good point too, I think, to think about this conversation between me and you, is that you own a business, I'm pretty much unemployable. But this is a low-risk conversation in a certain way. I mean, it is high-risk because you do own a business and you're still a figurehead, but there's a lot of freedom that you and I can have in this conversation to say—

Maggy: Yeah, you're right. That's one thing I think of: If I don't, who will? Because a lot of people really cannot [speak out]. This is what they are thinking, but they can't really say it.

Ashley: Right, but there's a power to putting that into words and giving people, at least an ear to say, “Oh, someone else is thinking this as well. Maybe I can talk to my boss about this.” And it's not so much about baristas not wanting to have these conversations, but giving them the tools to have them, like the Barista Wage Spreadsheet, you know? That was just an idea someone had and then they went with it. There's just a lot of power to hearing ideas and seeing examples, and I hope that people listen to this and think, “I'm going to talk to my boss about this,” or “I want more focus on this other thing.” And I just hope that they leave with a better understanding.

Maggy: Yeah, I hope so. I know it was a lot. This is like my therapy almost, where I'm downloading all this info on someone that I know understands. You’re not being like, “Oh my God, I've never heard that before,” but you were being like, “Oh, I've heard that before, but this is like a new perspective on it.” So this was such a great discussion to have with someone that's knowledgeable and empathetic about the situation.

Ashley: If this was your therapy, then you can come do therapy here anytime you want it.

Maggy: I know, this is my free therapy. I mean, I get frustrated again as a Black woman from a producing country, as you know, it's a shitshow. I sometimes get frustrated. To be a little bit candid, I didn't always speak like this. I've been a bit more reserved, obviously fearful of, “What are people gonna think of me? I gotta be p.c. [politically correct].” When I look at it, if I don't say it, who's going to say it? We have to fight. We have to fight for freedom. Freedom does not just come on a plate. And so this is where I'm thinking. Coffee radicalized me. I did not really care too much about politics or any of the social issues that much before I came into coffee, because I was in a little bubble, but coffee has radicalized me.

And one of your questions was around social justice, and seeing the levels of inequality [in coffee] radicalized me. When you're a Black woman in coffee, you're an accidental activist. Because you can't not be an activist because of everything that's coming at you.

But thank you so much, Ashley. I really appreciate you making time for this chat and inviting me

Ashley: Anytime that you want to be on the show, you can be on the show. Thank you again for talking to us.

Thanks for listening, please share with your friends, leave a comment, and I hope you enjoy these treasures from the archives!

Hey friends. For the rest of the year, we’re bringing back old episodes of Boss Barista. Part of the reason we’re doing this is because the community of listeners who are part of Boss Barista is so different than it was just a few years ago. But also, many of these episodes carry lessons and ideas that I still carry with me and are worth revisiting. If you haven’t subscribed to the newsletter yet, here’s a handy link to do so:

Below, you’ll find an episode from Alice Wong, editor and founder of the Disability Visibility Project. Back when this episode aired in August 2018, there was a lot of talk about bans on plastic straws, with many arguing that they were wasteful and bad for the environment. Alice came on the show and rightly challenged that idea, saying that the straw-ban debate erased the perspectives of disabled people and was an example of performative environmentalism. Since this episode aired, Alice has edited a book called Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century. You can pick up her book; visit her website, DisabilityVisibilityProject.com; check out the podcast that Alice works on—and listen to our conversation. Here’s the episode:

Ashley: Oh, man. We’re doing this. So could you introduce yourself to us?

Alice: OK. Hi, my name is Alice Wong. I live and work in San Francisco. I’m a longtime coffee drinker and a coffee lover, and I’m a disabled activist.

Ashley: You have a project called the Disability Visibility Project. Can you talk a little bit about what that is?

Alice: Yeah! So I founded the Disability Visibility Project in 2014, and it’s basically kind of two things. It’s a campaign to encourage people with disabilities to record their oral histories. I have a community partnership with StoryCorps, which is a national oral history non-profit.

The reason why I started this project is that I don’t see enough media and enough history about our community. So this is my way of giving back and also encouraging people to tell their stories and create their own history. And one thing that’s really exciting about it is that, as a partner with StoryCorps, they have a relationship with the Library of Congress. So anybody who participates has the option of archiving it at the Library of Congress. And since 2014, we have over 140 oral histories recorded so far.

That, to me, is kind of amazing, because this is a gift for the future, and it’s a way of recording who we are right now. And that’s, I think we can think of history as something way back when, but we are constantly creating history. Even right now as we speak, you and I are creating history on Boss Barista!

And the Disability Visibility Project kinda snowballed into an online community. So I have a podcast, just like you, and I have various online communities on Twitter and Facebook. And it’s really giving us a place for us. So that’s kind of what I’m all about.

Ashley: So obviously, you’ve been doing this activism for a long time. But recently, I think your activism sort of intersected with the coffee community because of all the straw bans that have been going on all over the United States and even internationally, I realized.

In your article that you wrote for Eater, you mentioned that, I think, Scotland and Taiwan are moving to removing plastics and removing straws in basically all aspects of life. So can we talk a little bit just about that in general? Like, what were your initial thoughts when you started reading that more and more municipalities were considering banning plastic straws?Alice: Yeah. I think as I started reading more and more about the ban in Seattle, the ban in Vancouver, you know, I really listened to what disabled people were saying. And on the ground, people were saying how a lot of the decision-makers at the city level were just not really paying attention to what concerns people with disabilities are having.

Each kind of ban is different; some have an exception for people with disabilities, and even that is problematic in itself because of how these exceptions are written and enforced. Again, you know, bans are, I think they really need to be carefully constructed.

And based on my observations of a lot of these bans and this trend toward phasing out plastic straws, a lot of it has been just in reaction to PR campaigns by environmental groups who are just seizing this moment, using celebrities, and raising awareness without really thinking about the implications on actual marginalized people.

And that’s where the performative aspect is really disturbing—because Starbucks announced their [ban], it was really, it made a lot of news when they said they were gonna phase it out. And we’ve seen after the Starbucks ban that so many other larger [companies such as] Shake Shack, all over the country and the world, large corporations are doing this.

And this is part of the, I think, trend toward social responsibility. A lot of these corporations are just trying to appeal to Millennials and really be as “woke” as possible. And I think you know, in the rush and in the urgency to do that, and to do good, they’re really neglecting some real moral concerns. And that’s really unfortunate.

Ashley: What drove you to be more vocal about this on social media? Because you are. You’re pretty active about it on Twitter, and you wrote an article that we mentioned earlier for Eater about some of the responses that you were getting.

Alice: Yeah. The straw ban really is visceral. It really hit me in the gut, because this is about a daily activity: drinking. If that was threatened by, if your right to drink and eat was threatened, I mean, it’s very real. And I think what’s really—and it’s not exaggerated, right—I think what’s really sad is that people think, “Oh, don’t worry about it.”

I’ve had so many non-disabled people online tell me, “Don’t worry. You know, these bans, these exemptions, you’re gonna be fine, you know? There’s no way you would be denied a straw.” And I’m just like, if you just understood what it’s like to be disabled and how every day, even with an apparent visible disability like mine, you are constantly scrutinized.

The microaggressions are just so real that people just assume that everything is going to be OK and that we should all—pun intended—suck it up for the greater good. And I think that’s what’s really missing, is that the conversation has always been about if you’re not with us, you’re against us. And we’re saying this is just another erosion in our way to participate in public, in our ways to be part of society.

Some of my friends online have already shown me these little signs posted at restaurants that are really passive-aggressive about, “We’re not serving, we’re not providing any straws anymore because we care about the environment. Thanks anyway!”

People are actually being really proud of not providing straws, and that, to me, is another sign that—let’s say, people are saying, “Straws are bad,” and they say, “Oh, people with disabilities should bring their own straws.”

So let’s say they bring their own straws and start using them? In this kinda climate, you can imagine the kind of possible harassment or criticism they’ll get just for using a straw in a public space. If you look at Santa Barbara, where they have one of the most punitive bans with really steep fines and even jail time for establishments that provide plastic?

I mean that’s really where you’re creating conditions that send a message to people with disabilities, older adults, all kinds of people that may need straws, that your way of life is not welcome. Your way of life is not normative. And what do you do with that? You’re just basically marginalizing us, shoving us away, and telling us that we don’t belong in the same place as you do.

And this is 18 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act, after decades of disability rights activism that really fought against segregation and against the days where there were laws called Ugly Laws.

So I’m not sure if you realize this, but in the old days, there were laws that disabled people and all kinds of people were not allowed in a public space because they affected people. Just their mere existence made people uncomfortable. And I really do see a connection between these straw bans and these kinds of historic laws that discriminate.

Ashley: You just said a lot of things that were really interesting, and I kinda wanna unpack some of them. So one of the things I think you mentioned in the straw ban is that there’s this mentality of, “If you’re not with us, you’re against us.”

Alice: Mmhmm.

Ashley: Have you gotten that kind of feedback from people like, “Oh, you must not care about the environment”?

Alice: Yeah. Definitely on Twitter and on Facebook a lot of folks have said, “Well, I just don’t understand why you have to use plastic. Why can’t you use a reusable one?” Or, “Why can’t you use a compostable one?” And then I would explain, and somehow, these explanations are not adequate. And a lot of people straight-up said, “This is what we all have to do in order to reduce plastic pollution.”

And you know, I am all on board with reducing my consumption, but I’m gonna do it in a different way. And I think this is the limitation of this whole movement toward zero waste, that it doesn’t account for different lived experiences. It’s very dogmatic. It should be an ideal, and the way we do it, we should be able to build in flexibility.

People have definitely been very, very confrontational and very aggressive about my own story, about my own life. One person said I look weak. He actually said my story and the way I talked about needing a plastic straw, he’s like, “She seems weak in telling this and explaining this.”

I was just so stunned by that because it’s as if I’m trying to ask for pity or that somehow I’m inviting pity, when I’m just really being honest about where I am and where my relationship is with plastic. And I think we all have to have honest conversations about our own relationships with plastic and with consumption and capitalism. And I just, with everything I do, I try to keep it real.

Ashley: Right. And I think you mentioned in the article too that there are ways that you can cut consumption of plastic—in way, way more drastic ways—and those are things that are not being talked about at all. But even just the idea that you have to justify your story seems to be a big theme, just in activism in general, the fact that you or others in your community say, “Hey, this is a thing we need, or this is a thing that hurts us.” And the question isn’t about, “Oh, how can we help you, or how can we do better?” But the question is, “Well, how does it hurt you?”

Alice: Yeah. And I think it’s been a common occurrence. For anybody who uses Twitter, all they have to do is go to #StrawBan and #SuckItAbleism, which is a hashtag that I think I created, but I’m not really sure if anybody else might’ve thought of that earlier. But you can see a lot of disabled people over and over again being demanded by non-disabled people to explain themselves, to provide free education, and always having to confront not being believed.

And that kind of interrogation is a real example of the power dynamics, as if there’s this sense of entitlement, as if we have to slice and expose so much of ourselves just to say, “Hey, we’re human. We also, we’re just like you,” where actually, that should be the default that our needs are just as valid as yours.

And I think right now, we’re still—it’s 2018—and we’re still at a place where our needs are not, they’re not seen as equal or as important as anybody else’s. So that, to me, has been really telling. And it’s really just a drop in the bucket in terms of the larger conversation about ableism in our culture.

Ashley: Yeah, can you talk a little more about that, and unpack how this issue has really opened up a bigger lens on how we view ableism in our society?

Alice: Yeah, I feel like it’s so ingrained in what we do and how we think and the language we use. I myself am learning all the time. I myself am working on my own internalized ableism. It’s really so much a part of our culture that sometimes we don’t even see it, and it’s really until disabled people have been pointing it out and naming it that we finally really see it fully manifest.

So I think that’s one of the things, one of the reasons why I started the Disability Visibility Project is that for a long time, our stories were told by other people. It might be by a reporter, and it’s framed as inspiration and like, “Oh! Look at these poor disabled people!” Or you know, “Oh, look at these amazing people who are just so angelic or so innocent!”

And often, it’s also told by advocates for us like our parents or non-disabled people who are seen as our representatives. And this is where we really need our space and our own platforms to really be true to ourselves. And this is what ableism does, where we are not centered, and I think a lot of marginalized communities are not centered.

Everything about the representation in the media, we have such a long way to go in terms of Black, Indigenous, people of color, women, people with disabilities, LGBTQIA folks. So it’s really interesting that disability is often still seen as an afterthought or not even considered in marginalized communities because, again, disability is often seen as this very medicalized, individual thing. That it’s a health problem. It’s something that’s broken or something that’s wrong with an individual.

But really, it’s a culture; it’s a community. And for a lot of folks, it’s a socio-political identity. That’s what it is for me. You know, we are a people, and we have a history. So whenever we center ourselves, I think that’s really the goal, to really shift from this white, cisgender, heteronormative default. In most of our broader conversations, how do we bring in everybody else? And that, to me, is always where I’m gonna be coming from.

Does that answer your question? I hope it does.

Ashley: I think it does. I think I asked a very vague question. With that in mind, we are gonna take a break, and we’ll be right back.

[ambient electronica music break]

Ashley: Welcome back to the show. We are talking with Alice Wong who is the founder of the Disability Visibility Project. And you just talked a little bit about the larger lens of ableism and how it affects the way that we talk about disability. I was wondering, what drove you specifically to activism? When did you start thinking of yourself as an activist?

Alice: You know, I really was reluctant to even use that word for a while because my upbringing is, my training has really been in academia. I went to grad school for sociology. I always thought my world was gonna be about research and teaching. I really became much more politicized as a younger adult, and I think a lot of ... I really became an accidental activist, you know? And I was always worried about identifying as an activist because I really had a very—I think a lot of people have a very—narrow sense of what does it mean to be an activist.

Sometimes I think you have to be somebody who’s a grassroots community organizer, you know, somebody who lays their body on the line, somebody that just gives their all. And I think I really fell into it as just living as a disabled person where I had to advocate for myself versus other kids.

I really realized that systemic change is what it’s all about. It’s about changing the system. It’s about changing institutions. It's about shifting the culture. And that work is much more difficult, and that work really requires collaborations, partnership, and mobilization with multiple movements.

It’s not just about bettering yourself. It’s about how do we lay the [groundwork] for the future generations so that we don’t have to repeat this work again and again?

So you know, I was an accidental activist where in grad school, I started connecting with other disabled students, moving to the Bay Area. You know, San Francisco, I feel really blessed to be in a place where there’s such a vibrant and diverse disabled community so that I really saw the power and the beauty of our community.

And then I became much more comfortable in thinking about how there’s all kinds of activism and all kinds of value. Most of my work is through online communities. There used to be this false divide between different modes of activism. And I do really believe that sharing information, telling our stories, even using Twitter with a hashtag, those are all really effective forms of activism, and they all work well together with other types.

It’s not a contest. They’re not in opposition to one another. They’re just different approaches. So yeah, it took me a long time to be able to say “I’m an activist” out of my own insecurities about what is an Activist with a capital “A.” What does that really mean? Do I even count compared to the other folks who’ve been doing this their entire lives?

So yeah. It’s been ... I’m a constant work in progress, I think.

Ashley: I think you hit on this a little bit: the idea that social media is a really powerful form of activism, and it’s not a contest. Something that I’ve seen a lot recently is this idea that social media activism is not real activism. Like, if you don’t show up, that’s not activism. And I think you touched on that really eloquently, that there are a lot of ways to participate.

And even just like you yourself had to conceptualize this new idea of an activist—because we have these very strict ideas of what they are—but that’s starting to change. Which is really great, ’cause that means that more people can participate and tell their stories.

Alice: Yeah, and I think again, there’s something very ableist about activism in itself where you have to do x, y, z. What does that mean? I think that, what are the normative expectations to be a “real activist”? There are a lot of people with disabilities and a lot of folks that can’t travel. For example, I can’t fly, and I can’t make it to a march, some rallies.

For me, it’s such an expenditure of my own energy and my own safety that I don’t go to rallies; I don’t go to marches. But that doesn’t mean I’m not in solidarity with the folks that do. And I feel like social media has given a lot of people who are really badass organizers and activists online doing the work, doing the labor.

You may not be able to see the labor in the same ways as people holding signs and people wearing their hats, but they are there doing the same work. They may be doing it from their bed, they may be doing it in front of their computer, and they may be doing it at a doctor’s office, you know? So I think there’s a whole lot of invisible, unaccounted-for labor that does happen in online spaces that really people just think of as lazy activism.

Whenever I see that kind of term, “slacktivism” or “lazy activism,” about online activism, I really do see it as an ableist attack. Because for some people, this is their world; this is the world where they are the most empowered. And why is that? It’s because the built environment and other movements aren’t inclusive enough. So we find environments where we are able to have the most potential impact.

Ashley: So I wanna talk a little bit about the built environment because for many of the people listening here, they either work in coffee shops or they own coffee shops or they interact with very physical spaces on a day-to-day basis.

Something that I was thinking about a lot in your article in Eater is the idea of hospitality, and how making barriers to getting things like straws, making exceptions that make it more difficult for you—to have to take another step to get a straw isn’t great hospitality. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what it is like for you to go into coffee shops and to not experience the same type of hospitality in a number of ways, not just in treatment, but in the way that spaces are created for you.

Alice: Yeah. I really [have had] some great experiences at a lot of cafés in my neighborhood. And I just wanna give a shout-out to my neighborhood cafés that I really love in San Francisco in The Mission: I love Sightglass, I love Atlas Café. And I go there because when I go there, it’s not a big deal if I have to ask for help. And I do ask for help for a number of things.

For example, some of the places have higher counters, and I need assistance with people bringing my drink to my table, people adding sugar for me to my lattes, asking people to put a lid on my cup because I can’t grab the lid because they’re usually on a counter that’s too high, and even asking for a straw.

And so far, it’s been when people assist me and it’s not a big deal—that, to me, is great hospitality. Because that’s what it’s all about. It’s not a special thing; it’s just part of good service. And I have been in places where people have really given me very clear non-verbal and verbal communication where I definitely don’t feel welcome.

For example, cafés or restaurants where it might be a smaller space, so my wheelchair might have a little bit of difficulty turning around or moving a chair out of the way. And you can tell sometimes people just give me this look, like they just can’t be bothered. They’ll roll their eyes; they get a little huffy. As if I just take up too much space.

Little things like that really send these messages that somehow, I’m just taking up too much space or that I’m asking for too much. And I think, for the folks who are listening to this podcast, you’re gonna encounter all kinds of people: people who have non-apparent needs. Sometimes you can’t see what their access needs are. Or people like me who are a little bit more apparent in terms of having a different way of moving and being.

And I think what you do is just be as open and as receptive and responsive to their requests, and try to be as accommodating as possible without it being overly unreasonable. And I think that goes a long way, and I think that builds a lot of goodwill with all kinds of people, with all kinds of customers. Because I really want to be a loyal customer. I truly appreciate places where I feel welcome.

And unfortunately, it’s because there have been a lot of bad experiences I’ve had even in San Francisco, such a “progressive” place—it’s not really always that great. So when I do feel welcome, and I do feel like it’s not a big deal when people help me, I will go back again and again because they deserve my patronage.

Ashley: Right. I think something that really just stood out to me is the idea—and you mentioned this earlier—of problematic exceptions. So you can give a straw to somebody if they ask for it, but that is just a step that further marginalizes groups. And I think what really stuck there with me was this idea that you’re being denied the same experience as everybody else. The whole idea is that you should be able to go into a coffee shop and have a drink the way that you can have it and leave.

Alice: Yeah. I think what’s really sad is that these bans, these ideas that these exceptions are good and that we should be satisfied with exceptions because, “Oh, we’ve listened to disabled people. They’re gonna be OK. All you have to do is request one.” And I think what gets kinda lost in that is that it’s assumed that café owners or restaurants are gonna be ... how do they interpret the need and the request?

I mean already, if you just ask people with disabilities their experience in public spaces, a lot of people are questioned all the time about their right to have a service animal, their right to use parking with a placard. I mean there’s a lot of people who just think, “You are not allowed. You are not valid. Your needs are not legitimate.”

And again, it’s this question of who is worthy, and who’s doing the judging? Oftentimes, it’s gonna be non-disabled people in positions where they can judge. And that, to me, is super problematic because there’s no way to enforce—no matter how much training and how much outreach a city does with small businesses about these exceptions, you can’t change the way people behave and think about disability through a ban, through an exception.

And that, to me, is where I know in my gut that there will be cases of people who will request a straw who will have to be answering all kinds of inappropriate, invasive questions about their “medical need” for a straw. And that’s just a downer for a casual hangout with your friends for brunch or for an evening out. People just wanna have a good time, and that, to me, is the total opposite of hospitality.

Ashley: Agreed. And I think that was a really important point for you to put in there, that it’s completely the opposite of hospitality. It’s exactly making people feel uncomfortable for the things that they need.

Shifting gears a little bit, I’m intrigued by people who also like to tell stories because that’s obviously something I really like to do. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about your podcast. What kind of stories do you look to tell? What are the things that have resonated with you the most? And what are you hoping for the future?

Alice: Yeah. You know, there’s just so much within the disability community in terms of issues that we care about and also about our culture that most people don’t know about. And I really wanted to show the huge range and diversity of disabled people and just really increase the diverse representation of what does it mean to be disabled.

As a disabled woman of color, I really don’t see enough people of color who are disabled represented. I think right now, the default image in a lot of, for example, stock images of people with disabilities are practically all white. And if you even look at Hollywood movies, representation of disability, it’s often a wheelchair user, white male or female.

And again, this is where us telling our stories, us really amplifying people that may not have the same reach of visibility, that, to me, is really important. So you know, I talk about political issues. I talk about people just living their lives and their experience. The lived experience, to me, is really important because it’s for us, as a community, for us to be able to see ourselves is incredibly important and powerful.

I think about young folks as well who are just working through their own identities, working through their own stuff. And I also think about non-disabled people who want to be better allies, who want to be better co-conspirators to take down and smash ableism with us, that by listening and learning straight from us, hopefully it’ll make a difference. So having our stories out there on the Internet, who knows who I’ll reach. And I hope that’s why, I’m guessing that’s why you do your podcast as well.

Ashley: Yeah, that’s definitely part of it. Maybe this is a little off-topic, but I just released an episode about abortion, and I’ve never had more people reach out to me. And that felt really wonderful in a way.

Alice: Isn’t it interesting? And as a creator—I don’t know about you, but it’s like you really have no idea the impact your work will make. You put it out there with the best intentions, and it’s amazing, I think. It can’t be underestimated, the ripple effect of just a little story. And that, to me, is just so ... it keeps me going. It really, you know, every time I feel frustrated or that people are shitting on me or criticizing me, I think about, “OK, there has been influence; there has been a difference.” And it makes me feel good. It keeps me going.

Ashley: What would you want people listening to this to take away from listening to you?

Alice: Well, I hope that for the coffee community, that they think about accessibility; they think about inclusion. Whenever they talk about customer service, whenever they talk about hospitality, they think about all kinds of communities that are part of your customer base.

You may not see them. They might not be as apparent to you, but they are part of your customers and maybe potential customers. Whenever you are considering changes to your practices or policies, think about the most marginalized communities. Think about how it will impact them, and hopefully, let that be instructive in how you wanna make changes. So I guess that would be my messages. And just to be kinda open and receptive to changes.

I really wanna give a shout-out to Nick Cho from Wrecking Ball Coffee because when I first started tweeting a lot about the straw ban, he tweeted me, asking me about, “Well, what would be the ideal situation?” And I gave him my advice, and he actually took it to heart.

I suggested that if you make compostable straws readily available, that you also make plastic straws readily available. Or if your compostable ones are by request, then you also offer the option of plastic ones. You know, I guess to quote a line from my essay in Eater, if a café could offer four different kinds of milk and a restaurant can offer 50 types of beer and wine, they can offer two types of straws. And I think it goes a long way toward giving people choices and giving space for all kinds of people to be part of your world.

Ashley: That’s awesome. That is … I’m happy to hear that people are listening to you and taking that advice into account. And like you said, it was as simple as interacting on Twitter and asking for your advice.

Alice: I felt so honored by that because, above all the negative stuff, that ... this is, again, a great example of being open and connected and seeing how there is a difference, where people do change and people are paying attention.

I also wanna thank you for opening your space and allowing me to be here to share my story and hopefully, influencing more people in the coffee community. Because I love coffee! And I definitely want all communities in the food service industry to really think about inclusion and accessibility and how we all may have implicit biases. And to really be open and honest about working through that. And we can do that together.

Ashley: Thank you for being on this show and being so open and honest with us. If people wanna talk to you, or if they wanna reach out to you, what are some ways that they can find your work or engage with you on social media?

Alice: Yeah, sure thing! So for folks who wanna email me, I’m at [email protected]. So email me anytime. And also, I’m on Twitter @sfdirewolf ’cause I’m a fan of Game of Thrones.

Ashley: [chuckles]

Alice: You can also find more about the Disability Visibility Project at DisabilityVisibilityProject.com.

Ashley: I was just there earlier today when I was doing all my questions and notes for this episode, and I was reading the story about the high schoolers who started the disability museum. There’s so many amazing stories on your website. So definitely check those out.

Alice: Oh! Thanks so much! And feel free to be part of the community and join in and just be part of us. I think everybody’s welcome.

Ashley: Yes. And thank you so much, again, just for being here and being open with us.

Alice: If I could also encourage folks who are podcasters who may be listening, another aspect of accessibility that I try to also promote is to make sure that, if you do have the capacity and capability, to include transcripts with your episodes.

Because being just an audio-only format really does exclude a lot of people, not just Deaf people but a lot of people where, for various reasons, audio is not the best way to process information. So podcasts that provide transcripts really do show that they wanna have a broader listenership/readership. So if any of you are podcasters out there, please consider that.

Ashley: Yes, and that is something that will be provided with this episode and hopefully with some backlogged episodes. Because that is not something that we have done in the past, and that is really important, and I’m really glad that you brought that up. Thank you for providing me with a contact for transcription, and that’s something that we will be working on. Like I said, this will be our very first episode that is transcribed.

Alice: Yay!!! See?

Ashley: Yeah. You just have a conversation. Things are getting better.

Alice: And for disability accessibility, that’s what it’s all about.

Ashley: Oh, thank you so much, Alice.

Alice: Oh, thank you so much! I just really enjoyed talking with you today.

Ashley: Me too. Thanks again, friends, for listening.

Alice: All right. Bye!

Thanks for listening, please share with your friends, leave a comment, and I hope you enjoy these treasures from the archives!

Hey friends. For the rest of the year, we're bringing back old episodes of Boss Barista. Part of the reason we’re doing this is because the community of listeners who are part of Boss Barista is so different than it was just a few years ago. But also, many of these episodes carry lessons and ideas that I still carry with me and are worth revisiting. If you haven’t subscribed to the newsletter yet, here’s a handy link to do so:

Below, you’ll find one of the most popular interviews I’ve ever done, and what I think is one of the most transformative conversations Boss Barista has ever aired. This episode features Karla Boza, who owns a coffee farm with her family in El Salvador, and originally aired in July 2019. From the pricing crisis facing coffee farmers to advocating for your work’s worth, Karla’s stories and perspectives have completely changed me—and I hope they change you, too. Here we go:

A few weeks ago, I was honored to attend Re:co, a coffee convention that invites speakers from all over the world to talk about these big ideas in coffee. This year’s conversation was focused on coffee prices and the crisis that we face as the price of coffee dips lower and lower.

I talked to the head of the coffee price crisis response initiative a few weeks ago, so if you want more context on that, listen to the Ric Rhinehart episode a couple of episodes back. But at one of the lunches during the conference, I met Karla Boza, a third-generation coffee farmer in El Salvador.

And the way that she spoke about the coffee crisis was in a way that nobody else was at this conference because it affected her everyday life. She was one of the handful of coffee farmers at this conference talking about coffee prices.

Don’t you think that maybe more of the players affected by the crisis should have been in that room, talking about this crisis? In this conversation that I recorded with Karla, which you’ll hear in a moment, we talk about the flaws in coffee buying. We often applaud coffee roasters—the folks that are on the other end of the supply stream—for being transparent with their prices, but are the prices that they’re paying actually changing the lives of farmers? Mostly, no.

Being transparent doesn’t make a price fair, and oftentimes the business of paying a higher price comes with a demand from a coffee farmer to do something extra for their coffee to stand out or taste different, which ends up costing the producer even more money. In this episode, I urge you to rethink the way that you consider quality, not just in coffee, but in every realm.

Karla’s experiences with coffee buyers—ranging from being tricked by an importer who told them that their coffee was s**t, to another noting that it was a standout from the samples that they were sent—question where quality really comes from, and if we should be basing our price standards on arbitrary markers of quality. This is easily one of the most informative and remarkable conversations I’ve ever had, and I promise we’ll be hearing more from Karla in the near future.

Karla: I am Karla Boza, I am from El Salvador, and I am a coffee farmer. And my farm is San Antonio Amatepec, and it's located in San Salvador, so it's 15 to 20 minutes away from the city, so it's in a pretty urban area.

Ashley: Did you grow up on the farm? Is this a generational family farm?

Karla: I would technically be a third-generation coffee farmer, and [my dad] technically started this farm. He bought it when it used to just be used for grazing, part of it, and there were no trees; nothing. And then another part of it used to be a stone quarry, so then it was sort of like the private stone area for a local architect. Then he would just be blowing up parts of the hill whenever he had a project. So there was nothing there before, and then [my dad started the farm].

I didn’t grow up there. I grew up in the main part of the city and we used to go every other weekend to the farm with my family. I wasn’t ever really taught how to be a coffee farmer. I would just go there to hang out with my family for the weekends.

Ashley: So at what point did you decide that that was something that you and your family wanted to do?

Karla: So my dad had been doing this specifically at this farm since 1969, which is when he bought it, and ever since then he had been working in that. And I don't know really why [my sisters and I] weren't ever really involved up until maybe a few years ago when it was SCA [Specialty Coffee Association of America Expo] in Atlanta.

At that point I had finished college and I had studied sociology, something that wasn't related at all with coffee. I was working at a nonprofit with water projects, so nothing to do [with coffee], right? But my sisters called me and they were like, you know, “Our farm is certified by Rainforest Alliance, so [my dad] sent in some samples and he was invited to the yearly breakfast that they do at SCA.” So then I was like, “Okay, sure, I'll go there with him and support him and everything.”So we went to Atlanta and that's sort of when I started to get more involved. At the SCA, my whole mind was just blown with how incredible the coffee industry is, because we hadn't ever really been involved in specialty coffee. We were growing specialty-quality coffee, but we weren't involved in that area simply because we didn't really know how it worked, or even in my personal experience that it existed.I had gone to specialty coffee shops before, but I didn't really see the difference between that. [I just saw] that maybe they were brewing using certain methods or things like that. So that's sort of where I started to get involved. And I saw how my dad’s coffee, the quality that he was growing, belonged to this other category of coffee that wasn't being recognized.Up until then, what we were doing was that all of the coffee was turned into a local mill. Literally a little truck would show up to your farm, you would load the coffee cherries, and a few days later you would get paid. We never knew where it ended, where the coffee went, who was buying it, at what price it was being sold ... nothing, because we were getting paid at market prices. Every once in a while we would get paid a little bit more because it was Rainforest Alliance-certified.So then at [the SCA] breakfast, we happened to be sitting with this lady who was a Q grader and she happened to remember our coffee. And I was like, “What?!” This whole time we had been told by this local exporter that our coffee was s**t. Literally, that's what he told me. We would ask [the exporter to send samples to the SCA] breakfast and they'd be like, “Oh no, your coffee is so bad that we just mix it in with all of the other coffees, so then we don't really have any traceability for your coffee because it sucks.”So we're like, “You know, okay, whatever. It is what it is.” And then [we wondered], “How come this woman who is a Q grader, who's cupped thousands of coffees, happens to remember this one specific coffee from a shitty farm?” So then we were like, something's wrong here, you know?So then that night I started Googling our farm and I realized that the exporter had been selling our coffee to specialty coffee roasters in the U.K. and they were using everything: They were using our pictures, our story of the farm, my dad's name, a picture of him ... everything. And I was like, whoa. So I asked my dad, “Did you know that this is going on?” And he was like, “What??” He had no idea.So that was part of it. The other part happened the next day when we were going around the show, and my dad found some friends and they were talking, and then this guy—with me standing next to my dad—he goes up to my dad and he's like, “I am so sorry that you only have three daughters, because who's going to look after the farm afterwards?” And I was standing right there and I was like, “What??”

I'm very stubborn, and my sisters are as well, so that's sort of what pushed me to get involved and be like, “No. The next time I see this man, I want to show him that I got involved in something that he thought that I didn't belong in.” So then it was more to prove him wrong and to get the value out of the coffee that we were producing. It was a mixture of things.

Ashley: That's ... this is a story that you have told me before, and I'm still listening to it and I'm like, “Oh my god!” The idea that you would be told that your coffee is terrible and then someone else makes this huge profit off of it. Do you think that's something that happens a lot—the lack of information to farmers being exploited?

Karla: Yeah, definitely. This is our story and it's very sad and everything, but at the same time, what makes it worse is that this is the most common story that you will find across coffee farmers. We have all had this happen to us. It's not something unique to [our farm].

[Farmers may say], “This local exporter is only paying this much,” or “This local exporter is paying that much,” and they are all prices that are just so bad. Then when you talk to roasters or Q graders, they tell you, “Coffee from El Salvador, even if it's grown at a low altitude and it's not well taken care of, and this and that and blah, blah, blah ... it's generally really good-tasting. It's usually—maybe not necessarily specialty [grade], but pretty much up there.”So it's pretty sad to see all of these older people [getting taken advantage of]—because you know, most coffee producers these days are of an older generation. All of these people are the age of my dad, or maybe someone's grandfather. They are all being told these lies that are just horrible. And they're being taken advantage of, either by local exporters or international importers.

Ashley: What does the coffee scene look like in El Salvador right now? You mentioned before that you had been to some specialty coffee shops, but you weren't really sure where your farm fell in that realm until you went to SCA.

Karla: Before there were maybe one or two coffee shops that I didn't even know were considered “specialty” up until now. The thing is that our local market is flooded with really good coffee because we produce it. Even the coffee that is maybe not the best out of that farm, it gets sold locally and it's still pretty good.So without knowing it, everyone here has been drinking really good coffee for a while. But then what's happened recently with the market [being] so bad right now is that a lot of farmers have decided to open up their own coffee shops. Out of nowhere you see all of these coffee shops popping up everywhere, and they have really good coffee. There have also been some roasters that are popping up as well, and they are roasting really well.It's something that I'm so proud of because now not all of the good coffee goes abroad. A lot of it stays here and it's starting to get recognized. All of these coffee shops are starting to have guest roasters come in or they open up cuppings to people so we can start to evaluate our own national product in a way.Just yesterday I was at this mall that just opened near our farm. It's like a strip mall. In the food court area, there's this coffee roaster. So I went in to see if I could offer them samples for coffee and they were just like, “Oh no, thank you for your interest, but this is actually the coffee roastery/coffee shop of a farmer.” So I was like, “What??” It's so cool that everyone is starting to get interested in selling their coffee in the local markets. That's really cool.

Ashley: Something you mentioned earlier is that one of the reasons people are starting to produce and consume more coffee in El Salvador is that the market outside of El Salvador is really bad. Can you talk a little bit about that—what it looks like selling your coffee to exporters?

Karla: Sure. We started selling our coffee independently a year ago. After Atlanta, we were all left with this big question in our mind of what we had to do in order to survive. I started looking into it with my sisters, and we convinced our dad—we don't have our own mills, so we convinced him [to go through] a local privately owned mill that is specialized in processing specialty coffee. We convinced him. We had no idea of what we were doing. We were just angry about the whole situation of people taking advantage of him and everything.So we went through that route and I think that the best thing that has happened to us has been having social media presence. I opened up an Instagram page for our farm, posting pictures every once in a while, commenting on stuff ... the usual. When it was time for the harvest and to start selling our coffee, we had never done this before and there is no manual or instructions and how you become, you know, like a coffee ... not an exporter because we're technically not exporting it ... but like commercializing all of this coffee.So I just started reaching out to people through Instagram because that's what I knew how to do. I started reaching out to some roasters and, fortunately, Girls Who Grind Coffee in the U.K. were interested in our story. We sent them samples and they got back to us pretty quickly, and it was just so amazing to hear this first confirmation of having someone value not just yourself, but having someone else value your coffee and be willing to pay a fair price.Dealing with them has been so incredible because it's been completely transparent and we have both been moving on our ends to see that everything goes well, and that was really cool. For this year, we already had sort of proof that our coffee was valued elsewhere, so we continued the same strategy: going to different shows, sending samples and everything, and it has been pretty good.What we have found that has worked for us the best has been approaching roasters that share the same values that we do. They are interested in transparency, they are interested in female empowerment ... all of these things that we value—sustainability, the environment—and that has been pretty cool.I have also tried to approach importers and it has just been the complete opposite [experience]. I think that we have been talking to some importers since maybe November of last year and they take a month or so to get back to us. Clearly they're not interested, you know?I spoke with this other importer in the U.K. and it was pretty bad. Supposedly their page said that they specialized in selling coffee that was sustainable and that they valued all of these great social and environmental things, then we started talking [to them] and they were like, “We only pay like $115. So that's $1.15 per pound.” And I was like, “What?? If you value all of these things, then you know that that's not enough.”Fortunately we found an importer who we love. They're based in Canada and it's called Mountain Coffee. We're working with them this year to import our coffee to Canada and to parts of the U.S. and they have been great. They came to see the farm, they saw the mill, they met other producers that we really love here, and they were really interested in purchasing coffee in a way that is fair and respectful on both ends.That has been pretty neat. So I think it's sort of the strategy that has worked the best for us has been going on Instagram and sharing our images and everything, and then also looking for partners who have our same values.

Ashley: What does that mean “to purchase coffee fairly,” to you?

Karla: To me it just means not only recognizing monetarily the value of coffee. It’s definitely working outside of the C market, because the C market is not sustainable. It's not realistic. It doesn't reflect the actual value of a coffee.Aside from that, it means going outside of the C market and going outside of scoring numbers. If a Q grader scores your coffee at an 80, which is where you're told that it's “just specialty,” it doesn't mean that it's any less valuable than something else, like something that is scoring higher.Also valuing the local impact that you're having on communities; the fact that you value your workers [and] that you respect them; that you value and respect the environment as well; that you're doing what you can to make the working conditions the best that they can be through your circumstances.That is something that I would also like people who are purchasing coffee to take into account whenever they are purchasing coffee in a way that is fair, taking into account these factors. I don't necessarily have a number [to say], “It needs to be above this or that,” because everyone's costs are different, and the things that they're doing are different as well. So those things change.

Ashley: No, that makes sense. It makes sense to, number one, make it very clear that the cost of production for every farm is very different. Because it's easy to say, “We're paying this much more because the C market is this,” like, that's a number that could cover every farm, which I'm sure is frustrating to see on your end.But I think something that you said that's really interesting is going outside of scoring. So I think something that we talked about—because we met at Re:co in April of this year in Boston—and it feels like roasters will say, “Hey, we're paying more for coffee,” but there is a demand on quality that seems not viable, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that.

Karla: Sure. So when I say to value coffee outside of scoring, I mean that there are other factors that you need to take into account. Just talking about scoring, I mean, we've had our coffee scored by many different people in many different countries, under many different circumstances and I would say that a lot of them are certified Q graders, which sort of standardizes everything despite all of that.And we have still gotten very different results, which personally, I think that that is completely normal because I find this obsession with standardizing coffee almost silly, because from a grower’s perspective, it's almost impossible to have it rain the same amount every year or to get the same amount of sunshine and all of these other factors that we don't have control over.The fact that we get told that we get paid on quality and not even the Q graders can decide on what “quality” is, or the score that we get, or the attributes that we have, or the aftertaste, or “the this or the that.” Out of all of these reports, who do we base it on? Because it's not that they are different in one or two points. It’s that sometimes some people score it at an 81 and others at an 85, you know? Does that mean that the person [that said it was] an 81 who was also a Q grader ... I don't know. Those things, they just don't make much sense to me.And I think that it's also very unfair because I think that this obsession with standardization and coffee and making everything repeatable and all of that doesn't happen at origin, and I don't think that it happens in roasting either. You can get two very similar cups of coffee and that's great, but they won't be identical.At the point when it touches the barista's hands, they won't be able to make the same espresso or the same pour-over twice. It can be very similar, but it won't be the same, and just because they taste differently, it doesn't mean that the value is different. Coffee goes through so many different hands that you can't make it the same twice. And I think that is something that, instead of penalizing it in [the coffee score], we should value it and be like, “Wow, I had this one really good cup of coffee,” and just keep it in your mind, then value it for what it was, because it's going to happen once and that's okay.

Ashley: Right. Does it happen often where maybe you're working with a roaster or an importer and they make a demand or request for a value add, like, “If you try doing this, we'll pay more. If we try doing this sort of growing process, we'll pay more,” and are those requests viable?

Karla: A few years ago (well, maybe last year), I was talking with some roasters and they were like, “Do you have any fermented coffee? Do you have any of this?” or something like that. And I was like, “Guys, we don't even have our own mill, so no, we don't have our own fermented coffee. We are barely learning how to make naturals and how to process [honey processed coffee] this year, so we haven't gotten there yet.” And they'd be like, “Well, you know, if you did this one type of fermentation with this one type of yeast, it would all work out and your coffee would be so great and this and that.”And, you know, I really value their opinion and I’m sure that they are great at roasting, but that's what they know how to do. You know? And I don't know how to ferment coffee. I know for a fact that they don't know how to ferment coffee either, so the fact that they're putting this pressure [on us] for those stories, I don't think that it's safe.I am thankful and fortunate that I have this background in sociology that makes me question everything a thousand times more so that I'm not as susceptible to going out of my way and being like, “Okay, this year, we're going to ferment our coffee, even though we don't know what we're doing and we're just going to do it.” You know?But I know that other people—other farmers—they don't have this mindset. It's like power structures. [The farmers] value the input of roasters and importers a lot more than their own experience and their own judgment and what they know how to do. So then if you have someone who has this purchasing power come and tell you, you need to ferment your coffee, I am sure that a lot of them, without having a clue of how to do it, are going to go out of their way and do it.Maybe they'll get lucky and they'll do it really great, but most likely they won't. It puts a lot of pressure on producers to sort of jump whenever a roaster or importer tells them to jump, even though maybe that's not what they're used to doing. So it's good if you are telling people good meaning, well-meaning suggestions like, “Maybe you can try this,” or, “I have seen this [at] another farm,” but not give it as an absolute truth or demand.

Ashley: Right. It's interesting that you talk about the idea of power structures, because I think you're absolutely right that when a roaster asks a farmer to do something, like try a naturally processed method or to grow something like this, it's really a play of power to say, “We will pay you more,” because there's always money involved and it's impossible to ignore that.

Karla: Exactly.

Ashley: So how do we remove that power from roasters? I mean, maybe “remove” isn’t the right word, but how do we start to acknowledge the fact that this is a system based on power structures?

Karla: I think that what is happening right now with the coffee crisis, I have noticed that it has made a lot of producers very angry. It's the good type of anger that makes you become a lot more aware of where you stand and what is fair and what isn't. I have seen [the farmers] become a lot more aware and be like, “You know what? I am not going to sell my coffee for 70 cents a pound after processing. I am not going to do this because someone told me to. I am not going to do that simply because it's the best thing that I can get at the moment.”They're starting, I think, to respect themselves a lot more out of this frustration and this anger and this lack of recognition. Even though it's something horrible that is happening right now, because a lot of people are really struggling and they're really suffering, but at the same time, this has made them realize that we are the base of this whole industry, and without our well-being—without our survival—no one else is going to have a job.It has sort of made them realize that they are definitely needed and that they need to be definitely valued a lot more. I think that it sort of starts with that: having producers become aware of their role in the industry and how much they're needed and how they also get to have a say in everything that happens. Just because someone is offering you a dollar for a pound of coffee after processing, while the C market is at 90 cents, that's still not a good price, and you shouldn't feel the pressure to sell your coffee simply because someone tells you to.I understand that sometimes the situation forces you to do something that you don't want, but as long as you are aware of what you should be receiving and how much you deserve to be valued, I think that that is a start to sort of changing these power dynamics that are happening.

On the other end of importers and roasters, I think that if you simply talk to a producer—I understand that a lot of the times there is a language barrier and that it's really hard, but—as long as you're asking questions and you see farmers as real-life human beings with families, with a job that is supporting your own livelihood as a roaster, I think that you start to value people more for who they are instead of just some random person within the coffee chain.I think that slowly, that is maybe how you can start to change these power dynamics, but it definitely needs to start with the empowerment of coffee producers.

Ashley: One thing that really struck me when I first met you ... we were at Re:co, which is a big conference bringing all these coffee thinkers together, talking about big issues in coffee. This particular Re:co was about the coffee price crisis, and when I talked to you, you seemed angry, and I wonder what it's like to be in a room in a non-producing country, mostly surrounded by people who don't grow coffee, talking about a problem that affects you directly.

Karla: Yeah, that was pretty shocking. Fortunately this year I had the opportunity to be a Re:co Fellow, which is something that I'm really thankful for because it opened the doors to an event that I had really always wanted to attend because it just seemed so cool. This year the topic was the C market.Wow. People who have a say in this are talking about something that's really important and that affects me.So I got there, really excited, and once I started seeing that even though the whole topic was the C market and how hard it is to be a farmer these days, there were no farmers in the room other than maybe a few people. If you're going to be talking about someone, then I think that someone needs to be in the room, especially if you're supposedly discussing how to help them out and how to realize the struggles that they're going through.So that was really shocking to see. At the same time, this is the Specialty Coffee Association. So we're supposedly talking about this coffee that gets paid pretty well based on quality and everything else that we have been talking about that isn't always so simple. Right?

And we were in those rooms when they asked us to have the group sessions and everyone was just going on about how maybe we needed to create not a C market, but an “S market” for specialty coffee. And I was like, “What??” You know? This is what got us here in the first [place]. Why are we replicating something that we know for a fact doesn’t work?

And then someone else was like, “Where are we going to base this market at?” And then someone else was like, “We don't need to base it anywhere, physically, it can be the internet.” And I was like, “Whoa whoa whoa,” you know? We're all talking about these things that don't really matter as much right now, because right now we're in a crisis and this is not something that we're going to solve in a day, but it's something that we need to be talking about for what it is and not replicate the same systems that have brought us here in the first place.Surprisingly enough for me, [in this conversation] I didn't know where I stood, because if these were the big thinkers in the room and these were their concerns, then I don't know what I am as a coffee farmer because I don't see my future in there and it doesn't seem very good for me at the time or in the future, according to what they were saying.I was so surprised that the only people who cared about this were the people from Walmart. I was like, “This is just so wild.” You know? The things that we hear about this company are pretty bad usually. They are known for the horrible things that they do, and yet their employees, their representatives are the only ones who seem to care.And they were asking a lot about the conditions of what it is to be a coffee producer, our costs, what we were doing, what they could do. I was like, “You know, there's Walmart in El Salvador and [you could] actually open up your shelves for local roasters of specialty and non-specialty coffee to put their products in.” So that was pretty helpful. [The representatives said], “We feel bad because we represent Walmart.” And I was like, “Actually, don't, because you are doing a lot more than a lot of the people who supposedly should care more and who are supposedly more in tune with ethical things. They’re doing a lot more.In the case of El Salvador, at least, I know the person who roasts the coffee for McCafé, which is the coffee side of McDonald's, and they are paying a lot more for coffee than a lot of specialty importers are. So it's just this wild situation where the people who were supposed to be responding to this crisis weren't, and the other people who are often the “villains” of everything in the world were [comprehending better] what is going on. So yeah, that was a really weird experience for me, but it was very eye-opening as well.

Ashley: What has the coffee price crisis done specifically to you and your farm? How has it affected you?

Karla: Our farm [has] stopped working maybe about a third of the coffee farm, because it's just not viable anymore. We have also had to lay off a lot of people. And every year we used to give everyone [raises] and this year—well, for the past two years —we haven't been able to do that. So, that has affected their households as well. It has been pretty bad.Then we have also had to take out a bunch of loans from the bank. In El Salvador there are only two banks that are giving loans for coffee because it's so risky right now, and the interest rates that they offer are extremely high. And one year we were only able to pay the interest rates and not really pay our loans, so that sucked as well. We lost maybe over $500,000 U.S. dollars just in that.So yeah, it's been pretty bad. And this is the best-case scenario for El Salvador right now because we're also part of a local co-op and they are really good. They are maybe one of the best functioning co-ops in El Salvador right now. They're very transparent. They're very efficient. They have their own roastery, so they make a lot more earnings.And despite that, since so few people are turning in coffee—because a lot of them have shut down their farms—their productivity has gone down, so that has impacted everyone else's prices. That has impacted us a lot as well because that used to be sort of a more stable way to sell our coffee and now it isn't. So yeah, definitely a lot of bad things.

Ashley: Yeah, no, none of that sounds good.

Karla: Yeah.

Ashley: It’s pretty jarring to hear it all laid out like that too, and I think it bears repeating because I think that still this hasn't landed for a lot of people.

Karla: Yeah. I think that a lot of people know that something is going on, but they don't really know what it is, and I think that those would be the majority of the people that are more aware. But generally I think that people don't know how bad it is and how we're not being very dramatic about this.Like what I just told you, it's not even the worst. It just ... it is what it is, and it's our reality. And like I said, we are one of the best-case scenarios of farms right now in El Salvador. A lot of [farms], they just shut down and they locked the gates of the farm, they fired everyone, and that's it.It's so ironic because this is something that my dad tells us all the time, that his friends who used to be coffee producers, the ones who shut their farms [down] about three to four years ago, are doing a lot more, they are a lot healthier, they feel a lot safer financially than people who are still in coffee right now. So he's like, “What if I would've just shut down the farm a few years ago? We wouldn't be in this situation right now.”But then he takes it all back and he's like, “Well, but then four or five families wouldn't have a job, and maybe 20 or 30 people who are seasonal workers wouldn't have a job, and then the 20 or 30 coffee pickers that come for the harvest wouldn't have a job either. So yeah, it's pretty bad. It's actually really bad right now, the situation.

Ashley: So what does viability look like for you? How do we begin to change that trajectory?

Karla: This is maybe our last year that we will be working the farm if it doesn't work out. [My sisters and I] have become a lot more involved and we have been going to fairs because we have realized that's the only way that you can make a human connection with roasters and with importers and that has paid off pretty well.So we're selling our coffee definitely at a higher price than the C market. But then we still have to see if that's enough, and if it's not, then I think that this might be the last year that we're working the farm. That's something that we're facing at the moment.

Ashley: That's really incredibly real and I'm honored that you shared that because, again, people aren't realizing quite how serious this is: Coffee will be gone. I'm feeling a little lost for words, honestly, because you are the base of the whole industry, which you just said too. And I don't know why we haven't reacted appropriately.

Karla: I think that it's just this lack of empathy, really, that is part of the problem. Because, for example, once you get to know about what is going on and what happens ... you're a person and you're a good person, so that causes something in you when you start asking all of these questions, and I think that's part of what needs to happen as well.If you are a coffee shop owner and you get your coffee from elsewhere, ask your roaster how much they're paying for coffee. If you're a roaster ask your importer how much they're paying for your coffee. If you're an importer, ask your coffee producers how much they're spending on producing this coffee. I think that by asking these questions, you start to humanize coffee a lot more.You start seeing that behind coffee there is the life of the barista, the life of the roaster, the life of the importer, the life of the coffee farmer, the life of the coffee transporter, the life of the coffee picker, and everyone else. There are just so many people that depend on this crop and there is no room for us to be selfish about it and not be transparent either.

Ashley: Is there anything else that you want people to know about you and your farm?

Karla: Yeah. I would like everyone to know that our doors are open. If you want to come and visit, let us know. I think that people also need to maybe see for themselves what is going on. If you prefer another country you can ask me and, if I know someone there, I can ask them. If you have any questions, my Instagram is public.You can ask me whatever you want to know about coffee production, because I really do believe that as long as this information is out there and as long as it's accessible and as long as people are at least slightly interested in finding out what's going on, then things can change.So if you have any questions: ask them. Don't be afraid. Don't be scared. Don't be embarrassed. There is room for everyone in the industry to grow and to be better about what we're doing and how we're doing things. Like I said, a lot of people depend on this and we all deserve to be recognized for what we do because we're all doing a great job and that needs to be recognized.

Ashley: Karla, thank you so much for being on the show and thank you for sharing your stories.

Karla: No, thank you for being interested [in me] telling these stories about things that happen in this industry. If there's anything else, just let me know.

Ashley: I know, I already have a list of questions I want to ask you for a follow-up.

Karla: And just one more thing, because I don't want this to be depressing and horrible for whoever listens to this. I go to a lot of these meetings in coffee and it's usually a lot of older, older men who are very negative about how things are looking and they feel very sad about how it is.Like I said, our story is not unique. It's very common for a lot of people, but fortunately despite all of this, you know, you've heard me laughing throughout this whole interview and it's not that I think it's funny. It's just that we have this saying in El Salvador, “No se dona, para se goza,” [which loosely translates to], “Maybe you're not winning, but at least you're enjoying it.”So it's sort of like making the most out of things, you know? So whenever you go to these meetings, you hear all of these men laughing about how ridiculous it is that someone offered them a dollar per pound for their coffee. They're just crying—crying out of laughter because it's just so ridiculous.So we're definitely struggling, that's very true, but our take on things has been to adapt to the situation, to see what we can do to move on, because this is something that we love to do. We would give anything—well, we're giving everything that we have to keep working the coffee farms. It's something that we genuinely love doing and that we do with a lot of pride. Even though things are really bad, we're making the best out of what we have. So even though it's pretty bad, we're still enjoying it as much as we can.

Ashley: That's nice that you were so generous to help end on a positive note. That was very kind of you.

Karla: You know, it's not like the most positive thing, but yeah.

Ashley: Well, thank you again for being here and it was an honor to talk to you.

Karla: Yeah, no problem. And just let me know if you need anything else, if you have any more questions, or if you'd like to discuss anything else as well.

Thanks for listening, please share with your friends, leave a comment, and I hope you enjoy these treasures from the archives!

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When Frankie Volkema and her father, Tim, decided to become Q graders, they didn’t know how much that single decision would influence their future.

The Q grading certification is a coffee education and tasting test meant to standardize how professionals judge coffees for defects, flavors, flaws, and other traits, in order to make growing and buying decisions.

Frankie, at the time, was 13 years old. She would become the world’s youngest Q grader. She’s 15 now, and still holds that title, but the Q grading class also introduced her to a very important fact about coffee: 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.

Frankie and Tim started Joven Coffee, a line under Tim’s existing coffee brands, Schuil Coffee and Sparrows Coffee, that showcases coffees from young producers. All the farmers that Frankie and Tim work with are under the age of 35, and together, they’ve created a specific market for their coffees.

Buying coffee from Joven means directly supporting the next generation of farmers. In an industry that easily veers toward the esoteric, Frankie and Tim Volkema haven’t just raised important issues, but have presented them in a way that’s easy and digestible for drinkers—and that’s never been more critical. Here are Frankie and Tim Volkema:

Ashley: Every now and then we have more than one person on the show. We have two people joining me today. I was wondering if we could start by having Frankie introduce herself.

Frankie: I'm Frankie Volkema. I am the youngest Q grader in the world. I became a Q grader through spending a lot of time working with coffee. [My dad] and I did that as a bonding thing to become Q graders together, me and my dad.

He can probably tell you more about Schuil Coffee and our coffee companies, but I'm also the founder and brand ambassador of Joven Coffee, which is a line under Sparrows Coffee.

Ashley: And then Tim, if he could take it from there.

Tim: Sure. So I'm the owner of Schuil Coffee, Joven Coffee, and Sparrows Coffee. I got into the coffee business almost five years ago and I came in through an acquisition of Schuil Coffee, which is a 40-year-old coffee company that was started by Gary and Gladys Schuil. I have a kind of boring business background before that.

Ashley: I think it's funny that you say “boring,” but I'm like, “What did you do before?”

Tim: I'm happy to go into it if you want.

Ashley: I would love to hear that. I think those things are super interesting to me.

Tim: I came into coffee directly from Amazon, actually. That was my most recent employer prior to coffee. Right out of undergrad, I went into finance consulting. I did mergers and acquisitions for Deloitte. Then I went back to business school at Kellogg, which is Northwestern's business school, just outside Chicago.

Then I went to Kraft Foods for five years, and then I started, with a partner, an Indian version of Chipotle called Kasa. That's in San Francisco and that still exists. My partners now own it and operate it. I went to Amazon and then we moved back to Michigan for family reasons. My wife's family and my family are both from here. We both grew up here and then left for a long period of time and came back.

That's when I was looking for my next thing. And just looking at a bunch of different opportunities, and Schuil was the right kind of company at the right stage in its transition. It just sort of worked out, and I'm super grateful that it did.

Ashley: I'm eager to hear both of your different experiences with this question. This is a question I ask almost everybody when they come on the show, so I'll start with Frankie: What was it like growing up with coffee in your life? Do you remember coffee from a young age?

Frankie: My parents have always drank coffee since I've been alive, but I never really paid much attention to it. It was just always an adult drink. I never tried it really until my dad bought Schuil. And then I was around it a lot.

I just heard about it a lot. My parents started to get really into it, and looking at different origins and different [roast] levels of coffee. I learned more about it through kind of eavesdropping and just being around Schuil. There are a lot of posters up on the walls about where coffee comes from and how to produce coffee. So I've kind of learned through that, and that pretty much sparked my interest for coffee.

I didn't really know much about coffee or really cared about it until around sixth grade, around age 11. But then after that, my interest for coffee really grew and I started to learn a lot more about it.

Tim: And you were sort of trapped at Schuil because it was like, a babysitting thing.

Frankie: I couldn't get anywhere. You had to watch me.

Ashley: And you became the youngest Q grader at 13, is that correct?

Frankie: Yes, that is correct.

Ashley: Did you pass the Q exam the first time?

Frankie: In the first week that we were there, I passed all the tests except for one of the cuppings. Then I had to go travel a couple months later to a different class, to just pop in and retake the cupping—which is a coffee tasting—afterwards. That's when I passed the Q, but yeah, it was a couple months later than the first class.

Ashley: That's wild. That's so cool. We'll come back a little bit more to how you two started taking the Q grading exam together, but Tim, I was wondering if you grew up with coffee in your life?

Tim: Not really, to be honest. My parents were never big coffee drinkers, and I don't think … I'm always amazed at how young people nowadays get into coffee. I don't think I had my first cup of coffee ’til after college, actually. I distinctly remember it was at a Starbucks in Chicago because it was right before an interview that I had coming out of college and I was like, “I should probably—I'm like an adult now, I should probably try this.”

It came to me later in life. Then as I lived in these other larger, bigger cities, obviously there was like, a really amazing coffee shop on every corner. [That was around when] the third-wave coffee movement was taking place as I was getting through my 20s and 30s.

I got really into coffee as a consumer, but really didn't know anything behind the scenes. I had no idea what scoring was. I really didn't know why I liked what I liked. I just sort of went with—I just tried a bunch of things and I was like, “Oh, I think I like Blue Bottle,” but I couldn't have told you why.

Ashley: I think something that you said, Frankie, that's really interesting that I want to go backwards a little bit on is: Tim, you buy Schuil and obviously you have your kids around. I was wondering what it was like to have a coffee business, but also have a family and have children grow up in that business.

I don't think that we have a lot of examples of that in the coffee industry right now. So I wonder what it was like for you to have this business that's maybe not a family business, but at the same time, you're like, “Well, this is my family business. They're always here all the time. The people around me are growing up around it.”

Tim: I guess it would have been like any kind of business that we were in. It was just our circumstance that we have three kids and they all have different schedules. We used the business as a dropping-off point where Frankie would come after school and she would do homework and whatever and watch Netflix.

At some point though, we were doing a cupping and I was like, “Why don't you just try this?” I think you said, “I don't think I want to.” And then you did and you were really good at it.

We were working with another person, David Poole. He's a longtime coffee person who lives in LA, and he was helping us. When I first came into the business, I recognized that I really didn't know anything about coffee and I better get smart about this if I'm going to do a good job at it. We have a mutual friend from Equator Coffees—Helen Russell—and she introduced me to David.

David would come in periodically during the beginning, especially helping us evaluate our green [coffee] program. He was really our green coffee consultant at the beginning. And he was pretty surprised at your ability to pick up notes and articulate them at your age. He was, I would say, a catalyst certainly for your interest in this idea that you might want to get your Q.

Ashley: When was that?

Tim: You were 11?

Frankie: Probably 11, maybe 12.

Ashley: Do you remember this Frankie?

Frankie: Yeah, I do actually. I don't know if it was the second [cupping] I did or the first one, but I just remember one where—and it was in, we had a remodel at Schuil since then, so it was in the old Schuil cupping lab, which is also the break room.

We had the cups set up on a table and I was really nervous because I was like, “Oh no, they're going to judge me if I don't know what I'm doing.” I know it was just supposed to be fun, but I know I put some pressure on myself like that.

I remember everything and thinking like, “Oh, this is so fun that I get to be with all these adults.” And I remember tasting one of the cups and being like, “This is really woody. I feel like I taste some wood in there,” and they were like, “Wow, that's a great tasting note, Frankie.” I was like, so proud of myself. I remember that specifically.

Ashley: That's wild that at 11, you were able to articulate the term “woody.” Maybe when you're 11, you're closer to an age where maybe you put your mouth on a tree or something—maybe that's where that comes from [Laughs]—but that's still pretty impressive to be able to make that connection.

You mentioned that at that cupping that's when people identified like, “Oh, hey, Frankie can really taste these notes.” At what point did you two decide to take your Q grading exam together?

Frankie: It just started out of curiosity. We weren't like, right after that coming for more like, “Oh, let's take the Q together.”

After that [cupping], my dad was like, “Do you genuinely enjoy doing the cuppings and coffee tastings?”

I was like, “Yeah, I think it's fun. It's cool that I a little bit know what I'm doing.” So we looked into it. And we talked to David too. We said, “Is there an age limit? Or could this be a possible thing for us to do together?” That's when we started looking into it.

As we learned more about the Q and about what it entailed, we started to get more excited about it as a possible thing for us to do together and a way for us to learn a lot more about coffee in general. So I feel like it was probably a month later that we decided to sign up for the course and started tasting coffees more and preparing for that course.

Ashley: So you two take this course together and you learn some pretty transformative information during that time, right?

Frankie: Mhmm.

Ashley: Tell me about that.

Frankie: The course was six days—three days of classes, and then three days of testing. The classes consisted of a lot of general coffee knowledge to tell us about coffee processing methods, about producers, about the coffee plant itself.

We did tastings and we talked through the tastings and what things to look for [with] certain scores. We also did the practices of the tests that we would be taking in the last three days. The majority of the chunk that was just general coffee knowledge was really informative because we learned all about the processing methods, like I said, and things that will help us connect with coffee and actually help you in the tests later, because then you can think about like, “Oh, what region is this coffee from? What kind of notes would it have? What kind of defects or imperfections might be common in this coffee?” and just things like that.

Tim: And they went off-script a little bit, which was nice just to talk about the supply chain—the farmers and the co-ops and the exporters and the importers. That was also helpful. And that's what sort of led us into this discussion around the aging farming population, especially in Central and Latin America.

Ashley: Frankie, can you speak a little to that—about age and coffee farmers?

Frankie: When we were in that coffee course, one of the main things they told us was that there was a problem in the coffee industry, and that was that the average age of a coffee farmer was about 55 or 56, and that was too old.

There weren't enough young people that wanted to take over their parents’ or family’s business, because they didn't see it as a viable career option. They didn't think they would be able to make enough money.

We heard about that and we were like, “That's a problem.” We want to help get more young people in the coffee industry and then make sure they can also make enough money.

Ashley: So you take this Q grading exam and you learn this information, and then I imagine you go home—what do you do with that? How does that ruminate in your head?

Frankie: At first we just talked about it a lot. I remember being at the course and saying, “Well, that's really interesting. We never heard about this, as coffee consumers, and as a coffee roasting company, we had never heard about this issue.” We didn't really have any means to do anything about it at that point and I hadn't even gotten my Q yet since I failed the first time, since I failed one of the cuppings. So then I had to finish it, but we wanted to do something about it, but we really hadn't formed an idea yet.

Later we were invited to go on a trip to Colombia to talk to young producers and to talk to young farmers and taste our coffee and see coffee farms. That was a confirmation that we're actually going to do something,

Tim: I would say it was a progression too. So it was more of just a side comment at the Q, and then once you've got Q, we started connecting the dots a bit later—on that you would be a really good person to have this conversation, because of your age. So it came together, I'd say, a little bit later, but the seed was absolutely planted probably when we were at the Q.

Ashley: It's interesting that you mentioned that being not necessarily a throwaway comment, but just something that was mentioned as a fact about coffee—that the average age of coffee farmers is in their mid-50s, and that's going to be a problem because young people aren't taking over farms.

Obviously what makes you stand out is that you took that information and you took action. So at what point did Joven start to really formulate as a concrete idea?

Frankie: I would say that the idea of Joven formed a little bit before we went on our trip to Colombia in November of 2019. We had an idea that we wanted to do something, and that something would be some form of our own line of coffee, or something that would support these young farmers specifically.

So I went down to Colombia to talk to a certain co-op that we knew had a young producers program, so we knew about that before we went down, but then the name for Joven and the exact thing—we're going to have a line and we're going to have only coffees produced by this criteria, by [farmers] ages 35 and younger, and it has to score an 84 or above—all came a little later, after we had solidified the first group of young farmers.

Ashley: What's your elevator pitch for Joven? When someone asks you, “What is Joven?” what is the response that you give people?

Frankie: I'll usually tell people that Joven is a line of coffee that celebrates and showcases young coffee farmers’ talent. We sell coffee from farmers ages 35 and younger to ensure that young farmers are getting paid for their coffee. We only buy coffees that score 84 or higher to make sure that it is high-quality coffee, so that the farmers get a good price for their coffee and can make a living off of coffee farming.

Ashley: What is it like when you tell people about Joven’s mission? Because I know for me as a coffee professional, I've read that statistic before—that there's a problem in coffee with people not taking over farms, that farmers are getting older and older—but as you said, that was new information to you at the Q grading exam. Also, I can't imagine that most consumers know that. So I imagine that part of your mission is almost like a public awareness campaign.

Frankie: Yeah, that's a huge part of it because the only people that really know about that statistic and this issue are people already in the coffee industry, and even some roasters don't even know about it.

I think especially in the U.S. and on the consumer end, it's something that nobody knows about and that's mainly part of our goal: to get people aware of the issue and what's happening so that we can get more people interested in, more people to buy coffee from us, but then also other roasters to be like, “Hey, I want to get in on this issue. I want to help out. I want to start selling coffee from young producers specifically,” and have that become a bigger thing that people want to support and want to become more of a widespread thing that people want to donate their money to.

Ashley: So most people buy coffee—you’ve mentioned grading, you’ve mentioned scores. Most people probably buy coffee based on those scores, they cup a coffee, they give it an 84, 85, 86, whatever … they'll make buying decisions that way.

What was it like when you first approached the importers that you were working with and said, “Hey, we actually have kind of a different goal. We want to buy these coffees from young producers that score this amount.” Was that a question that they had ever gotten before, or had anyone ever asked about young farmers?

Frankie: I think when we went to Colombia and we talked to these co-ops, they gave us the impression that [it was] not very many roasters. We were one of the first roasters that had ever specifically asked for coffee from young farmers and was specifically interested in this issue.

They were really excited about us being there and we're really excited to showcase their coffee. I think just to answer that question, yeah. We were like the only people that were really interested in that specific issue.

Tim: This is a problem they're obviously well aware of. They have these programs where they're training young farmers to produce better coffee so they can get better pricing. And that's amazing, but to develop a market in the U.S. that was, like Frankie said, I don't think that, to our knowledge, has been a priority for any other roasters up to this time.

Ashley: Yeah, that's a good point, what you were saying: that this is an issue that many people in producing countries are well aware of, and we can certainly treat it from that level, from the producing end and encouraging more young people to get into farming on that end, but there has to be a market for it as well. So I imagine that's where Joven kind of thinks about—not only are we buying these coffees from young farmers, but we're also creating a whole new market for them as well.

Frankie: Exactly.

Ashley: That's something that I find really interesting just about your business model in general, with Schuil and Sparrows—is that you have experience in branding things for different audiences. So was that something that felt intuitive or natural for you folks to do?

Tim: Did it feel natural for you, Frankie?

Frankie: Yeah. My goal was always to push the young farmers thing. I guess it felt natural for me to be like, “This is my purpose. This is Joven’s purpose.” If you are somebody who cares about cause-based things or wants to help a certain cause or secure the future of coffee and make sure you have coffee to drink in the future, then you'll like our product.

Tim: I say for me, it did feel natural, especially because coffee is segmented in a way that you're seeing in other coffee companies, really large ones, be very specific in their messaging.

So one example I would use is Death Wish where they have Robusta [coffee] and it's highly caffeinated. That's the message that they push now. Is that going to speak to me? No, it won't, but there is a segment of coffee drinkers that it really does speak to, and they've had great success there. So we're like, “How can we use that same sort of segmentation and specific messaging to reach an audience for this purpose?” That's really how we thought about it.

Ashley: I love that because I think for a lot of coffee roasters, we kind of focus on a singular message of quality—not to say that that's bad, that's obviously a good pursuit, but quality involves a lot of buy-in.

It involves a consumer already having a base knowledge to understand what quality is, especially when we're facing consumers who probably come into coffee shops and they're like, “I just want a cup of coffee.” So can we segment people in a way that matters to them.

I can imagine making a decision about coffee as a consumer, if I don't know a lot about coffee and saying like, “Okay, I don't know the difference between this Ethiopian coffee and this Colombian coffee, but I understand that I want coffee in the future and I want to invest in coffee's future. So I go in to buy this coffee that supports young farmers.”

Frankie: What's been really interesting for me, what I've seen of the consumers of Joven, is that it's not all just people that are really into coffee or that go to Madcap every day and want that super high-quality coffee.

It's a lot of people that hear about the story and are really interested in it and have never—they always drink whatever coffee in the morning. But since they've heard about Joven and about the issue that we're pushing, they have been drinking our coffee and have been like, “Wow, this is really good. I've never had coffee this good before, and I've never appreciated coffee for what it is and for the farmers that are producing it.”

I think that's just really cool to see people that have never thought about coffee in this way before be transformed because of Joven’s mission.

Ashley: Right? You've almost given people an accessible point for them to engage with your coffee, but then it opens up the door for another experience. They're able to say, “Oh, I bought this coffee initially because of this, but now I'm learning so much about how coffee can taste—let me take that next step.”

You're almost bringing in the next wave of coffee drinkers in a way.

Frankie: I would say so.

Ashley: I think you are!

What does it feel like, being the spokesperson for this brand? Because I mean, part of the brand is that you are a young person. Are you excited to be that spokesperson, that front person?

Frankie: Yeah. I love it. I love being the person that people ask me questions about Joven. I love being the person that people are like, “I'm so happy. I'm so proud of you with your coffee. And I love your mission so much.”

I love to be able to share that too, because I've always been a public speaker. I've always liked public speaking and doing speeches and talking in front of groups of people and stuff like that. So for me to also use that talent that I have to share this message and to talk about what I'm passionate about and make sure that people know about it has been a really cool experience for me.

I'm really grateful that I have this opportunity. And yeah, it's just really exciting for me.

Ashley: I was about to say, I was thinking about when I was 15 and I was like, I don't know if I could do this right now, be on a podcast. So that just landed for me—how well you do public speaking, which is awesome. It makes sense that that's something that you're passionate about.

How do you folks talk about the future? Because you obviously do Joven, you work with these farmers, but I imagine part of the business model is always thinking ahead.

Frankie: I would say that our main goal for the future is to get this awareness of the issue of young farmers out there, and to get more consumers interested in it, and to also get more roasters to support that issue and start selling coffee from young farmers and to create this market for this young talent.

[We want to] make that a more widespread thing, that a lot of consumers know about and that more people want to support. We’re not trying to be selfish and like, “We want to be the only coffee company that sells young farmers’ coffee. We want that to be our thing.” We want everybody to know about it and for everybody to start supporting it so that we can all support the future of coffee.

Tim: Specifically we would, along those lines, like to essentially force the hand of more co-ops and importers to sponsor projects like this.

We started out buying, you know, not a small percentage, but less than half of this co-op’s—Cafe Norte—output of their young producers program, and heavens, I mean, it's not all of it, but it's almost all of it now.

Frankie: Like 80% or something.

Tim: The more that we can do that, the more demand there is for this, I think it's going to be really great when we start to see more of these programs pop up, because they know that it will get purchased.

Ashley: I think what you mentioned earlier—getting more roasters interested in this project—is really, really pivotal. It seems like you folks think about this issue from a really multi-faceted level.

Tim: We’re trying to. Certainly, and again, as Frankie's said earlier, we're a business—we want to be successful of course, and spread the word about this issue, and sell coffee along the way. But that's not really the reason we're doing it. We're not trying to be this enormous—Joven's not really designed to be this enormous company.

It's more designed as the front-runner on the education side, and then if it gets larger, that's great. If other roasters follow us, that's also great, it's not really about trying to build this one entity into as big as it can be. It's more about trying to get this issue out there.

Ashley: Right. Exactly. What's it like working with each other?

Frankie: I love it. For me and my dad to bond over this is a really great thing because I mean, he has other things with my siblings where he can bond with them and spend time with them. But for us to have this thing where we traveled to Colombia together, that was super fun. We do cuppings together and to have this thing to connect over, especially since he's busy with work, I'm busy with school, so it's easy for us to not be able to spend any time together or just to be like, “I'm going to hang out with my friends, I'm too busy for you or whatever.”

It's nice to be like, “Well, now we're doing this thing together.” So we have to spend time together and then we can bond. And I don't know. I really like it. For him to be kind of my boss or my mentor, I guess, and be really good at cupping and for us to be able to talk through that, it's just a blessing.

Ashley: I'm always really into how people work together. I think it's really interesting that you're obviously father and daughter, and you have this one very specific relationship, but then you have this other way that you connect with each other that's totally independent of that, but still is obviously informed by your father/daughter relationship.

Tim: Yeah. I love it because there's only so much detail a teenage girl's going to go into with her dad on how her day was, you know? I'm just being realistic here and saying that it's nice to have this additional stream of content that we have in common, that it's helpful for us to, or it just facilitates more time spent together, and it gives us a good excuse to travel together. Selfishly, that's been a really cool part of it.

Ashley: What would you count as some of your biggest successes?

Frankie: I think my biggest success is Joven for sure, because it's me being able to take something that I'm good at—coffee tasting and being a Q grader—and being able to take that and use it for good and use it to better our world.

I think that's a success for me, even if Joven doesn't grow as much or we or I don't end up doing coffee for the rest of my life, since I still have a lot of it left. I just think it's already a success that we've been able to reach this many people through Joven and hopefully more. Yeah, that's my biggest success.

Ashley: What about within Joven? Are there any particular relationships that you've fostered or any coffees that you've sold that you've been like, “Yeah, this is cool.”

Frankie: I think it's amazing that I was even able to travel to Colombia and meet some of these young farmers whose coffees are part of Joven, and to talk to the people who are in charge and to see a whole different culture.

I’d never been to South America before, and it was just so cool to see how people lived there and how coffee was such a huge part of their community. I was just so glad that I got that experience to see. I think that's amazing. I would like to go back to Colombia and back to South America and to other countries that we get coffee from. But I think that trip specifically was very eye-opening and really, really amazing.

Tim: Just the idea of this value chain from coffee cherry all the way to its end product. All we're doing as roasters is cooking the beans. It was very apparent and, as relates to coffee farming in general and not just to young farmers, but it's so much work on the front end. That was just so eye-opening I think, for you, Frankie, and for my first time, to see how much goes into the production and processing and sorting of coffee by the time we get it, literally most of the work's been done.

Ashley: Right. That's a good point. I think something that's come up a lot on the podcast with some other guests is the idea of risk, and how roasters can take on more risk for farmers.

I think this is one example of that—it’s identifying an issue on a farm and saying, “We're going to specifically make this a thing that we focus on and we're going to make a market for this,” and assume—not necessarily assume some of the risks, but we're going to make the investment worth it. We're going to say we think that this is important and we're going to make a funnel for it, essentially. Maybe funnel is not the right word, but you see where I'm going with that.

Tim: I think to your point, we will forward-contract this coffee, so we'll do it before it's done. And so there's by creating—

Ashley: Explain that a little bit. Just what the idea of forward-contracting is.

Tim: Sure, so not to be confused with the C-market futures. Forward-contracting would just be that we commit to—let's say, I want a whole container of this Cafe Norte youth coffee. We'll commit to that before it's ever produced.

So before the crop is harvested, they know that we are committed to buying a container. We sign a forward contract with whatever importer you're working with on that—that would be facilitated typically by the importer. You'd sign a contract to say, “I'm buying X number, let’s say 300-some bags of this particular coffee. And I will take it between this time and this time.”

That's a commitment that we make as a roaster and then that trickles down to the farmer and they know that they already have a source for that at a given price. They ship a pre-sample and we have to approve it. They can't not deliver the quality we're expecting, but at least they know that that coffee is already sold.

Ashley: That's something that comes up a little bit throughout the show, which I would love to get more into—obviously not at this time, but the idea of contracts and how contracts are often formulated, and what a contract actually means.

Something that I've heard from some producers, actually also in Colombia, was that during COVID-19 a lot of people found ways to get out of contracts which is a big deal, which is a big problem. So being able to say, “I am going to buy this coffee at this price, and this is promised or ready before you can produce it,” is a really big deal.

Tim: Absolutely.

Ashley: What would you want people to know about Joven that maybe gets glossed over or maybe doesn't get talked about as much?

Frankie: I think probably the one thing that we don't emphasize as much is that coffee itself is a very complex drink, and the fact that—and like my dad said, the value chain just has so many steps—and for the farmers at the beginning to do so much of the work, it makes sense that we need to be able to pay them a fair price so that they can make a living.

I think that it's also just important for consumers to understand that coffee is a complex thing and it's not just fuel in the morning—it's okay if you drink it for fuel or you drink it just to have a caffeine boost, but also it is something that is just more than that. [I’d want people to] understand its nuance a little bit.

Ashley: I feel like you folks are doing this really important and intricate work because you're tackling a really big issue in a broad sense, but also doing it in really, really specific ways and on a multi-faceted level.

I wonder, since you're in this work, do you think that in the next five years, people are going to be trying to catch up? We seem to know that there are problems with the supply chain of coffee. We know that climate change is an issue. We know that the age of farmers is an issue. It doesn't feel like enough roasters think it’s as imminent as it is. What do you think the next five years will look like?

Tim: Well, if not a lot changes that average age is going to creep up past 60. I know the climate change thing. That's so multifaceted and complex. I hesitate to even comment. I'm not an expert in that area, but it's…

Ashley: Let's just focus on age.

Tim: I agree with you. There are not enough. I feel like this is an under-talked-about issue for sure. It is relative to its importance and significance at origin. I do hope yes, that other roasters will catch up because I think it will become a bigger deal, and it could take five years to just cross that threshold into a more mainstream understanding of it. I hope it doesn’t take that long, but it might.

Ashley: I feel like, I mean—I don't know, obviously it's hard to predict the future and all you can do is really try to work to make it better, which kind of seems like what you folks are doing.

Frankie: I mean, that's our hope, is that what we're doing makes a difference and that we can actually raise awareness and be like, “Hey guys, this is a big deal. This is actually a big deal. And we would like you to join our mission and help us out.”

Tim: And to be honest with you, we should get props to one of our main partners in this—Trade, the copy subscription company.

They're a huge source of volume for us, for Sparrows, but Joven as well. That's one thing we can do. We're not really putting our full resources into Joven, into marketing. We've been focused on some other things. We've been putting the message out there, but there's more we can do on the digital marketing side. In 2022, we're planning to push that a little bit harder on our end.

Ashley: If somebody was listening to this and they were like, “Yeah, I'm going to go buy some Joven coffee right now,” where would be a good place for them to start on your menu?

Frankie: You can go find all our offerings at jovencoffee.com. You can also follow me on Instagram at @kidqgrader, or there is a @jovencoffee on Instagram.

Ashley: What's your favorite coffee right now?

Frankie: We're about to launch a coffee from Guatemala and it's with Coffee Kids. It's delicious and I'm very excited about it. That's my favorite one right now because it's our new one and it's a nice, balanced coffee, a nice everyday drinker. I'm excited about that.

Tim: We just got our annual shipment of our Ethiopia Dimtu Tero and that's on the Sparrow side and it's tasting ridiculous. So that's been my jam lately.

Ashley: Thank you both for taking time to chat with me. I really appreciate it.

Tim: It's been great. Thank you.

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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. They learned that farmers were only paid a few dollars per kilo of coffee, while roasters could fetch double, triple, or even quadruple that amount. Their solar-powered roasters were meant to shift some of that value down the supply chain by empowering farmers to roast and sell their own coffees.

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.

I was introduced to Pepe and Compadre through Ana Sofía Narváez, who did a takeover episode of the podcast this past June, and it’s clear why she connected us: Compadre is a rare company that has been honest about how much its brand has shifted, and Pepe speaks to a lot of their early ideas about coffee and the needs of farmers. Rarely do people admit they’re wrong or that they’ve misunderstood something, but Pepe’s goal has always remained the same—to serve farmers first—and that’s involved a lot of honest reflection and a willingness to learn, change, and do better. Here’s Pepe:

Ashley: Pepe, I was hoping you could start by introducing yourself.

Pepe: Okay. I'm Pepe. I’m from Peru. I've been working in coffee since 2015, 2014. We started more with the technological part related to coffee, more related to the roasting.

Ashley: Can you tell me a little bit about coffee in Peru? I know that's a very big question, but when someone asks you, “What is coffee like there?” what do you say to them?

Pepe: I would say it's complex. It's diverse. Those would be the main things I would say.

You can find great coffees, people working really, really well. In the consuming part—here in the cities and also in the producing areas—consumption is growing and you can find people working really well, but you can also find the other side, right? People not doing a very good job, people that have a lot of work to do.

Ashley: Are you drinking coffee right now?

Pepe: Actually I am. I'm drinking a coffee coming from the central jungle that a friend from a cooperative gave me. It's a natural Bourbon; it's very sweet. It's very sweet, very fruity. I really like this coffee. You can find many profiles, different profiles here, whether if it's coming from the central jungle, the north or the south—we have those three main producing areas.

Ashley: People always want to classify a country as one way or another. Like, “Coffee from this country tastes like this, and coffee from this country tastes like that.” Even myself, I found myself wanting to ask you that question: What does coffee from Peru taste like? And I was like, “No, there are microclimates, there's diversity,” like you were saying.

I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about Compadre, which is the company that you co-founded. How would you describe what Compadre does?

Pepe: Compadre is a brand of roasted coffee. We work with specialty coffee and we started actually, as I was saying, as a tech company who started developing technology to process coffee, to roast coffee, and to roast it in a sustainable way using solar energy. And that's how we started.

That was in 2015 when we started operations. Our model at the beginning was to build these machines and to try to sell these machines to farmers so they can process their own green coffee, their own parchment coffee, and they can add some value and they can sell roasted coffee—because, at the beginning we knew nothing about coffee. We started with this technological part.

Ashley: I want to go backwards on that because you mentioned that you didn't know anything about coffee when you first started.

So let's go back to when you first started Compadre: What drove you to start this company? Who were you folks before this started?

Pepe: So I have a friend—he's a mechanical engineer. He did a project, a research project in university for his undergraduate thesis. He built, together with other engineers and designers, a machine that could roast coffee on it with some mirrors and sunlight. So that was his project.

Some years later I was doing other kinds of projects with this friend—his name is Juan Pablo—and we were traveling through the jungle, we were doing projects with native communities, with schools. We loved working in the jungle, the Peruvian jungle has a special vibe for me. And we kind of fell in love with that.

We decided we wanted to work with [those communities], and we encouraged this friend to make something with the solar roaster and to have impact within these communities—a lot of these communities were coffee or cacao communities.

That's how we encourage him to present this project for a contest here. For this contest, he needed some partners. He told me and another friend, Fiorella, who is an anthropologist—[Juan Pablo] is a mechanical engineer and I'm an industrial designer. He told us, “Okay. We need a team. I need a team to present my project for these contests. Can you be part of the team?”

By that time, we had another friend who had a PhD in solar-concentrated energy. So we had a lot of chances to win with our project and we presented it and we won. We got some funding to start the project, to start developing the first and to start the pilot with one of the farmers we found at the beginning. That's how we started.

Ashley: That's so cool. I love that. This was just a project that Juan Pablo had designed years ago, it seems, and you found a new application for it. Was it obvious? At what point did it become clear that this could be a project—the solar roaster—that could impact farmers?

Pepe: Since the beginning, we tried to look to find what would be the impact of this. As we knew nothing about coffee, we only saw, “Okay, so how much [money] are farmers receiving here for their parchment coffee?”

If you go to origin, if you had asked a farmer at that moment what the price of coffee was, it was less than $2 per kilogram of coffee. We found that you can find roasted coffee for around $10, $8. So we said, “Okay. So if the farmer can roast the coffee, he can keep that $8 in his pocket, right?” That's the impact—that was our naive value proposition at the beginning.

But then we start working. We soon realized how the value chain works and what was the main problem, right? That it was the distance, the huge distance between the farmers and the final consumers. That's when we said, “Okay, we have to build a brand so we can commercialize this coffee with this story and we can ensure good prices for the farmer.”

Ashley: It's interesting that you were able to look at the value chain and see that immediate gap, because I don't think that's necessarily—it's obvious, but not, you know what I mean? That like, “Oh, if the farmer is selling his coffee for $2 a pound and the roaster is selling it for $10 per pound, let's transfer that value over to the farmer by giving them the power to roast green coffee.”

Which is really interesting, especially because you guys didn't have a background in coffee at all. So being able to identify that seems really powerful, but like you said, it was—I'm not going to call it naive, but you called it naive. But at what point did you realize that this wasn't going to be enough? You mentioned that you started to learn more about the value chain, what were you learning that told you, “Oh, this isn't going to be enough to change this.”

Pepe: It was when we started.

When we [gave a farmer] the first machine and we had a meeting with different farmers, different comparatives, different actors related to coffee, we showed it and they started asking questions. Everyone said, “Okay, so cool. That's so creative. So innovative,” but nobody really wanted it. We started asking, “Okay, why?”

We started asking questions, we sort of realized, “How are they going to [use this when they’re] isolated?” We were in Cusco, it’s in the south of Peru, and we said, “Okay, we're really far from the final consumer. How are they going to get there?”

We said, “We live in Lima. That’s the main market, so we'll have to commercialize this coffee there. They will have to send the coffee, they will have to produce a coffee and they will have to send it to us in Lima and we will have to sell it.” That was the first change in our model.

Ashley: Now that I'm thinking about it, I don't know if it was this simple, but it sounds like the initial idea you had was, “We have this solar roaster, farmers can have access to it because the infrastructure to operate the solar roaster is minimal, and we're going to be able to transfer value over to the farmers by giving them these roasters.” But there was no infrastructure on how that coffee was actually going to physically get to consumers. Is that right?

Pepe: I mean, it's the infrastructure, but it's also the knowledge, right? You need to operate a company to sell coffee to find a consumer. It's related to marketing related to finance related to a lot of things … relationships with other brands or distributors…

So it was a lot of work that the farmer—I mean, the farmer already has a lot of work on the farm, so it was a little bit too much.

Our next model was like, “Okay, we'll sell the coffee for the farmers in our impact model, we pay good prices—between 20 to 70% more than the market price was paying, depending on the quality we will find in the community. And then we’ll install a solar facility where people from the community, the farmers that sold the coffee to us, they could go there and they would work in sorting the coffee, the classification, and the roasting—and they would get paid for that.” That was our second model.

Ashley: Interesting. So there was still opportunity for farmers to roast their coffee, but there was an added level of infrastructure where Compadre would help sell the coffee and market the coffee. Is that right?

Pepe: Yes. And we were focusing on that.

Then we pivoted. When we had that model, we started growing the commercial part and we saw that the capacity of the technology was not enough.

So we said, “Okay, what do we do? Shall we try to roast coffee with a regular gas roaster? Or do we just stay with our solar-roasted coffee?” We thought if we want to make an impact for the farmers, if we want to buy coffee at good prices from more farmers for the community, we have to sell more coffee. That's when we started doing this hybrid production with solar and gas production.

Ashley: Did you have to rethink the way that you thought about sustainability at that point? Because I can imagine, going back to that presentation that Juan Pablo is grabbing you and grabbing all your partners—part of what made that really exciting is that you have the solar-powered roaster, that it doesn't need electricity, but then as you start to work with farmers and realize, “Oh, the things we need are way bigger, we have to think about sustainability differently.” Was that a conversation that you folks were having?

Pepe: Yeah. We were having a lot of these conversations.

It was mainly when it got to the point where we said, “Okay, are we going to roast coffee with the sun? Or we are going to roast coffee with the regular gas roaster?”

I said, “Let's sit together and let's define what are our main values or our main goals. Are we Compadre because we roast coffee with the sun, or are we Compadre because we want to make a change and we want to make a positive impact for the farmer?

We said, “The farmer is first.” That's the first thing. The first priority. If we can do things with solar energy, that would be amazing. But if we cannot do it, we still have to make an impact. We still have to keep working towards a future where we can be more sustainable, in the energy part or in the production part. That was second. [Across both fields] should be quality—that should be always there too. That's how we define our operations. And that's how we started planning ahead.

Ashley: It seems like in six years of operating a business that has drastically changed over time, you have learned so much about how value is created in the coffee industry.

Pepe: Yes. It's been a wild journey. We have learned a lot. Something good we’ve done, I would say since the beginning, was that we tried to spend a lot of time—most of the time—in the farms, right next to the farmer, and tried to understand how things were working over there.

From the city, you're going to see a lot of initiatives, a lot of certifications, a lot of programs, but what is really happening in the farm where you're supposed to see the impact—and then you go there and there are not many examples that are really working or working the way they should. It was good for us to travel a lot and try to understand how [these programs] were working and how we want to be part of that change.

I mean, it's so complicated. That's why we've been changing a lot because we were testing many things, but we’re still thinking, “What's the best way?” We are still trying different things right now with other projects, different projects.

Ashley: Are there any lessons or experiences that you had on coffee farms that you particularly remember or were exceptionally mind-changing for you?

Pepe: I'm sure I have many. You can pick the topic and I'll tell you a story if you want.

Just to give an example: We wanted farmers to sell their own coffee, the roasted coffee at some point, but when we started asking farmers how they used to move their [green] coffee from their farm to sell it—they would sell it in the closest city—some of them would take their coffee bags, like 60 kilograms of coffee in their shoulders. They would walk between five to eight hours just to sell one bag of coffee.

At least 10 years ago, most farmers would do that. You can still find some farms that are very high up and you cannot find roads and they have to just carry the coffee bags on their shoulders. They have to do all that work just to get to the closest city, to sell [their coffee] as parchment coffee, or to drink coffee. How would they even try to sell roasted coffee? It was crazy.

Ashley: One of the things that your website mentions is that you focus on two principles: on technology and Indigenous communities. I was wondering why Indigenous communities, why was that a specific goal that you wanted to focus on?

Pepe: We have a special—I don't know how to say, like feeling with Indigenous communities. We started our trips to the jungle working with Indigenous communities—Asháninka was the name of these Indigenous people.

They’re not the only kind of community we work with. Right now, we’re working with different farmers that are working on organic production, that have world-quality coffee, above 82 points a cup, and that are small coffee farmers.

We try to focus more on the smaller or medium-sized coffee farmers. If it's from an Indigenous community, even better, because we're trying to encourage them to keep their jobs in their communities, where they live. Because they have such a strong culture in their own communities.

We have spent so much time there and we find this special way of living in harmony with nature, in harmony with them working together, that we feel it's something that should be kept alive. We've also seen that a lot of these young people from these communities have to go to the nearest city to find another job and have more income. So it's possible to encourage them to stay, because they want to stay, but they just don't have the opportunity to. So if we can encourage that, that would be awesome.

Ashley: It sounds like you're saying that in the remote communities that you go to, there is a very strong Indigenous culture and that's being threatened by people leaving because they have to get job opportunities. So the work that you're trying to do is to preserve people's ability to stay within their communities and to essentially let their culture thrive in those communities.

Pepe: Exactly. Yeah. That a huge goal. Of course, we cannot do it by ourselves, but if we can help a little bit with that, that would be awesome.

Ashley: Is there a specific reason why you want to focus on Indigenous communities in particular? I know that you've mentioned that that's not the only people that you work with, but did you realize that Indigenous communities in particular were being threatened or were losing some of their access to their own culture because they couldn't sustain on what was being produced in their own communities?

Pepe: Indigenous communities have kind of special values or rules on how to live or how to protect their land or how to protect their own people, their own forest, that I think it's something we have to support. Because it's a good way of living. Of course, it's not a rule. I'm being general, but it's sometimes a pattern you can see in native communities. For us, it has a lot of value.

Ashley: That totally makes sense.

Let's talk a little bit about what Compadre’s current iteration is looking like, because as you mentioned, you've had a lot of iterations, which I think is really unique for a company—not necessarily to have a lot of iterations, I think that that happens to a lot of companies, but I think it's unique that you're very upfront about it, because that says to me that you're willing to listen to farmers. As you mentioned, traveling to different farmers in different communities, it seems like a lot of the solutions that you've generated have come from those conversations.

Pepe: Yes. There's this—and actually, as we are part of many parts of the value chain, we can also have a bigger picture on how things are working and what things should be done.

Right now what we are doing—I mean, after the pandemic or during the pandemic, it was so difficult for us to keep operations in the jungle with the farmers because most of the coordinations we did by being there. The communication, the technological part, they are not used to coordinating if they don't see you, so it was kind of complicated to keep that model.

So we had to find a partner in one of the cities in the jungle, a specialist. He's also a Q grader, he's a roaster, he's a specialist in coffee. So we partnered with him and he would be the one who visited the farms, the one who would talk to the farmers, he was the one that started projects. And we focused more on the quality part. He would go to the farms and make suggestions.

We started doing a project with a couple of farmers, trying different kinds of fermentation [during processing]. So he had all the tools necessary to make sure [he could measure] temperature, Brix, and then he would cup those coffees and would try to choose the right fermentation process for each coffee.

We would support these farmers with infrastructure, meaning for the drying process, solar dryers. We sold a couple of solar dryers—one of them a conventional solar dryer and another, it was with a new development we did to improve the drying process. We saw that one of the biggest problems [for farmers] was the drying process.

Ashley: Can you talk a little bit about that? Just for people who maybe don't even know what the drying process is for coffee—how are you seeing it? What does that look like for farmers?

Pepe: After the farmers pick the coffee, depulp or ferment the coffee and wash it, they have to put it into a dryer or they have to dry it. They have to go from, I dunno, 55%, 45% humidity, to around 10 to 12% humidity, but they have to do it in a proper way, in a consistent way, so they can reach water activity under 0.7—0.6 would be better. You need consistency for that.

If you are doing, for example, naturals or the pulp natural process, it's super important that the first days you have consistency in the drying process. And of course, the better coffees, the best coffees, you find them above 1,500 meters above sea level. And in some areas, above that altitude it’s very humid and the temperatures are quite low during the night. So you lose a lot of consistency in the drying process because you lose humidity.

And then, if it rains one day, the humidity goes up. So it's so chaotic. Sometimes farmers with great coffees, they have to just take their own coffee and put it in a regular mechanical roaster and they lose quality—or as it happened to one of our farmers, he wanted to do naturals last year, he did great naturals. And this year he's pulled all his naturals because when he harvested, the weather was really bad. He had four very humid days. And the naturals, they got spoiled.

Ashley: I think this is a really key thing. I just want to stop for a minute just because I want to make sure that people understand how important it is that the weather affects how coffee taste.

I think that that's taken for granted. I think people assume—most of the people who listen to this podcast are coffee people. I think a lot of people know this intuitively or at least have some experience with this, but lately more people who don't know coffee very well have been listening. So I just want to make sure that people understand that like, if it rains too early, your coffee can be messed up. Drying, especially naturally processed coffee where the cherry stays around the coffee bean, can be really volatile. Because that could take anywhere from one to three weeks to dry. So you really need to have consistent temperatures to make sure that those coffees dry, not only correctly, but consistently, as you were saying, that one cherry isn't at 40% moisture and then the other one's 10% moisture.

Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off there, but I wanted to make sure that that was super clear.

Pepe: Yes, yes. Seems easy, the drying process.

Ashley: It seems easy!

Pepe: At the beginning, it seems easy, right? When you study the whole value chain, the whole process, you say, “Okay, the drying process looks like the easiest process.” But it's not because you have different conditions, weather conditions that are key in order to keep a consistent drying process. And if you lack good weather at that point, you can spoil all the great work you did before—in the harvesting, in the fermentation, for example.

Ashley: So it seems like if we zoom outward a little bit on Compadre’s mission, the mission for you folks is to create positive impact for farmers and to really think about sustainability, not necessarily as environmental impact, even though that's important, but to think about sustainability as social impact, is that right?

Pepe: Yes. As a social entrepreneurship, we've seen that sustainability for us should be a balance, right? Because at some point we need to work more in the social part. At some point when we have the resources, we will work more on the technological parts so we can [pay more attention to] sustainability on the production side and on the energy side. And at some point we will have to say, “Okay, we have to reduce costs and we have to focus more on selling coffee. Otherwise we will die as a company and we will stop all the impact we've been building so far.”

It's always been, through all these years, it's been a balance. It's been a decision-making process on which part of the sustainability [equation] we have to focus on now.

Ashley: Right. Which must be really hard because there's so many things, especially as you get more and more involved in the coffee roasting side, or the coffee production side of things—more things come up.

Because I'm sure before you started Compadre, you weren't thinking about the drying process—that wasn't part of your business model—but now that you're more involved in the value chain, you're like, “Oh, this is actually a really key, pivotal part.”

What I think is interesting about focusing on the drying of coffee is that it really focuses specifically on the farmers. A lot of coffee—I'm not sure if this is always true in Peru, because I know in different countries it can kind of depend—but is most of the drying done on the farm?

Pepe: Yes.

Ashley: So a lot of that impact that you're focusing on is directly focusing on farmers, giving them tools specifically.

Pepe: Exactly. Exactly, yes. I think one of the good things we've always had is that our purpose is clear, right? So it doesn't matter how much our model pivots or changes at the end. We try to do something better for the farmer, for the quality or for the actors in the value chain that are working properly.

So I don't know. That's why we changed the way we're working and now we are focusing on the drying process, but it's still trying to impact the farmer. A lot of factors would be—[there would be lots of benefits from a good drying process], but the farmer would be one of the main beneficiaries of this.

Ashley: I know that this is a big question, so feel free to take it in whatever direction you want, but what do you think is your biggest success so far?

Pepe: To be alive? Yeah. I remember when we started in the incubation program, when we started Compadre, because we started after we won this contest and we enter this incubation program. There were five other projects. And the director said, “Okay, next year, or maybe in two years, only one of you will be alive.”

Ashley: Oh, wow.

Pepe: The other four will die. And here we are.

Ashley: I don't want to out the other companies, but did the other ones not make it? Do you know?

Pepe: Many reasons, many different reasons.

Ashley: We don't need to know why, but are you the one company that stayed alive out of that whole group?

Pepe: Yeah. That's what I'm trying to say. We are the one company still alive.

Ashley: That's an accomplishment. That's huge.

Pepe: Yeah.

Ashley: What do you think has kept you folks alive?

Pepe: I would say our commitment. Our team is super important. Whenever you have these kind of projects—because at some point you are so disappointed by the results and to have a partner that levels you up, brings you up. Who says, “Okay, we're still doing these things, we've done all this much and we can still do it.” And then maybe, I don't know, some months later he's the partner that’s down, and you have to be the one trying to encourage the team to keep up the good work we’re doing.

Ashley: Yeah. That can be really hard.

Pepe: Another thing is that we are not afraid to adapt to different things, to different models, to different ways of work.

Ashley: It seems like you folks are always learning and you're always taking in knowledge and improving on what you've learned.

Pepe: Yeah. Actually at some point, when we said, “Okay, we are not a tech company anymore. We are more like a coffee company. Some of us should be experts in coffee.” That's why I did a Masters in Coffee Economics and Science with Illy—initially with Ana Sofia, that's where I met her. So we try to adapt, and now we’re a specialty coffee brand.

Ashley: So you have a goal to improve the lives of coffee farmers. I know that this is a very big goal, but what would be an ideal situation for you? When would you feel like your mission has been accomplished? What would the farmers have, or what structures would be in place, where you'd be like, “Okay, this is what we were hoping for”? Again, I know that that's a big question.

Pepe: It is. I would love to have a strong value chain, working with the same farmers I've been working with—at least 60 or 70% of the farmers we're working with would be the same farmers we've been working with since, I don't know, two or three years ago, because that's a good indicator that you are doing a good job with them.

That they are every year increasing their production or their income because they are improving their quality. And that we are also sustainable in the commercial part, that we are very stable. That we have strong relationships with our customers and that we are positioned to be the sustainable coffee brand here in Peru. And that if someone else wants to sell sustainable coffee, they would have to look at us and say, “Okay, let's try to do something similar. Let's try to have the impact they're having in order to say we are sustainable too.”

That would be the vision we have. And of course we want to close the whole experience and be closer to the final consumer. That’s the person who has to understand all of this. We want to close it with a coffee shop, with a cafeteria. That hopefully will happen soon.

Ashley: I think it's interesting when you have a company that focuses on social entrepreneurship, because logically at some point your work may never be done, but the goal is almost for your work to be done.

The goal is that you don't need Compadre anymore, or you do, but you don't need it to be as active in improving farmers' lives because that's already been done. The value chain is “fixed.” Even though, like we were saying, that's a huge goal and maybe won't happen overnight or won't happen in six months, but do you think about that? Do you think about the world that you'd create that doesn't need you anymore?

Pepe: I mean, this question it so interesting because a lot of times I've questioned myself and it's like, “Okay, how big can we be? How many farmers can we impact at some point, right, by being just one brand?” Because we are, as a social entrepreneurship, we are competing against huge companies that have aids in the market. Right. And they have super strong value chains.

So how big can we be? How many farmers can we impact? And we see the projections and it's like, “Okay, we can, I don't know, impact 50 farmers next year, maybe 70 in two years,” but it's still in a universe of 200,000 coffee farmers in Peru. It's very little, right?

So if I'm looking for impact, should I be doing this? Or should I be working in a huge NGO or in another big company trying to push this next sustainability … but I think something very important is the story you can create in your own company, in your own value chain, and that you can inspire other people, other companies, other people working in huge companies to start doing things similar to what you are doing.

If we can show that it's possible to be sustainable, to be a business and to be sustainable and responsible with the environment, with the farmer, and that we can push technology and creativity—if we demonstrate that that's possible, I would say that's a huge goal that we can reach.

Ashley: It's really a story of optimism, in a way.

Pepe: Yes, exactly. And it's something that our society needs a lot in these times. Right?

Ashley: Well, Pepe, thank you so much for taking time to chat with me. I really appreciate it.

Pepe: No, thanks for the invitation, Ashley, and congratulations for the great work you are doing.

Ashley: Congratulations on the great work you're doing.

Pepe: Thank you very much.

This Boss Barista episode is brought to you by Urnex.

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My guest on today’s podcast episode is Neichelle Guidry, 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.

I was drawn to Neichelle because she’s a storyteller. As she describes her journey in coffee, she reflects on the meaningful experiences that have shaped her, and administers important life lessons she’s learned along the way. That means there’s no way to reduce this conversation down to a few bullet points or a singular theme—Neichelle shares so much of her personal relationship to coffee that it’d be a disservice to boil it all down to a few talking points.

In that specificity are universal ideas that I hope you can take to heart—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. Here’s Neichelle:

Ashley: Just to start, could you introduce yourself by saying your full name and what you do?

Neichelle: Sure. My name is Neichelle Guidry. I am a college administrator and I'm also the creator of Black Girl Black Coffee.

Ashley: What are some of your earliest memories of coffee growing up?

Neichelle: My earliest memories … generally speaking, my father would have coffee most mornings. We had a white Mr. Coffee automatic coffee pot in our kitchen that he would fill with Folgers from a blue can religiously.

That was kind of a daily memory, but my most formative coffee memories happened in my grandmother's house, my paternal grandmother's house. And I shared this story in my Glitter Cat video last year about how my grandmother would brew her coffee on her stove.

She would always put PET Evaporated Milk in her coffee, and she would serve her coffee in the most beautiful, very dainty, floral cup-and-saucer sets. Coffee in her house in Beaumont, Texas was a very communal activity. She would always have people coming by from her neighborhood for her coffee. And hers, I guess, was kind of like an unofficial gossip and coffee spot. Hearing the way grown Black women talk around coffee tables was such a fascinating thing for me as a child.

Ashley: What did that evoke for you as a child? What did you think as you saw people sitting around and drinking coffee?

Neichelle: Mostly that I wanted to be a part of the conversation. I think of myself as a child, sometimes my memory of myself is very deeply curious, always wanting to be a part of things, but also very shy. If I ever had a chance to meet my younger self again, I would tell her, “Just go, just get in there. Get in that grown woman talk and ask the question you want to know.”

Yeah. So just the feeling of wanting to be a part of it. I drank her coffee and at the time of course I could not have imagined it without that PET evaporated milk because it made it creamy. It gave it sort of a medium, heavy-like body, and it made it sweet. It was like a dessert, the way she prepared her coffee, and just wonderful.

Ashley: What was your relationship to coffee as you grew up, or as you started to maybe be part of those conversations at the table as you grew up?

Neichelle: I don't think that coffee became a part of my life until later. I think like many college students, when you're trying to pummel your way through an all-nighter, you think, “Let's go get coffee.”

We had a little French press that we would use in my college dorm. You know, making some grocery store coffee to help us get through the night. So it really wasn't until my adulthood, like young adulthood, late 20s, that coffee started to factor pretty prominently into my life. That is when I took my first trip to Ethiopia.

Actually—let me go back a little bit further than that. The first trip was in 2016 and in 2010, 2008, I used to live in Berkeley, California. This is when I was in graduate school, and I was working at a church in downtown Berkeley, and the church sexton was a first-generation immigrant from Ethiopia—and he and his family took me in for that summer that I lived there.

In between meetings at the church and in the evenings, if I was done working late, they would have me in their home and they would feed me the most delicious meals and we'd watch movies, we'd hang out on the couch. We would just talk, just experiencing really, really deep community.

They introduced me to the Ethiopian buna ceremony because it was a sign, first and foremost, of hospitality—anytime they had a guest, coffee was going to happen. His wife would prepare coffee, from the rinsing of the green coffee to the roasting over the open flame to the grinding with the mortar and pestle to the preparation, the brewing and the jebena. And I had never had anything so delicious in my life.

That summer, it is safe to say, I spent probably about 80% of my time just buzzed and coffee drunk from the delicious coffee that Ahmada and his wife would prepare in their home for me. Their introduction of Habesha food cultures and coffee cultures was exactly what inspired me to take my first trip to Ethiopia several years later.

Ashley: I love that you explained the ritual of the Ethiopian coffee ceremony because I think that's something that probably a lot of people have heard of, but maybe haven't experienced for themselves, which is incredible that that was, I guess, your second introduction to coffee in a way—later in your adulthood. So you had this experience, you lived with this family for a while. What inspired you to go to Ethiopia later?

Neichelle: It was actually a big life change that inspired me to go to Ethiopia. I had just gotten divorced and I was in this space of like, “Why wait?” You know?

It was something that I wanted to do ever since that time, ever since being in their home. At that time—it was 2016, so what is that? Like, eight years later? Eight years and a world apart from that experience. I just was in a mindset of, “Everything that I want to do, I'm doing it. And I'm going to give myself all the joy that I have not experienced for so long.”

That was at the top of the list, of the list of things I wanted to do. So I saved my money. I invited my two best friends. We went for my birthday, which coincided with the Ethiopian Orthodox church celebration of Timkat. So we went and did the whole festivities around that, had some great foods, some great coffee, made some great friends. It was an incredible time.

Ashley: I wrote down the phrase, “Give yourself all the joy,” which I think might be a theme that comes up throughout this conversation.

I also want to make sure that we're telling the story linearly so we can follow along, which I love that you're giving me years—I’m even writing it down on a timeline like, “Okay, 2008, this happened. 2016, this happens.”

So you come back from Ethiopia: How do you take the experiences that you had in Ethiopia and start to explore coffee more?

Neichelle: Around that time I was still in graduate school. I think, again, coffee was just sort of this thing that I am turning to help me power through things. I remember I did find a place in Chicago, which is where I was living at the time, where I could experience buna. But that became a very rare experience when I got back because I just got back to my life—you know, school and work and everything.

But I was always very captivated by the memory of the way that it tasted. I came back home from that trip with three or four bags of coffee from a pretty, I guess, prominent coffee roastery in Ethiopia called Tomoca Cafe. I came home with a jebena as well.

I went and got a blade grinder to grind up my Tomoca beans and would play around with the jebena on my stove. That was how I brewed my coffee for at least a year or so afterwards. I was making my coffee with the jebena on my stove in Chicago. My next step in the coffee journey, though, was buying a Nespresso machine.

Ashley: I love it. You laugh about it now.

Neichelle: And I love the Nespresso machine! I actually still have that machine because sometimes I just need something to go. I need to make something quickly. That was the next step.

I bought the set that had the espresso machine and the frother that stood up right next to it and brought all the capsules and did all of that. I bought this mini machine to where I could actually take it places with me. So when I got to the point in school where I was writing my dissertation, that espresso machine actually made it into the room where I was writing my dissertation. When I was up all night, all day researching, writing, I was also drinking a lot of espresso from that Nespresso machine.

I would say the journey would have to fast forward at that point to quarantine, which really shifted things coffee-wise.

Ashley: You mentioned that your coffee story—even though you have all these experiences beforehand—that your coffee story is really a story of quarantine. So I was wondering if you could talk about what happened to you during quarantine that inspired you to think more about how coffee factors into your life?

Neichelle: Just practically speaking, as the story goes, I was on Zoom one day for work and I was on my second cup of coffee for the day and I had just finished brewing this cup of coffee on a Bodum wire filter and little carafe set that I got. But I had had the same coffee earlier that day on the French press. And I was just so captivated.

I remember sitting on Zoom and I was like, “How does this taste so different? Literally, this is the same coffee.” I think it was just that moment that I was like something, you know, there's probably something to this.

That night I was on YouTube watching James Hoffmann all night and definitely developed a little coffee crush on James Hoffmann. Oh my God.

Ashley: This is a James Hoffmann safe space.

Neichelle: Thank you.

I was just literally like, “This man is brilliant. His accent, his little red glasses, his haircut…” Ah! Thank you.

It was just a rabbit hole from there—tasting a singular coffee with such flavor nuances on two different brewing devices or brewing methods. It was just really intriguing to me.

From there, the next thing you know, I'm ordering V60s and paper filters and I'm ordering a food-grade scale for my kitchen and I'm just watching all these YouTube videos. That's when I decided to start the Instagram account because I wanted to document it. I obviously had time on my hands, like many of us did, and I just thought this would be really cool, to remember this as a part of this pandemic. I didn't know what was going to unfold that year, but I knew I wanted to document how I took in that experience of living through a global pandemic. And that is how that Instagram account was born.

Ashley: I think that's really important that you mentioned the importance of documentation, because I think when you look at something like Instagram or social media, there's this pressure to just create content, but I think it can be as simple as taking a moment to take a photo of what you're doing to remember that moment. It seems like that was a big driver for you—trying to remember these experiences that you were having.

Neichelle: Yeah. I mean, I was scared, you know, scared AF, right? Of what was happening in the world. When we’ve never seen anything like this and it was really scary and I felt like my survival in that season, emotionally, was really going to depend on how I framed that time. And that's kind of what I wanted to do with that account.

I want to document something fascinating. I want to document something beautiful. I want to document a moment in my life where I'm a novice again and make it something that I can remember. I didn't start intending for it to become a coffee brand. I just wanted to document how I was getting through a pandemic through coffee.

Ashley: I didn't have this context when I first looked at your website and your social media account and knowing this—now I'm going to have to go backwards and look through that lens, because there's something so wildly positive about that answer, but at the same time, contending with a very potentially negative time where we're all at home, we're all not sure what's happening. It's scary. So like, how do we find meaning in the spaces around us?

Neichelle: Yes.

Ashley: It seems like that's something that you're naturally inclined to do. You're naturally inclined to tell stories and find meaning in the experiences that you have.

One of the big experiences that you had, one of the reasons that our paths have crossed, is that you did a competition called Glitter Cat, which the year that you were part of it, it was all online because of the pandemic. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about this coffee competition that you did and how you even decided to do it?

Neichelle: I think that was a really pivotal moment for me. And you know more than you're putting on because you helped us select my application [laughs].

Ashley: I did, that’s true.

Neichelle: But you know, I just remember kind of thinking, “Well, why not? Why not?”

I believe at the time, I made a connection with Erica Jackson, who's like my coffee bestie, the most amazing person ever. I feel like she was instrumental in me deciding to submit an application for it, and she's just very encouraging, like, “You can do it.”

Ashley: Because at this point you're making coffee at home, but you're not necessarily working in coffee.

Neichelle: I’m not a coffee professional, exactly! That was actually my static. My static was like, “Shouldn't this be reserved for people who know what they're doing? Or who have invested all this time, gaining all this coffee proficiency?” But again, I just feel like one of the things I never want to do is I don't want to foreclose on any opportunity for me.

I'm going to always leave the “no” to someone else to tell me. I don't want to eliminate myself from things. And so in that spirit, I just submitted an application and yes, I guess the rest is history.

I will never forget that experience because, here I am, a lifelong coffee drinker, someone who is at this really important juncture of embracing this lifelong passion and interest of mine, and finally exploring it deeper. This opportunity met me with workshops and with mentoring and—oh, gosh, I'll just never forget Chelsey [Walker-Watson] from Atlas [Coffee Importers] spending an hour or two on Zoom, coaching me on my brewing.

I just felt so floored that Eric and Veronica [founders of Glitter Cat] created such a generous thing. There was just so much generosity involved, there's all this equipment that was just donated to us, and all this training and all this mentorship.

I just felt like if this was so freely given, I just am going to embrace it, everything that I can learn, I'm gonna learn it and I'm going to dive really deeply into it. And in the end…

Ashley: In the end, you won!

Neichelle: Yeah. I won. Winning was really amazing, and I thought that was a really cool experience, but more importantly, I feel like it introduced me to an amazing coffee community through Glitter Cat, but also broader than Glitter Cat. In some sense, like I said to you earlier, it was a green light, like, “Do this, do this, do coffee, do something in coffee, bring your passion to life.”

Ashley: Was that always intuitive? Or do you think that winning the competition and the response that you got afterwards helped interpret that green light?

Neichelle: Yeah. I think winning and the response was certainly affirmation and I want to just also say—I've been sitting with this question of like, “And if you didn't win, what would that have meant to you, Neichelle?” And I think that it probably would have still meant “do it,” because I enjoyed it.

I think part of what this is helping me to undo is that everything that we do in life has to a) Be monetized, b) Has to lead to some accolade. There are some things that at least for me, there are things I want to do just for the sake of, I just like it. I enjoy it. I love it so much. And I want to share it with whoever will share it with me and coffee is that for me.

Ashley: I like that distinction that you made: That we as a society sometimes tend to get caught up in winning something or being named something or maybe just even producing things for the sake of producing things. But it's okay to just like something for the sake of liking it.

It's okay to pursue coffee just because you like it. You're right—you totally didn't have to win. And I like that you asked that question, because I like imagining the hundred different ways my life could go—like if this didn't happen or that didn't happen, then there are certain things that I wonder if I would have done or wouldn't have done if certain things hadn't happened. I like that you answered that question for yourself.

Neichelle: Yeah. I think my coffee story is a story of being multi-vocational. I think another part of the reason why I gravitated to coffee is because my work life is intense and it's a lot. It's a lot of pressure, and I just really needed a creative outlet. I needed an outlet where I cannot just be under the same microscopes and under the same pressure where I could just bring my heart in a different kind of way, and do it in a way that is deeply just artful and lovingly curated and crafted.

Coffee is also that for me, so there's a story behind everything in Black Girl Black Coffee. I do really feel like there's a little bit of me in all of it.

Ashley: How do you stay inspired?

Neichelle: I love to read, I love listening to music. I'm very, very big on African-American art forms. So Black literature, Black music, Black visual arts, Black poetry—there's something very inspiring about all of it for me. So at least once daily I'm reading something, even if it's just a poem, I get poems into my inbox in the morning. I'm subscribed to several Substack publications where amazing, beautiful writers are laying their hearts bare and it's coming directly to my inbox.

I have all kinds of Spotify playlists for whatever mood I'm in. I try to immerse myself at least in small ways daily in things that don't have anything to do with my job. It’s really important to me.

Ashley: It does seem like you're the type of person who acknowledges the importance of staying inspired and finding ways to connect to community. Like trying lots of coffees or staying engaged and seeing what other people are doing. It seems like you're someone who's really good at kind of replenishing your pot.

Neichelle: Yeah. I am, and I feel like part of me has learned that it's just not possible to do anything if you're running on empty. I know what it feels like to be burned out and I've experienced that. And I still experience that, and I think just doing little things daily to try to stay inspired is just a great way to navigate that.

Ashley: Something that I think is really important for Black Girl Black Coffee is that it is very much about you. It's very personal, but it's also very universal.

I wonder if that's a parallel that you see in your coffee brand or your Instagram Stories or the way that you share information. How do you create an identity that feels like, “This is true to me, and this is something that I want to share with myself, but at the same time, as a way for me to connect with other people and find the universalities that connect all of us?” I know that's a big question, but…

Neichelle: It is big. I love the question though. I feel like I want to answer it, but I want to ask you a question first, because I really appreciate this insight. I've never asked—how does this come across? And so it's really interesting to me to hear that it comes across with some universalism. Can you say a little bit more about that?

Ashley: Yeah. When I first decide I want to interview someone, I try to, not necessarily learn about them by reading articles, even though I do that, but try to evoke, “What does their work make me feel?”

And there's something about your Instagram presence that makes me feel like this is so much about you, because you're so present in it. It's usually you sharing something that you really love. It isn't just about like, “This is coffee and I'm trying to sell coffee. I feel really passionate [about this].” The passion really comes across in this really authentic way.

Then, as I was going through your website, it felt like you were able to identify parts of your story that were clearly demonstrative of where you are in your coffee journey now. It feels like you reflect a lot backwards.

Like you said, “I took this trip to Ethiopia and this changed me. I lived with a family who introduced me to the Ethiopian coffee ceremony, and this changed me.” And that's not always intuitive. I don't think that we always are taught to look backwards and make connections. And that's the most exciting thing for me.

I think that's maybe where I see your presence kind of speaking to me. So maybe the way that I'm interpreting it is a very personal one for myself, because I find the power of connection and tracing back where an origin story starts for me. Like, “How did I get into this?” Or like, “Why is this important to me?” So I think that that's where I see that for you.

Neichelle: That’s so encouraging. I really appreciate that because I think, for all intents and purposes, Black Girl Black Coffee is, at least the Instagram page, I'm still documenting a journey.

I don't feel like it's just a brand and I don't feel like it's just me trying to sell you my coffee now. I feel like in many ways, I'm still sharing how I'm growing as a coffee person. And so it is very personal. I follow a lot of coffee accounts and there's some coffee accounts that I really, really love that do things very differently, but there's a handful of coffee accounts that I don't follow because I feel they're devoid of a story.

Coffee has already been stripped away from its home, it's already been colonized. I think that there's just some, some spaces, some brands that are just further reiterating the disparities in the coffee supply chain, in the coffee industry. And I'm really, really interested in coffee as a personal thing.

I love following coffee accounts where you can see people's faces and where everything is not so pristine and so perfect and it's like not highly produced Instagram Reels, because it reminds me that there's a person behind this account that loves coffee. I feel like that's the category that I want to fall in.

So yeah, it is personal and I feel grateful that that comes across. And even now, with the coffee, with Be The Light, and the brand Black Girl Black Coffee, I want to show how people—like, I repost customer photos of their coffee or customers with their coffee. I love things like that because it reminds me that, while it's about me as the person that started it, it's also bigger than me, right? Brewing a new community. It's also bigger than me. And so I really appreciate that.

Ashley: Right. I'm glad that you were able to identify both of those ends, because I think that sometimes it can seem like it's mutually exclusive, like it's either about you or it's about your customers and the people you connect with. But I actually think that the more you center yourself—and I don't mean this in a selfish way, but more like the passion comes from me, the ideas come from me, I have to listen to them and I have to think like, “What do I like that I think others will love too?”—is really, I think the impetus for really authentic coffee brands.

Like you were saying, there are some coffee brands, and maybe just a symptom of capitalism, where it feels like the message is, “Buy this coffee.” But when I look at what you're doing, it's like, “I am excited about this thing and I want you to have it. I want you to experience this too.”

Neichelle: I think that's definitely the sentiment at the heart of it all. So I'm really happy it comes across.

Ashley: You've mentioned the coffee blend Be The Light that you formulated. I was wondering if you could tell me the story behind that.

Neichelle: Yeah. So Be The Light is actually a single origin. It's from Burundi. I wanted to start with Burundi for Black Girl Black Coffee because it's my favorite origin. Anytime I've had coffee from Burundi, I'm just like, “Oh, give me more, give me more, give me more.”

The story behind it is Phyllis Johnson from BD Imports has been sort of mentoring me through the establishment of my brand. I worked with her to source this coffee that was produced by an amazing Black woman who's no stranger, and her name's very familiar in the specialty coffee world—Angele Ciza in Burundi, who has such a fascinating story: grew up in Burundi on a coffee farm, and as she grew up, got educated, got a job working in exporting goods in Burundi, and came to a crossroads where she decided to bring all of that expertise to bear on her roots in coffee and acquired a farm and now owns the coffee, owns the washing station, and also exports.

And she's the only woman in Burundi that has all of this ownership and power over her goods and has utilized her position and her power to empower more women in Burundi in coffee. And I just love her story. So when we purchased the green coffee from Phyllis, she sent all this material back—videos about Angele and biographies. And this woman is just absolutely incredible. I mean, she's a force.

And I think she also walks in a profound sense of her forcefulness and moves with a keen sense of, “How can I help bring some other women with me?”

That's a story I wanted to share. And that's a story that I feel I can really get behind. I named the coffee Be The Light because it's full of citrusy notes that are balanced by the chocolatey notes. When I first sampled it, I said, “It tastes like a sunrise.” It reminded me of this trope of being the light, being the light in whatever situation, in whatever space—you're bringing the light, being the light. So yeah, that's the story of Be The Light.

Ashley: It feels like, just at the end, just when you were explaining Be The Light and bringing the light, it feels like that's a metaphor for your coffee journey.

Neichelle: It can be, it can be, there's definitely resonance.

Ashley: Even writing down some of the things that you've said. Some of this was said obviously during the podcast, some of this was said off-air before we started recording. But one of the things that you've mentioned is constantly being inspired and replenishing your cup, how you're trained as a womanist to not erase yourself …and it just seems like if I had to think of a visual metaphor for you—I don't know why this is coming into my head—but I'm thinking of you walking into a room and it being not necessarily dark, but I can just see like light radiating off of you.

Which is funny—I often mix metaphors in my head sometimes. I don't know. You kind of saying that sometimes you have to bring the light and be the light … just reminded me of the way that you seem to approach coffee.

Neichelle: Yeah. I actually do struggle sometimes now with continuing to do specifically the Instagram page just from a space of total authenticity, because I think there is some there's some pressure of like, “Oh, it's a brand now, should I change how I do social media?” It's tempting, but yeah, no, I don't think so.

Because when I start to make that switch, I start overthinking it, I start overthinking what I put on my page when I'm like, “You have something in your life every single day that has to do with coffee. You don't have to overthink this, Neichelle. Just show your journey the same way you always have.” I just think I'm attracted to authentic people. I'm attracted to brands that lead and tell stories from the heart.

There's some people on Instagram where I'm just like, “Thank you for reminding me of how basic this really is.” It doesn't have to be complicated. Steve from The Coffee Enthusiast, he's one of my closest coffee friends and his Instagram page, it's just got heart, he's showing himself roasting coffee and traveling and having coffee with his family.

And Erica has pages full of coffee reviews because she has an incredible palate and people pay Erica to taste their coffee. And I'm like, “You better do your thing.” I love, love, love, just following people who are documenting the dailiness of their coffee lives. And I want it. That's the kind of person, that's the kind of space I want mine to be as well.

Ashley: I know that we've talked a lot about this throughout the podcast, but one of the most exciting things about talking to you, for me, is how much of a storyteller you are and how much stories seem to factor into your life. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the role of storytelling for you?

Neichelle: I feel like stories are just such a common denominator across so many different lines of distinction and difference—who doesn't love a good story?

I feel stories are such powerful vehicles for values, for beliefs, for truths, whether they're personal truths or communal truths or universal truths. You can do so much more with a story than you can with a law, you know? Stories are just very powerful for speaking to the heart.

One of the first stories that I shared on Black Girl Black Coffee has actually been the impetus for what I'm doing now, and that's the story of Rose Nicaud who was the formerly enslaved woman who purchased her freedom from her slave owner by selling coffee in New Orleans. And if you're in New Orleans and you're Black and you love coffee, maybe you've heard her name.

When I told that story on my page, there was this massive response because, like many Black women across industries and across time, her name and her significance have been erased. But what an incredible story that this woman utilized the law of manumission to sell coffee in front of a cathedral on Sundays. And by doing that, she gained so much economic strength, personal economic strength, that she was able to purchase her freedom and be a free Black woman in the antebellum South, and went on to start the first permanent coffee cart in the French market and went on to establish her cart in the same place where Café du Monde now stands.

Café du Monde has global name recognition, but this woman, this Black woman whose concept is at the heart of it, at the root of it, you scarcely hear her name.

That is a huge driver for me, that's a powerful story. In fact there's a Reel coming out today or tomorrow about the Black Girl Black Coffee logo and the rose in the axis of the logo is an homage to Rose Nicaud. Because here's this Black woman who created this incredible coffee recipe that made her so famous that she made so much money that she bought her freedom. Now that's amazing—and then went on to empower more les vendeuses—free Black women—to establish their own food and hospitality businesses in order to buy their freedom in New Orleans.

Ashley: That's incredible.

Neichelle: And coffee is a way to share these stories.

Ashley: Is there anything that you'd want people listening to this to know about you?

Neichelle: To know about me? Yeah, I just—I'm real. I'm a real one. Whenever I post anything, whenever I'm thinking of the next coffee that I'm going to sell, my heart is in it. If there's a season where I'm not posting as much, it's because I'm working on something and I don't want my content to feel automated. I'm real. I feel like I want to bring my heart to what I do.

Ashley: I think you absolutely do. I am so honored and touched that you took time to talk to me because I feel like you brought so much to this conversation. So thank you for taking this time to chat with me.

Neichelle: Thanks for the invitation to be on your podcast, Ashley. I really appreciate it.

Photo by @ericajsimmons

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My guest today is Sierra Yeo, founder of the Kore Directive and the coffee specialist for Alpro, a U.K. company that makes plant-based products. I’ve known of Sierra for a long time, and talking to her revealed something that I didn’t think I could have overlooked—that there’s a lot of pain and anger fueling some of the most positive and uplifting people that you know.

Sierra talks about the eight years it took her to navigate her career. That’s an important number to remember as you listen: There’s discussion of her work with Alpro and the future of plant milk, but this conversation boils down to the sadness you sometimes forget you feel. The sadness I forget I feel.

Truth be told, I didn’t realize it until I listened back to this episode. There I was at my desk, transcribing, and I reached a point where I sat back and thought, “Whoa—these are two very vulnerable people.”

Every time I write something, or I post on Instagram, or even when I reflect on my own past experiences and issues with bosses, co-workers, customers … there’s always a moment where I doubt myself. I ask myself a question similar to the ones Sierra asks in this episode: “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?”

These moments of doubt don’t always make it beyond my brain, but we really lean into that feeling in this episode. I hope listening to it validates the imperfect path we all take to find our voices and stand up for ourselves. Here’s Sierra.

Ashley: We're here. We're live.

Sierra: Woohoo!

Ashley: We did it. Sierra, could I have you introduce yourself by stating your full name and what you do?

Sierra: Yeah, sure. Hi, my name is Sierra Yeo. I am the coffee specialist for Alpro U.K., which is a plant-based products company, and we've been in the business for 40 years now, I think maybe going 41—so a long time!

In whatever time I have left, I am a cat mom first and foremost. I'm also the founder of the Kore Directive, which is a diversity, equity, and inclusivity organization in the coffee industry here in the U.K. I am also a freelance writer for coffee magazines all over the world and a Q grader as well.

Ashley: What a resume! I feel like if I had a job to offer you, I'd just give it to you right now.

Sierra: Please give me a job. I want to live in the States—I say this all the time. I have such an affinity for the States, for New York. I used to live there a little bit when I was younger—in the States, not in New York, but I love New York.

I visited a couple times and just thought, “Wow, the coffee scene there is incredible.” I keep in contact with a lot of friends from the States and the coffee world as well, and just think, “Oh man, in another life, in another life…”

Ashley: You still have time!

Sierra: There's time, I know. People mistake me for American anyway because I have this weird hybrid accent.

Ashley: Yeah, tell me a little bit about your background. Let's start specifically in coffee. How did you get involved in coffee, and what were some of your first memories of coffee?

Sierra: Oh my gosh. I mean, everyone has to pay the bills and I think that's kind of how it started.

I was at university. I was born in Singapore, but then I flew to the United Kingdom for university. I studied linguistics and I needed a part-time job to pay the rent. I think I started out in a dinky little deli-cafe-bar-type thing—you know, one of the sandwich counters and stuff.

I wasn't allowed on the machine because I didn't know what the hell I was doing. Then one day the barista needed a cover because she needed to go to the toilet. I was like, “All right, I guess I won't set the shop on fire.” I didn't. And then that was pretty much the start of my love affair with coffee.

I worked my way up into more specialty coffee shops. That was really when specialty started taking off anyway [in London]. I would probably say six or five years ago. And it's just been full steam ahead ever since.

So then I got moved up into managerial roles and so on and so forth. One really notable gig was when I managed an Internal Affairs cafe at Facebook, in the Facebook headquarters in London, in Oxford Circus. So that was super fun.

But then this gig at Alpro came up and I was like, “I'd love to stay behind the bar, but there's also more to discover.” I thought the plant-based world was a really interesting segue and a really interesting tangent to go into. That's how I am where I am at the moment, which I'm loving.

Ashley: That's a really amazing trajectory. I love that you mentioned the idea of having a challenge or doing something new—but at the same time, when I think about milk, especially in the coffee industry, sometimes I tell people that I touch coffee maybe 10% of the time. And I touch milk about 90% of the time.

It's funny how little I know about milk relative to coffee. I could spout facts and facts and facts about coffee, but sometimes when I'm talking about milk, I'm like, “Oh, my knowledge is actually incomplete.”

We're definitely gonna talk a lot more about milk and plant-based milk specifically. But I was wondering if you could set the scene a little bit for coffee in London, because I think when you said that the specialty coffee scene boomed five or six years ago, that might be surprising for people to hear.

Sierra: In London the scene really peaked, or really started around 10, 15 years ago.

So you had your little independent cafes opened up by—a notable example is Prufrock, which is in Chancery Lane in London. I used to work there for maybe six to eight months, and that was opened by Gwilym Davies and Jeremy Challender, both of whom have a lot of accolades to their name. I think Gwilym was a world champion at one point.

You have people who were interested in the scene—a very small niche scene, but people were interested and it's a far cry from where we are today, where you couldn't round another corner in London without stumbling on a new gem, and I think that's just so wonderful because I think coffee is super accessible. It's an accessible luxury. And I'm not just talking specialty, but commercial as well.

It's such an affordable luxury that I think people find it very hard to step away from that. For example, during the pandemic, we saw that people weren't able to give up their coffee shops and were really mourning the loss of their local cafes.

Ashley: Absolutely.

Sierra: I definitely think that when I think of the scene in London, that's what I think of—it’s very saturated, it's very vibrant. People are constantly innovating and coming up with new concepts, new ideas, new places, new ways to showcase coffee. And I just think that's amazing. That's kind of what my world is like: being able to visit all these cafés is part of my role; as part of my day-to-day it’s just such a joy.

I do think that more and more people don't have to seek the route that these guys in the past had to where it was like, “Oh, if you're only super passionate about it, if you've competed to a certain level, then you're allowed to open a coffee shop.” I think now people are taking it upon themselves to say how, “Oh my gosh, I actually really liked this product. I'm very passionate about it.”

There's tons of resources available online, in person, different courses, different programs that you can get certified on. And then saying, “Oh, I want to take my passion to the next level and basically expand the scene.” That's kind of how I think the London scene specifically has bloomed, but also in other pockets in the United Kingdom—like Manchester is one of my favorite coffee cities ever. I lived and worked there for a little bit, so it's always got a special place in my heart, but Manchester, Sheffield, Bristol, Brighton … all of these places have very happening coffee scenes and they're doing such a great job as well.

Ashley: That's really cool. I love the idea that the growth of specialty coffee isn't about saturation, but it's more about accessibility and people saying, “This is a thing I really like, I want to enter it.”

I think it's easy to be negative when things get really popular. I think it's easy to be like, “Well, this was cool once.” And I think that the coffee industry especially has been guilty of that in the past—I think you've even mentioned it. Yeah, I'm sure.

But it's really interesting to see you reflect on it as a good thing. It's good that more people are able to enter the industry. It's good that more people are able to see their passion reflected in other coffee shops. It's good that there's not just one way to enter the field that you can say, “Hey, I didn't have to win a barista competition to open up my shop.”

Sierra: But that was one of the biggest myths. And I think that's why I'm so passionate about my work with the Kore. That was one of the myths that I found so often debunked in my time as a barista. Because I think I hit a point in my career where I was struggling to get anywhere. And I was like, “Well, I know I'm good at what I do as a barista. I don't really have any desire to be a manager because I'm terrible at it. But I could probably move into a roastery, but I also don't really want to roast.”

There seemed to be like, at least at the time for me, there seemed to be this mythical career ladder where you would go from front-of-house to barista to senior barista to head barista to manager to getting your foot in the door of a roastery, you'd be a production assistant, and then you work your way up to roasting…

I was like, “Who do I know physically who has done that?” And the answer was a whopping zilch—I didn't really know anyone who had fit that mold. A lot of the people that I look up to today who have astounding careers in coffee didn't work that way and they didn't work their way up that way.

That was one of the things that I found so key to debunk with my work with the Kore. A lot of the small business owners that we have as part of our community, a lot of the smaller roasters that we have as part of our community, all kind of started out just liking the product and being like, “Okay, well I'm not in this certified cool club. How do I make my way in this world?”

That was and is the community that we provide, we say, “Well, come and join us. We don't really know what we're doing either. We'll figure it out.”

Ashley: So I know you've talked a little bit about the Kore Directive and some of the reasoning behind why it was founded and what the organization does. But I was wondering if we could step back a little bit and talk about when the organization was founded, its principles—if you could give that the elevator pitch.

Sierra: Oh my gosh. It's funny cause this elevator pitch changes all the time.

Ashley: I’m ready for it. I'm ready for it to be different even when I release this episode later.

Sierra: I think partially it's also down to my personal growth. The way it started out was I was super salty. [Laughs] I was super salty after—

Ashley: That’s how Boss Barista was founded, so don’t worry.

Sierra: I feel like it was good that you and I channeled our anger into something positive. I honestly do say to so many people that the Kore saved my life, but it basically started when I left a really toxic place of work and had experienced all sorts of things from managerial bullying to racist incidents to just a really toxic work culture.

People were burning out left, right, center. People were leaving—all the classic [signs], I'm sure you know this, Ashley—so all of that stuff, and then I just felt gaslit to high heaven because I was like, “Surely I can't be the only person finding this an issue.” At the end of the day I was saying to myself, “You need to take the step for yourself and step away from this job. It doesn't matter that you need to pay the bills. You need to find a way to pay the bills in a different way. It just needs to be done.”

So that happened. I sank into a major depressive episode for something like six months after that because I was so angry. I'm sure you felt that way, but I felt so angry and disillusioned and disenchanted and thought, “There's gotta be more than this.” I don't want to give up a whole career in coffee just because this has happened, but by God I was close.

In time, I started to talk to some more people and explain my situation. I was in between jobs at the time and started talking to more women and saying, “This is what I've experienced.”

They were like, “Oh, okay, well that's not new. I've experienced that too.”

And I was like, “…Okay.”

So after the first two women I spoke to, I was like, maybe that's a coincidence. Maybe after like the sixth or seventh woman I spoke to, I was like, “This is a thing, it's a thing.” That was the impetus for it.

I wanted to create something, anything—a space, an organization, I dunno? A web server, a blog—whatever. I wanted to create a space where we can collectively acknowledge that this is not fair to women specifically. Then that broadened after our first—I think we did a launch party in November of 2018. It was a soft launch. We wanted to see if anyone was interested in feminism and then holy crap, 60 people turned up and I was like, “Whoa, okay, this has got traction. This has got legs.”

Then we did our official launch launch party in January of 2019. That was also equally well-attended.

From that point on, I think people started being sold on the idea that we were around. We were around to stay. Gradually we worked our way into magazines, I tried to tap in as many of my connections as possible to spread the word. We started running events and that was how we had started out: running events based around accessibility, equity, inclusivity, and to try and get as many people as possible attending that were not—and I use this a touch ironically—but not “the norm.”

We wanted to get as many women, as many people of color, as many marginalized folks down to our events as possible. I think the general vibe that I've had from each of our events is if you have any questions, ask. There are no stupid questions.

So we've run the gamut of events from a grinder maintenance workshop, an espresso machine maintenance workshop for women. We've run a, “Bring Your Own Regular” cupping. So every barista that attended had to bring two of their regular customers to learn more about coffee. That was really cute.

We ran an alternative flavor wheel cupping where I think I chopped up something like 67 different fruits that weren't Eurocentric. I got to taste fruits from my home. People were like, “Whoa, I've never tasted jackfruit that wasn't in a vegan steak.” And I'm like, “Yeah, jackfruit’s a fruit!” So that was brilliant.

I think the general theme that runs through what we do is to make coffee as welcoming as possible.

Ashley: When you're talking about these events where—just going back to the flavor wheel, because in general for coffee, there's this flavor wheel … I guess I'm describing a flavor wheel by describing it as a flavor wheel, which is ridiculous, but there's a whole sector of different flavors that you can taste in coffee. It’s a reference point that a lot of coffee tasters, Q graders like you, are used to to describe coffee, but it is very Eurocentric.

There are a lot of fruits that are not represented on the flavor wheel. So even just opening up the door for people to say like, “Hey, this is a tool that we use. However, it's very Eurocentric, let's expand that outward and see what happens,” is really interesting. I'm also really struck just because—and I share this with you—by how many things are started in anger.

It's both a little bit funny and not because it's something you can reflect on and say, “Oh yeah, that's right. I was really angry when I started this thing,” but it's something when you go back on, you say, “Well, why was I angry? And how many people also feel the same anger that I do?”

Like you were hinting at, there's so much gaslighting that goes with these feelings of anger and disenchantment of like, “Am I the only person who feels this way? Do other people feel this way? I can't connect with other people to know if they feel this way because it's very taboo to talk about these things at work.” So I appreciate the fact that you were able to take some of that anger and almost—not necessarily push past it, because that anger is very valid and a lot of people feel it—but able to find a way to express it outwardly so that other people could identify with it, which is so hard because we are not set up to acknowledge unfairness with others because we never really get the chance to talk about it at work. Does that make sense?

Sierra: Oh my God. Perfect sense. It's almost cathartic to hear you say it, and one thing that I think we both feel, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's such a painful part of our personal histories to talk about.

I still think back to times when I was working at this place or even previous places—it wasn't just localized to a single coffee shop—and these are deeply painful, deeply personal histories. I just remember thinking, and I don't know if you've ever felt that way, but just thinking, “Am I attention-seeking for wanting to make this a bigger deal than it is?”

A lot of that is conditioning as a cisgender woman, a lot of it is conditioning to not be loud, to not make a fuss and so on and so forth that we've been exposed to since we were kids.

So definitely stepping up and starting the Kore is kind of like my big f**k you to the whole system. It’s my big f**k you not just to the patriarchy, but to white professionalism in general, because you can absolutely be professional and also be f*****g angry. They're not mutually exclusive.

I think that that's been a big part of my personal work ethos. I won't speak for the whole of the Kore, but for Sierra that's definitely an energy that I bring to my work. Even now, if I'm not happy, I express myself. People have to make those TikToks where you have to decode professional language on emails. And I'm just like, “No way. I’ll use as many exclamation marks as I want to.” I tell people when I'm not happy about something, or I tell you when I am happy about something.

There’s this myth that we’re contributing to, I feel, that this disempowers people of color, especially when we don't end up speaking the language of white professionalism. So I absolutely go into all of my spaces of work as honest as possible, as tactical as possible when I need to be, and then if I do need to state the truth, I don't shy away from that.

I think that's the kind of energy that I'd love to see more of, if that makes sense. Because sometimes you do feel like a bit of a weirdo when you're expressing yourself. I think that was the one big takeaway, not just from the Kore and just being empowered by creating this organization, but also for myself and saying, “Okay, there are things that I will not stand by. And one of those things is not being honest. Not being honest to my employers, not being honest to myself.” It’s a two-way street, I suppose.

Ashley: Right. It's difficult though, because I feel like … I don't know. I feel like as I've gotten older—and I've hit like a weird part of my career. Right now I'm doing only freelance work and I'm still trying to contemplate if I can ever work for somebody else ever again because I feel like so much of what you've said does resonate with me.

There are things that I feel like I will not do anymore. I try not to do anymore. And yet I still fall into these traps of repeating some mistakes. I have this podcast, I write about these things, but if I'm still struggling with them, then what does that mean for other people? I think that there's a good lesson in what you've said: of being an example and saying f**k you to white professionalism. And I'm going to do the best that I can to do that.

But at the same time, that is hard work. It often can be met with resistance or [you’re treated] like you're the problem. One of the reasons I left my last job was that my boss would continuously tell me that I was the only person who had problems with things. And I was like, “What is this? Am I the problem? Am I the only one?”

I don't know, but like I said, there's so much gaslighting that's involved in trying to change the rhetoric around how work works essentially. It's really, really difficult. And I think it's not linear either—I just wanted to make sure that we emphasize that, because I think it's really easy to listen to this podcast or listen to you talk and be like, wow, this sounds really easy and it's not.

For me—for Ashley—it's one step forward, two steps back. Or sometimes it's two steps forward, one step back, or eight steps forward, 20 steps back. It takes a lot. And I think it's okay for that imperfection to exist, too. I feel like I need to acknowledge it.

Sierra: I definitely want to caveat what I've said because I'm just like, “Oh my gosh, that's like oozing privilege.” And I definitely do want to…

Ashley: It's not, I want to be clear on that. It's just that I think—everything's contextual. I think it's easy to listen to this and be like, “Cool, she's got it all figured out,” but that's not what you're saying at all, but I think it's easy to take that. You know what I mean?

Sierra: Yeah. I think to contextualize a little bit more—and I will be completely honest: The job that I currently have is the first job where I felt safe enough to dissent. I read this on a thread somewhere or something, on Instagram, on Twitter, but basically it was talking about diversity, equity, and inclusivity.

It said that diversity is an easy tick, like a tick box exercise. You could amass any number of people in the room that come from diverse backgrounds of any sort and call that diversity. But if that's as far as [you go], that’s shallow marketing.

Inclusivity is being able to have any of these people dissent safely. That really stuck with me where I said, “Oh s**t, that's what I'm feeling in my current job.” So I can be different and I can be honest and that might not be everyone's vibe, but it doesn't mean that I am in a place where I am in fear of losing my job for it. Does that make sense?

Ashley: That totally makes sense. And that's a really good point. I'm glad that you pointed that out, because I think you're absolutely right. It's easy to be like, “We're a diverse place—look at our staff,” but if no one actually feels safe enough to dissent, then it doesn't mean anything.

It's checking a box, it's saying, “Look at this! Cool! We did it, and we're done,” versus “This is an evolution. This is a process.” It involves listening to a lot of people and admitting that you're not right sometimes, and that's okay.

Sierra: The one thing as well, this is kind of a shout-out to Sierra from the past, and I suppose Ashley from the past as well, where I had to go through so many jobs where that doesn't happen and I absolutely do acknowledge that there are jobs in which people cannot dissent safely even today, even still.

Dissenting isn't necessarily as straightforward as we would like it to be. And certainly not as equitable as we'd like it to be, but I do honestly think—and I'm going to round this bit off with an anecdote that I had that I really wanted to share at our trade show [London Coffee Festival] but I didn't. So I'm going to share it here.

I was meant to be hosting a panel called “Seats at the Table,” and this was a diversity, equity, and inclusivity talk specifically for the coffee industry. What I didn't manage to mention at the time was that early this year when the Atlanta shootings [had happened] and there was a case against a couple of missing women in the country, in the United Kingdom where their bodies had turned up, I think, a couple of weeks later…

So there was just a really intense week during International Women's Day in early March. And what happened during that time was that I got racially harassed. Again, it's not new. It happened a lot when COVID first started, obviously being of Southeast Asian descent, I kind of knew that was going to happen. I got racially harassed in March and just broke down on the street and was like, “Oh my God, this is terrible.”

I went home—and this [happened] on a sales call. This was during work hours. So I went home and I shared it with a couple of close colleagues. And that was really the bridge where I thought, “Oh my gosh, I feel safe enough to share this with colleagues and not have them be like, ‘Are you sure you weren’t just making stuff up or imagining things or whatever? Are you sure was as bad as you said?’” There was none of that.

People were like, “Oh my God, this is terrible. I'm really sorry this has happened to you.” And then gradually we escalated that through the business and what truly gave me closure was the business coming back and saying, “All right, we hear you, let's implement a protocol to make sure that yourself and your team, your field sales team, are safe moving forward and for you to be able to report any sort of these instances if they do happen again.”

It was such a little, but also big thing, because I spoke about this with my team who have also had a couple of people that also had harassment incidences. And we said, “Wow, this is the first time we've been in a company that a) believes us and b) is doing something about it.”

I was just kind of processing that for about a week after and thinking, “This took eight years. This took a career of eight years for me to find a company where I finally felt safe enough to be like, ‘Wow, they're listening. And they hear me.’”

I suppose my point is, especially for listening to the podcast, to say please don't give up hope. I know that there are a lot of structural difficulties when it comes to, for example, HR. I think a lot of smaller coffee company companies can't afford HR or haven't even considered HR, et cetera, but it is possible to have a career in coffee and not feel like you're burning a candle at both ends. So yeah, that was my point and a really wholesome point to end on, you know?

Ashley: I think it's important for people to listen to stories like this for proof, almost, for both reasons: for the reason that you just ended on—that there is hope and there is a light hopefully at the end of the tunnel and things can get better, but at the same time for people who maybe enter their careers and never have to think about these things, who don't even have to think about the fundamentals. They're like, “Oh, I know that I will be safe at work. I know that I will be listened to at work. I know that my complaints will be handled or at least my basic safety will never be challenged.”

For you to come on the other end and say, “It took me eight years to find a place where I could even just establish that baseline.” And thinking critically about where are people at in their careers. Sometimes I even think about my own career. I'm like, not old. I'm 34. But sometimes I'm like, “Well, shoot, I wish I could be further along, but this happened and this happened and this happened…” and I have to remind myself that I had to establish a lot of safety and feeling listened to at work to even feel like I could advance or get anywhere.

That comes back to that anger issue too. It makes me really angry. It makes me really angry that I couldn't just establish a career and establish a safety net for myself. But that's neither here nor there. I mean, it is here and there, but it's a little bit off point.

Before we start to wrap things up, I want to ask you a little bit about your work at Alpro. As baristas, we touch milks so much more often than we do probably coffee in a way because we steam so much milk. We make so many milk-based beverages.

I'd say at my very last barista shift I probably steamed more plant milk than I did cow milk.

Sierra: No way!

Ashley: Probably at least 50/50 at this point. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about some of the things that are on your mind in terms of plant milk and really thinking about sustainability, not just as an environmental concern, but as a social concern.

Sierra: Absolutely. I think it's so interesting because so many of these social justice movements kind of happened in the last year or so, and people are really opening up their eyes to the fact that our planet is in dire straits and we definitely need to start doing something about it. In fact, we should have been doing something yesterday.

With regards to plant-based products it's definitely something that I didn't envision myself doing, but then when I did, I was like, “Oh wow, there's a demand for it.” And it’s growing exponentially at that. It's just almost like, why haven't we considered it sooner?

I talked to a lot of people in my line of work who have switched over to what we at Alpro call “a flexitarian diet.” So you're basically favoring more plant-based stuff, you won't rule out meat necessarily, but when you do consider meat it's more ethically sourced—you're just a little bit more conscious about how you’re consuming it, but then mostly it's plant-based.

Obviously we cater to people with vegetarian diets and vegan diets as well. And that's kind of where the big driver is where people, I think, in lockdown weren't able to get their hands on dairy and then thought, “You know what? Now’s as good a time as any to start experimenting with my diet.” And then a lot of them didn't switch back from plant-based after that, which I think is amazing.

I think a lot of discussions are happening which will likely propel plant-based more into the coffee spotlight. I think, with regards to ingredients, that's just so interesting because I think soya has always been around. It’s been around for the longest time. Back in the day, I don't know if you remember this from when you used to drink soya, Ashley, if you ever did, but back in the day it was just curdle heaven.

We didn't know what stabilizes were. We didn't know what acidity regulators were. We didn't know what hydrocolloids were. Soya, and most plant-based milks in general at the time—I would probably say 10, 15 years ago—were not engineered to work with coffee. And if they were, it was just an afterthought. So people would just be like, “Do you have anything that isn’t milk? Oh, okay, cool, I'll take soya.” It's a little bit different now.

But then deforestation was a big topic. And with Alpro, we source 60% of our soya locally in Europe—Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany—and then we source the other 40% of the soya from Canada by boat. So we definitely don't touch any deforestation areas, particularly in the Amazon. So that's really good.

Next up we have almonds. Almonds are a little bit of an interesting one. I don't know if you've had similar discussions, obviously, because California is such a big producer of almonds. But for Alpro, we source our almonds from the Mediterranean with natural rainfall. So we try not to irrigate artificially. We also try to protect the ecosystem, particularly the bee ecosystem surrounding these almond groves, which I think is brilliant.

With almond, it's a little bit more interesting because there's so many different flavor profiles. I think some people prefer a more marzipan flavor profile, or some people prefer completely unsweetened and so on and so forth.

That actually brings me to a very interesting segue. A lot of people don't realize, I think, there's always this standard where a plant-based milk has to aspire to dairy's performance level. I don't know if that's a) possible—we haven't found the technology to do that yet, or someone would have already done it. But also b) I don't know if that's necessarily something we want to aim for, because they're just completely different products, they're completely different occasions with their own flavor profiles.

As coffee professionals, as sensory professionals, I don't know if it's a helpful paradigm to hold ourselves to—to try to limit plant-based products by saying that they should resemble dairy. I think that there's aspects that could resemble dairy. I think for example, mouthfeel and creaminess are two quite important things that we look out for, neutrality, and so on and so forth.

The way that I approach it in my work at Alpro is more of like a bartender or mixology point of view, where it's like, “Okay, these are all different ingredients that taste completely different from each other. How about we figure out how to pair them with coffees to best complement whatever's happening in the cup?” Surely that makes more sense as opposed to saying, “Oh, let's rank these ingredients in order of how neutral they taste,” because that doesn't make any sense to me.

Ashley: It seems really interesting that we haven't approached plant-based milks in that way. I've fallen down the rabbit hole with plant-based milks a little bit, and milk proteins are so unique and they only exist in milk and they perform the way that they do because they’re milk. So the fact that we are trying to mimic this thing seems technologically, maybe impossible—maybe later it will be possible.

In a way the coffee industry sort of shot itself in the foot when it comes to plant-based milks, because we did offer it as an alternative.

Sierra: Exactly.

Ashley: “You can't have dairy, we have this other thing,” versus “We have these two things that are both really excellent. They taste different, and this is how they taste different.”

And I wonder, as plant-based milks become more popular, do you think that will start to shift? I still think that we're in a little bit of a conundrum when it comes to plant milks where we still treat them as the alternative—and perhaps even picking the alternative has become cool or trendy or interesting. But it's not that we have posited these two things as different. We still posit them as alternatives.

I'm thinking about amaros (amari), for example, those bitter liquors. All of those amari fall into the category of amaro, but they all taste different and you can build drinks with all of them.

I'm trying to think of a drink that's amaro-based and I can't think of any, but if you switch out the amaro, the drink is going to taste different, but you still fundamentally have the same sort of drink. You can still have a latte with almond milk versus cow milk. They're going to taste different, but they're still fundamentally the same drink. How do we think about things that go with them that will highlight all the flavors inside of them?

Sierra: Also who decided that dairy was the standard of excellence and taste?

Ashley: It's Eurocentrism.

Sierra: Well, there you go.

It really behooves us to start questioning these norms. And I think that that is happening. It's so interesting that you bring up the molecular composition of dairy because a lot of what makes plant-based products perform in coffee today is a blend of protein, of some sort of plant-based lipids and acidity regulators, stabilizers, some sugar as well really helps.

So when people, for example, ask me for unsweetened almond milk, I'm like, “You do know that that's totally not going to work in coffee, by the way. It just doesn't work. We haven't broken that frontier yet.”

That's definitely something to consider with oat and coconut as well—I think coconut gets a really negative rep and that's something that we've been trying to change at Alpro recently, because coconut, a lot of people tend to say, “It overwhelms the flavor profile of the coffee.”

I'm like, “You do realize that there were big, boozy, natural coffees that will be able to hold their own with coconut and will create probably a banging drink?” I think as an industry, we need to stop restricting ourselves, to get up out of our own way, and really think about exploring different possibilities.

Ashley: Is there anything that you'd want people to know about? I feel like we covered a lot of different topics, but very, very quickly. So is there anything that you would want people to know about you or about your work at Alpro or about The Kore that we didn't cover?

Sierra: I would probably say for people—I would love for people to do their research.

I think when it comes to things that you don't know much about—whether or not it's social justice movements or it's about equity, equality, diversity, et cetera … and then also when it comes to plant-based choices in your life.

If you want to pursue a new ingredient or if you want to try something out from a new brand because we're seeing so much competition in that market at the moment—and that competition is good, it's a good thing—but I definitely say try to be as discerning as possible with your choices, with what you support. Particularly with these products, find out where they're sourced, try to find out more about the supply chain of the ingredient, if you can … the credentials of the company, whether or not they're B-Corp certified, for example. It's just access to information and making sure that you are making as informed a choice as possible.

Ashley: Sierra, thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it.

Sierra: No, man, this is great. This is so wonderful. I've been such a fan of your podcast for the longest time and the work that you do, and this was such an honor.

This Boss Barista episode is brought to you by Urnex.

One of Urnex’s latest advances is a range of environmentally friendly cleaners called Biocaf. Biocaf products are made entirely from plant- and mineral-based ingredients and are fully biodegradable. They're available for both commercial and household coffee equipment.

Urnex is also partnering with coffee pros—like me!—to highlight some of the best sustainability efforts in the industry with the Biocaf Sustainability Series. You can read my most recent piece on Onyx Coffee Labs’ switch to oat milk in their latest café, and learn more about Biocaf here. And be sure to read the dozens of pieces focusing on sustainability in coffee and beyond.

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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.

Former guests have talked about the idea of risk in a global supply stream. When an item has to go through so many hands to get from Point A to Point B, how can risk be shared responsibly? Oftentimes, it’s not. In coffee, a lot of the risk lands on farmers, whose profits fluctuate based on what roasters are willing to pay, even though roasters have a vested interest in keeping the coffee industry going. In fast fashion, the risk shifts to factory workers, who deal with designers who might cancel orders if they’re not doing well in stores, or fluctuate their requests. Those factors mean anticipating labor needs can be tricky.

I know it might seem strange to talk fashion on a coffee and food podcast, but the parallels between the two industries show how systems meant to benefit those in power aren’t accidents. The same systems show up over and over across industries where there are huge profits to be made at the expense of others’ labor. Here’s Rachel.

Ashley: To kick things off: Could you introduce yourself?

Rachel: Sure. My name is Rachel Faller and I'm one of the co-creators of tonlé.

Ashley: How did tonlé begin? What's the story of tonlé?

Rachel: In 2008, I had the opportunity to go to Cambodia on a Fulbright fellowship and learn about traditional textiles from craftspeople who were working there, primarily through fair trade organizations using fair trade as in capital “F” and “T,” and also “fair trade” in quotes. [At the time], fair trade was really starting to become more of a thing in fashion.

I had just started to learn about fair trade and I was interested in how it could be a solution to some of fashion's problems. Having graduated from a textile program, I knew that there were a lot of problems in the fashion industry, but I didn't really know—I wasn't really seeing any solutions at that time. And so I wanted to go and learn from makers directly about what was working for them and what wasn't working for them in this movement and in their businesses, and learn about the traditional crafts that they were making.

I got to do this year of research and really hands-on experience working and learning from craftspeople, which was really incredible. I was extremely privileged to be able to do that and to have that opportunity. But what I kind of saw is—at the same time that I moved to Cambodia in 2008, the Recession happened, and that really dramatically impacted the sales of a lot of these makers.

There was also at that time—2008 and the Recession really led to the rise of fast fashion. Companies started to realize that they could sell more and more products at cheaper prices, so it really accelerated the pace of fast fashion.

Cambodia is also a country where a lot of fast fashion is produced, so I saw how that was affecting people firsthand. The price for fairly made textiles was essentially going down while the production of fast fashion was ramping up.

I saw both extremes in Cambodia, where you saw the impact of these huge fast fashion companies through their manufacturers in Cambodia on the environment, as well as on the workers and also how some of these groups that were striving to be fair trade and to produce things in a better way were also struggling because the market for fair trade was kind of considered luxury. They were also struggling at the same time.

On a very personal note, I was also having a hard time finding clothes that I really wanted to wear and felt comfortable wearing after seeing all of this. Even within the small markets in Cambodia, there were a lot of products that were handmade and very beautiful, but not really clothes that you could wear on a daily basis.

Then you also had these massive markets for castoffs from the larger garment factories—a lot of things that had failed quality control or were overstocked. That was flooding the markets. On a personal note, I was like, “I don't feel good wearing most of the clothes that are available out there for me.”

Ashley: How did these observations—what you were seeing in the fashion industry—translate to starting a clothing company?

Rachel: There were a group of people through one of the nonprofits that I was partnering with who said, “Hey, we want to start this business. But we don't really know how to—can you help us?”

So we kind of did an exchange of knowledge and that led organically to starting the first iteration of the business. And eventually it became clear—my goal was to basically help this group of women start this business and then my goal was always to leave and let them take over the business and let it keep going from there.

But there was a bit of a conundrum with the market in Cambodia where there was this market for higher-end products to sell to tourists and expats, but the problem with the market in Cambodia is that a lot of the products that were sold locally to the people in Cambodia were also being made under unfair conditions.

In the tailoring workshops, there's an exploitive culture where within Cambodia, families sort of work together and maybe the head tailor gets paid, but everybody else gets free room and board—they might not actually get paid or they send money home. That's kind of the system: It's family tailoring workshops that rely on unfair pay structures.

So it was a bit of an organic process and a lot of evolution in conversation with the team that we developed, and the needs of people changed as we grew as well. So there were a lot of ups and downs, but essentially I ended up staying in Cambodia for seven years working directly with makers to grow this business.

We started out working on a per-piece model with people working from home. And then we moved to having a production facility where people work in the facility and get paid. Then we moved to a salary model, then we moved to a combined model where people are paid a per-piece rate, plus a base salary. So they can earn more depending on their output, but within a set number of hours so there's no overtime hours and stuff that you see in the factories.

Ashley: Since this is a podcast that talks to coffee folks, it might be helpful to explain how tonlé is structured or operates differently from the traditional fashion business model, if there is one?

Rachel: So there have been a lot of changes, a lot of evolution, but we’re constantly in conversation and in consultation with our team in Cambodia, and really centering them as the decision-makers in terms of what we're doing with the business and what they want and what's best for them.

So it’s very different than a traditional fashion brand. The way that works is the designer says, or a brand says, “Hey, what do we want to produce? What's going to be good for the market? Let's go out and find a facility to produce that.” It’s usually multiple facilities around the world. You end up with these long and convoluted supply chains where the product and the customer is prioritized rather than the people who make the products being the center.

The way that we've developed our business has been much more with the makers at the center and always asking you the question, “What is good for the makers?” We ask, “How do we develop products that are first and foremost good for the people who make them, and then secondarily are going to be sellable and good for our customers as well?” It's kind of backwards in the traditional fashion sense, but that's what we do.

Ashley: I think that's amazing how you laid everything out. I think initially someone might listen to this episode and think, “What does a clothing company have to do with coffee?” But you hit on so many themes that come up in coffee, and we're going to talk about a lot more of them as we go on through this conversation.

I want to lay some foundation just for folks who maybe don't know a lot about what the fashion industry looks like or what fast fashion is. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that moment in 2008 when fast fashion became more of a thing, and what that actually means and what that looks like from a supply chain standpoint.

Rachel: Yes, yes. So this is really important because I think a lot of people don't understand what fast fashion is. It's a very specific term that's become very broadly used.

Traditionally in the fashion industry—so pre-2008 and pre-fast fashion—you would have a pretty long lead time before a product got to market. So designers would take about somewhere between three to six months to develop their collections and produce really high-quality samples and do all the fit testing, fabric testing …everything that goes into making a really beautiful prototype.

Then they would present those prototypes to buyers, like department stores and boutiques and so forth. Those buyers would then place orders based on the prototypes. Then the designers could go to the factories or their suppliers and say, “Hey, we have an order from a buyer for this many products.”

Then the factory would have three to six months to produce that order based on an actual production order from a buyer that was going to buy that item, based on a prototype that's really well-made and really well designed. Then the factory would produce it and then it would get sent directly to the stores. Then the stores would have probably another three to six months to sell it.

That whole process is somewhere between 12 and 18 months. So a year to a year and a half, that was how the fashion industry used to work. That's why you have runway [shows] that happened six months in advance.

Ashley: That explains seasonal displays, like, “This is this season’s styles,” or whatever that looks like.

Rachel: That has been denigrated, but it's actually [a] really important [system] to produce in a more ethical and sustainable manner. I know that sounds really backwards, but let me explain to contrast the situation that we're in now.

So fast fashion is where these businesses can be vertically integrated. They can actually take product from design to market in less than a month. The way that they do that is they essentially don't make prototypes. They don't make samples, they don't develop their products in any way.

They're just sending some kind of sketch directly to the factory and they say, “Okay, produce 10,000.” And then the factory sends back the 10,000 that have not been sampled, that have not been tested, that have not been prototyped.

They immediately put them in the store and they test those 10,000 items and see how fast they sell. If they sell well, maybe the brand will order more. There's a lot of data analytics and stuff that goes into this. But essentially, as you can imagine, that results in more waste, more overproduction.

We’re getting to this micro-season thing which we have now, where stores are expected to have new products on the shelf every week instead of collections every six months. I'm not saying 2008 started that, but it sort of jump-started it.

This whole thing means that [companies] are shifting the risk onto the factories and onto the suppliers, because in order to get something from design-to-market in a month, when the process used to take 18 months, the factories basically have to pre-order fabric. They have to pay all these upfront costs.

They also have to take on the risk of having—let's say a factory has 1,000 workers. So that capacity is a risk, right? They need to pay their salaries no matter what. And this is true of tonlé as well. The factory needs to pay their solid salaries, no matter what, whereas the brand only pays for the products that they ordered.

If one month they get an order that they need 1,500 people to work on, well, they're going to outsource to a subcontractor. If the next month they get an order for only 500, that's only 500 of their workers they need to make [things]. Then they've got all this spare capacity.

The factories essentially have to take on all that risk of the capacity of the labor. They also have to take on the risk of buying the raw materials upfront, which means that they're going to over-order their raw materials, so that if a brand comes in to place an order and they say, “We want this really fast turnaround time,” they can do that.

Ashley: It seems like there's a lot of problems with that model.

So first and foremost, you used probably my favorite word right now, which is risk—a lot of the risk in fast fashion seems to be distributed to factories. Is that right?

Rachel: Yup. I think really emphasizing that these are formerly colonized countries or continue to be colonized countries. This is 100% a legacy of colonialism. It's not coincidental at all that all of these countries were colonized and now continue to be colonized by this extremely exploitative system where we—primarily in North America and Europe—can outsource the labor. But these companies, which are again, mostly owned by white Europeans and American men, are essentially making huge amounts of profit while not having any of the risks.

Ashley: Exactly. Their profits are not affected at all. They're still making money while transferring the risk of fast fashion to formerly colonized—and truthfully, like you said—[they continue to be] colonized countries.

Rachel: Yes. A lot of that infrastructure was literally set up under colonialism. It's just really mind-blowing. I mean, if you think about India, for example, a lot of the garment industry was built under colonialism and now [companies] are like, “Oh look, we can just kind of continue using this.”

Ashley: Right, right. There's no talk of what reforming an entire system looks like. Especially when it's set up under a system that was meant to exploit people.

But then it seems like there's this secondary issue of sustainability from an environmental standpoint and from a consumerist standpoint, where fast fashion encourages people to buy things and continue to look for new trends and fashion—probably more often than they would normally—to encourage continued spending. And that's where you get the environmental waste as well, like, “We need this product to be produced really quickly. The waste of it is inconsequential at this point.”

Rachel: Yeah. And it's partly inconsequential because the brands and the customers who, again, are in those Global North countries, are never having to see it, right?

I lived in Cambodia for seven years. I literally saw this waste piling up. I mean—yeah, there's so much we can say, but essentially those negative environmental outputs are being shifted onto these countries as well and it’s not only in terms of the literal waste, but the cut waste that we see.

tonlé uses scraps that come from the garment industry. I forgot to mention that earlier, but we actually get this waste literally from these huge companies via their factories, because the factories have all this excess fabric. Some of it is still on the roll, so it's perfectly good, but they just had to order extra because they didn't know the brands were inconsistent with their projections.

That's another part of the risk: that they're having to invest in all these raw materials. Brands will not give them clear orders or productions until the last minute.

Then there's also cut waste. There's things that fail quality control because of course, if workers are trying to produce so fast, their quality is not going to be great. So things are not going to be produced as well. So there's lots of extra waste [that] has increased exponentially.

I would say that the percentage of waste as compared to the products being produced has increased. The number of garments that are being produced has increased. I think, and I'd have to check this statistic, but it's something like since 2010, the number of garments being produced every year has more than doubled.

Then if you think about waste as a percentage of that, the waste has more than doubled as well because the waste as a percentage is higher.

I mean, it's pretty unbelievable. Our team goes to these warehouses in Phnom Penh where the scraps are collected by these informal recycling streams, they go and they get waste from the garment industry, from these big factories. Factories have to get rid of them sort of on the sly, because the brands don't want their sort of trademarked materials to get out and be made into something else.

But the brands also kind of look the other way because they know that they're not buying the raw materials and they're not investing in those. So they can't really say anything. So our team members go to these warehouses where all this stuff is collected and resold, and then we can pick out what we want, but I see all kinds of things there. I see garments that are half-made. I've seen bales of fabric with brands’ names on them. It's pretty wild. I'll have to show you a video or something.

Ashley: One of the first images that I saw when I went to your website was a picture of stacks and stacks and stacks of garments. I assume that that's what traditional factories would call waste?

Rachel: Yes, exactly.

I want to just really emphasize that there is a tendency to villainize the factories in this situation. Even with this concept, and I know we’re going to talk more about transparency, one of the problems with talking about transparency is it lets the brand say—and I want to credit my friend Kim here, she worked with tonlé in the past and she now has her own podcast called Manufactured, which is really fantastic. She talks a lot about the distribution of risk and reward and why that needs to be re-analyzed.

She and I had a lot of conversations about transparency and how it allows the brands to basically say, “The problem is transparency. The factories are trying to hide things from us,” and this kind of, “OK, we’re going to put the blame on the factory. When in reality, we made the factory take all that risk and we're not paying high enough prices and we're not giving fair projections.”

So the factory is taking on all the risk, meanwhile, we're kind of saying, “Oh, the issue is these bad factory managers are exploiting their workers and throwing away all of this waste.”

I just want to really reemphasize the fact that these brands—it's very convenient for them to be able to make all the profit, but take none of this responsibility when something goes wrong.

Ashley: It's this idea of transparency, but without thinking of the intersection of transparency and power.

Rachel: And accountability, right? It's like transparency, but no accountability when you're really the one that isn't providing the infrastructure and the money to make these changes.

Ashley: It seems totally viable for a lot of these companies to very well do so. Especially these huge fast fashion companies that, as you mentioned, there's no risk to their profits. They're just transferring that risk over to factories.

Rachel: Right. And the way that works essentially is again, brands pay for products that are made. They pay for the final goods, right? Sometimes they don't even pay for them until 60 or 90 days after they've already got those items on their shelves. So if they aren't selling those items for any reason, they can basically find something in their contracts that allows them to get out of paying for those items.

Ashley: That happens in coffee as well. I think that that's why this is such an interesting conversation to have because there's so many parallels in the way that items that come from one place and are consumed in another place are treated because of colonialism. Colonialism is the house that builds all of this.

Rachel: Yeah. I agree. 100%.

Ashley: So let's talk about tonlé and how you’re at least, in a small way, trying to build a more ethical structure. Something that I really appreciate about your website is number one: you don't use the word “disrupt,” which I hate.

But number two, you also admit your own mistakes. And you talk about that. You talk a lot about honesty and how you're not necessarily this big company who's trying to shake things up—I mean, you're trying to shake things up to the extent that you can— but you're saying like, “This is our company and this is what we can do.”

So I was wondering if you can talk about some of the tenets of tonlé that are attempting to at least chisel away at some of these colonial structures.

Rachel: I think, just going back to my experiences—when I first moved to Cambodia, I, and again, this was in conversation with our makers, but mostly my first goal was, “Let's provide jobs for people that are safe and comfortable and different than what's happening in fashion at large.”

There is this culture of aid and white saviorism that is also a continuation of colonialism and this idea that, myself as a white person, not only a white person, but a person from North America who's had access to a good education and a lot of privileges—that I have benefited from this colonialism very directly through the riches of my culture that have been enriched through this extraction and this exploitation.

To to Cambodia and then saying, “I'm going to help people,” but not acknowledging that the very poverty that I was seeing was actually caused by my own culture's history of extraction…

Ashley: I see what you’re saying. I think that's hard to reframe sometimes because you're totally right. The way that so many companies in the Global North and in Western countries portray themselves is this very like, “We are saving the world, we're saving these parts of the world that are being affected,” but there has to be a point where we say, “We caused these problems.”

It's something that I'm starting to see people talk about more in Central and South America, where in the United States, where we were refusing refugees, we caused political upheaval and disruption and instability in Central America, flat-out.

I think that that's an important framing to talk about with tonlé because it's not about like, “Oh, we're going to—again, using those buzzwords—we're going to go disrupt the fashion supply industry because these are all the problems.” It's saying we caused these problems. We need to fix it.

Rachel: Yeah. That's exactly what I'm trying to say. Fair trade—we could get into it—has a lot of problems. There's a lot of neocolonialism in fair trade.

If we wanted to make trade truly fair, there have to be reparations. I don't want to say one brand can do this on their own, and that's why I don't call our work reparations. But there does need to be systemic reparations before things can get better because, for a country like Cambodia that is so resource-rich, for example, and culturally rich, but there's been so much extraction for so long that it would be really hard for people to start their own, whole new infrastructure of thriving businesses because there has been this long history of extraction.

There has to be a giving back. One thing I've been thinking about a lot are the words “giving back.” I'm like, “Yeah, we do need to give it back. We need to give it all back.”

Ashley: Right, we took it.

Rachel: I think that giving back is often framed in a very white savior way, but if we actually acknowledged that giving back means literally, “No, I took this, I need to give it back,” and really sit with that and really think about what that means and how are all the ways in which we’ve benefited from this long history of extraction.

Again, no one company can solve that, but what we're trying to do—and this is my journey—but going from saying, “Oh, I just, I come to Cambodia, I'm seeing all this sadness and this poverty, and I want to help, and I want to do something about it,” but then having that realization, living there and seeing that ongoing impact of neocolonialism in the garment industry and in the aid industry and saying, “No, I'm actually part of these problems. I'm actually part of why these problems are happening. And if anything, the best I can do is to reduce my harm and try to return and redistribute some of that wealth that's been taken away.”

A big part of that is a fairer distribution. Again, I want to emphasize that not one company can do this by themselves. You have to be in a systemic thought pattern where we have to have collaborators and we work to create better systems at the same time, thinking within our business, how can we have a fair distribution of risk and rewards so that more money can be returned to people who had created that wealth.

Ashley: I think that's a really interesting point, what you said about reducing harm, because I think when you talk about companies that have connections to colonialism, or are the product of colonialism, there's a lot of talk of doing good, but there's not a lot of talk of reducing harm, because that feels bad, because that's a negative.

Rachel: To acknowledge that you created harm.

Ashley: And you need to reduce that harm!

Because it's easy to paint it the other way around. It's easy to say, “Oh, we're doing good work.” It's easy to see upward projections or it's easy to see impact that's benefiting people as good, but it's like—no, you [need] to reduce harm because you fucked it up to start.

I want to talk a little bit about how tonlé at least attempts to reduce harm. One of the things that I was really interested in when I was on your website was how you talk about the supply stream.

Maybe this is a weak visual—sometimes when I'm reading things, I try to visualize them. But when I think about a traditional supply stream, it seems like a linear—it seems like a graph that's going up and it starts with makers at the very bottom and then ends with CEOs or people who own the means of production or own power often ending up with the most resources. It seems like, in some way, you're trying to make that a circle. I was wondering what that looks like.

Rachel: That's what we're trying to go for. I believe that in the business models of the future, we need to be thinking—and the systems of the future beyond just business models, because I think there's also a tendency, I think right now there's an emphasis on businesses are gonna do everything and that's not a good way to think about it.

I think in the business models of the future, first of all, they need to be something that benefits everyone. And we need to be thinking about building our businesses in a way where everybody can thrive and benefit and cooperate to build something that actually does center the benefit of everybody involved. That includes the customers, that includes the owners, that includes the investors, but it also has to include the people who make the products because the people who make your products should be core to your business and [you should be] treating them well and making sure that they're benefiting—that should be your highest priority, because they're making the very thing that you are selling.

That seems very fundamental to me, but it's so opposite of what the traditional fashion industry looks like insofar as that, in the traditional fashion industry, the people who make products are actually not even included in the businesses.

At the beginning of the pandemic, when a lot of retailers were having shut-downs, they just canceled their orders to their suppliers. In some cases, a lot of those products were already produced or even already shipped. The brands just said, “No, we're not going to pay.”

A lot of people from the outside are like, “How can they do that? How can they not pay their workers who made their products?” And the fundamental problem is that those workers are not even considered an important part of those businesses, which is kind of mind-blowing when you think about it.

Ashley: That’s a common theme in a lot of businesses—the idea that the people who make the thing that is valuable are the most disposable. And that's very true in coffee as well, on both ends of the supply stream. I don't think we talk about the producing end as much in terms of disposability, but certainly for baristas, we treat them as disposable.

Rachel: Yeah. [We treat] commodified knowledge or creativity as more valuable than labor, or more valuable than the skills that it takes to create a high-quality product or the skills that it takes to farm a high-quality product.

You see this really in tech—their whole goal is to outsource all of their production of anything physical and to consolidate the knowledge and the creativity as the value. You see that to a certain extent in the fashion industry as well, where brands and patents are more valuable and even technologies are more valuable than the labor that goes into a product.

And not only the labor—I want to emphasize that it takes a lot of skill to make a high-quality product in fashion. There's a reason that robots don't make garments, because they’re hard to make. It's very hard to make a good garment—weaving and dying and all of these things. These things take a lot of skill and we don't value that anymore.

I think a big part of this again goes back to colonialism, because Europe was not resource-rich. So they went to all these other countries to extract the resources and made their value the “supposed knowledge” that they had—through religion and writing and language and history. They quantified that as their value.

I mean, this is a little esoteric, but it's kind of led to this idea that there's this knowledge class of creative people who, even to the point, in the art world, the highest-valued artists don't even make their products and have workers who make their things that get paid far less than they do for coming up with the idea.

Ashley: Something that you said that was really interesting is the need to build businesses that take care of everybody. I think it's really easy for people to almost default on how the system works as an excuse to not pay people.

So I was actually just reading this Facebook chain that a friend of mine who's a chef started, and it was all about how restaurants can't afford to pay chefs or cooks more money. And while that is true—because the restaurant industry is deeply, deeply flawed—I just thought how interesting it was that this person was able to justify the lack of high wages as just a problem that we have to deal with.

Like, “Oh, but I still deserve to have a business. I still deserve to run a restaurant and make money at the exploitation of others.” And I think that that's probably true in a lot of industries, including the fashion industry.

Rachel: Totally. That really resonates with me because I sort of had this realization probably a few years back where I felt some of those things. Where I'm like, “I have to conform to some of these things that I don't like about the industry in order to survive so I can keep paying people…” and so forth.

I can't put my finger on exactly what, but I think what I realized is that for me, I have no interest in running a business that isn't 100% true to my values. I would rather run no business at all, or a smaller business, a smaller version of this business, than to compromise on some of these very important things. If our goal is to create this more fair microsystem within the system, I want to do that 100%, even if that means being—most of the time, it doesn't mean closing down, it just means being much smaller.

I would rather do that 100% on the smallest scale than to grow really big and have to compromise. A lot of that pressure is actually coming from not just sustaining as you are, but there's a pressure to grow. I think usually when you have to grow, that's where these compromises start coming in.

A lot of that pressure does come from investors now. I have seen a lot of so-called sustainable fashion companies, when they raise money, they end up compromising because eventually those investors are going to be like, “Well, now I'm not happy with 20% profit anymore. I want you to make 25% profit. Now I want you to make 30% profit.” So how do you come up with that profit?

Then you end up squeezing things or you have to grow in some unsustainable way. I think the pressure is often not just about making a decent amount of money, but making a lot of money and who gets to consolidate that wealth.

I think for me, I realized I would much rather stay a bit smaller and just be more authentic to what we do than to grow and compromise, because that would be, I don't know, that would just be a fundamentally—I don't want to run a business like that. So why would I do that? I'd rather close.

Ashley: Right, and I think that's okay. That's something that I think when people talk about owning businesses, that's failure, but it's not.

I actually had somebody on my show maybe two years ago (David Hu), he ran a coffee shop in New Jersey, and it ran for a couple of years and then he shut down and we talked about that. We talked about what success was and what failure was. And he was like, “No, I succeeded. I ran the coffee shop I wanted to run. I paid baristas well. They knew their schedules ahead of time. I didn't devalue their work. I closed because I ran out of money, but I didn’t fail.”

I think this is really a framework because on the converse, what you were talking about—and especially because you're in San Francisco, you're in the epicenter of VC funding and venture capital is coming in and demanding, “Okay, we've made 20% returns this year. I want 25% this year. I want 30% this year.” It's embedded in our system that we are expected to grow constantly.

Rachel: Just on that: With the “impact” or “do good” space, I think there's also this added pressure to grow your impact.

I've talked to a lot of investors and we've actually raised some money, but luckily we've been able to raise it in a way that's very values-aligned—that could be another conversation. There's a lot of people, investors, who are trying to get into the impact space now and be like, “Oh, well now we're an impact investor, but we want you to make the same amount of profit. And also we want you to impact the lives of a million people.”

I've actually been passed up for funding versus other businesses that I knew they were deciding to make those compromises where it's like, “Oh, I want to be able to employ 1,000 people, but their lives are only going to be marginally better, they're going to get 10% more wages instead of having a very radically different business model.”

So compromising supposedly for incremental quote unquote “impact” versus radically reforming the system—because I think if you want to radically reform the system and really challenge those norms, you can't take traditional investment capital. It's just fundamentally not aligned, in my opinion. But people think they need money and they want to grow. So they decide to make those compromises. But I don't know.

Ashley: It’s tricky and it's weird because a lot of it involves almost deprogramming your brain a little bit. And I can see where say, “Oh, we hired 1,000 people” feels really good, but like you mentioned, if the impact is really minimal, would that impact be better served by fundamentally changing the lives of a few people in a really radical way as opposed to being able to put in your pitch deck, “Look at all the people we've helped.”

That's what that feels like. It feels like I'm going to put a pitch deck together and put these numbers together.

Rachel: And it's kind of disingenuous because it's like, people can already get jobs in Cambodia for 10% more money. Just because you went and created all these jobs, I don't know. It's just weird. It's like, “Oh, you're responsible for employing these people, but it's kind of taking away their agency.”

But I think the impact of tonlé, one thing I realized is that for me, I really want to create a business model that challenges the norms. I don't want to just be like, “Oh, look, I employ these people. Great. I'm good.” I want to create a model that people can look to and that can really challenge those norms and say, “Look, it's possible to do this and that we can really rethink and question these structures.” And like you say, do things that businesses don't do, like being open and transparent about our mistakes, being honest about the challenges and the compromises that we do have to make sometimes, and why we made those choices.

Businesses typically don't do that, right? And I'm not saying, “Oh, look, we're so good, blah, blah, blah …” But our customers are coming to us and saying, “This is so refreshing, and I wish more people did this.” And for me, that's worth it. That we can set a standard, that there is this different way of doing things.

No, it's not going to be perfect. We are living in a terrible system and we're all participating in different ways, but it's about choosing how you participate and then being transparent about how you've chosen to participate. I would rather know I'm participating in all these terrible things. I would rather pick the least bad one and then just be like, look, this is the choice I had to make. And here's why, you know what I mean?

Ashley: I see what you're saying. That's something I’ve thought about too, is that it can be really easy to see a problem like exploitation and colonialism and how the supply stream works and think this is too overwhelming. There's too much, but it is OK to choose a part that you can tackle.

I want to talk a little bit about one of the things that I think is really interesting that tonlé does—thinking about that circular supply stream is that customers are very much involved in that process. Something that I think is really compelling about the way that your business works is that the final point of sale—the customer now has the thing that they have bought and it is done, and that's the end of it—is not the end for tonlé.

There's a resale market. You talk about aftercare, how to take care of your items so that they actually last a long time. You also have this acknowledgement that the customer isn't necessarily always right. So I was wondering how you think about your customers—and not to say that you're not grateful for them, or anything like that, but customers are equal to employees. You can't treat customers as more valuable. They're just not.

Rachel: I think that this concept that the customer is always—the way that often manifests in the kind of fair trade fashion world is through also white saviorism.

It’s like, “Oh, buy this handbag and save a woman from sex slavery. Buy this and save poor people in Africa.” That is super disempowering, obviously. But it's this very white savior mentality and this very colonialist way of looking at it. It’s like, “Oh, the fashion industry is bad, but you can buy fair trade and you can save people.” That leads into the founder narrative that we were just talking about of like, “Oh, go to Cambodia and save people through providing these jobs.”

Well, you're not providing jobs. People have a contract to work with you and you've mutually decided to work together to make something and to sell something. I used to, but I've changed this, I don't say I'm providing jobs for people. I employ people. They choose to come work at tonlé, right? They always have the agency to leave as well.

People keep choosing to work at tonlé every day because it's good for them. And it's good for us. It's a mutually beneficial agreement. At the point at which it's no longer good for them, I hope that they find something else that they like better. The same is true with our customers, the way that I see our customers and the way that we've tried to articulate this is that the relationship of a person who buys a product to the person who makes it is a mutually beneficial agreement.

You get a beautiful, handmade product that has a lot of integrity and labor and skill put into it and they get paid fairly for their labor and skill and design. That's a mutually beneficial agreement and it should be seen as such.

So when you're a customer buying from a company that's trying to produce things in a fair way, yes, you're supporting their work, but equally you're getting something out of that.

Ashley: I also appreciate that you talked about the use of language because that's something that I've been trying to think about, even in the job market—the idea of how power works.

“I'm providing a job, I'm giving you a job.” No, no, no, no, no, no. We live in a capitalist system where we have to work. Jobs are there, you can employ people because that's what the relationship is, but to acknowledge that this is the system under which we work versus this paternalistic, “This is the thing I'm giving you,” is really, really interesting. And something I want to explore more of in the coming months.

Just to start to wrap up our conversation, just because we're going a little bit longer than some of the normal episodes that we do, I was wondering if you could talk about what you want people to know about tonlé.

Rachel: Oh, that's a hard one. I would say the most important thing to me about tonlé, or that I want people to really understand, is how different it is that we do our own production.

Our production, our sales, our design, all working in tandem seems very fundamental, but it's very radically different than what's going on in the traditional industry. When we talk about, “Oh, Nike makes this shoe,” or, “H&M makes this T-shirt,” it's not correct.

Nike doesn't make anything. H&M doesn't make anything. They don't own factories. They don't operate manufacturing facilities, they don't grow the cotton. You know? I want to really emphasize that I think the first thing that really needs to happen to change these systems is that I want customers and people who are new to the industry to understand that there is this major disconnect between where value is placed—and it’s not on the production.

And I think we need to recenter the people who are producing our goods, and that includes factory owners. That includes the people who are running production, because they are the experts in making products. Usually when we talk about sustainability, when we talk about brands, if you go to a sustainability conference, you will just see the leaders of all these sustainability departments at brands, but they're not the experts in sustainability. They're not doing the sustainability work. The sustainability work is being done by the factories and the workers, and even the factory owners. They're the experts, yet they're rarely involved in these conversations.

One of the things I'm most proud of with tonlé is that within our business, that's all very integrated and we have people running production who also do production. We have people working on designs who also are involved in the production of the garments. So that is all designed as a system to work that way.

In thinking about language and thinking about how we reframe this—we need to analyze that and analyze how we talk about these brands and the long-term implications of that.

Ashley: Rachel, thank you so much for joining me. This has been a really fun conversation and I think it might be easy to be like, “Oh, how does fashion relate to coffee?” But there are so many themes that translate to both industries. And I really thank you for going in depth with me.

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Before coffee, Nigel Price had a career in finance, working for a firm in Downtown Manhattan. But eventually, he decided he’d had enough—and he turned to cafes as a way to break away from the life he’d built and the trajectory he no longer wanted to be on. Over a decade later, Nigel credits coffee as the beginning of his second life, giving him a chance to create connections and bond with people in a way that his prior life in finance hadn’t.

Nigel spent 11 years learning about coffee before he opened the first iteration of Drip Coffee Makers, a duo of coffee shops in Brooklyn that began its life as a coffee cart serving pour-over coffee. In most coffee shops, pour-overs can be a chore—they’re time-intensive, and can take you out of the flow of service. At Drip, pour-overs are designed to be a focal point, a place for customers to talk to baristas and learn more about what they’re drinking.

Nigel opened his first Bushwick location just two months before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down most of the surrounding businesses, and that ended up transforming his new space. As one of the only coffee shops in the neighborhood that was open, Drip became a respite for locals during the pandemic’s darkest days, and Nigel noticed that people were ready, even eager, to sit, wait, and talk over a slow cup of coffee.

Ashley: Nigel, I was wondering if you could tell me about growing up with coffee. Did you drink coffee as a kid or did you see others in your life drinking coffee?

Nigel: I don't even know if you can legally call what my mom would make as coffee. But I do know it tasted super good. She had one of these old-school percolators and she would put this pre-ground, freeze-dried stuff in it, but it was loaded up with so much milk and sugar. And for years I thought that's what coffee was, until high school and college.

Then I see people drinking straight black coffee from a bodega, from a Starbucks or something like that. And I'm like, “This stuff is horrible. How can you drink this?”

Fun fact: Before [the idea of Drip Coffee was to serve coffee], it was supposed to be a tea shop, because I just never drank coffee. I just never drank coffee.

Ashley: When did you decide that a coffee shop was the way that you wanted to go instead of the tea shop?

Nigel: Really quickly. After shopping my business plan around, people thought it was ridiculous to try to open a tea shop and not offer any coffee. In hindsight it’s like, “Duh,” but at the time—and I drank a lot of coffee [at this point]—it just didn't make sense if you are going to be a premium tea shop to even serve coffee. To have coffee in a tea shop, a lot of the teas will pick up the scents or would pick up on the coffee notes and it would get imparted onto the leaves.

So I was like, that just doesn't make sense, but the more I looked into it—and then, at the time there was a ton of, well, not a ton, but a handful of tea shops in New York I would go visit and the next time I would go visit, they'd be closed.

Ashley: So your proof was there?

Nigel: Exactly. Unfortunately if you call something a tea shop people just will not go, so I moved into coffee. Like how I approach a lot of things, I really drill down and I have to go through the whole process of learning and different processes and tasting. And the more I tasted, the more I realized that coffee is just as complex, if not more, than rare, fine teas.

I was just really lucky to work with serious coffee professionals and people who were trying to make a career out of coffee as opposed to this is just a job in a coffee shop that they have.

Ashley: Right. Let's step backwards a little bit, because we were talking about the idea that you had initially to open a tea shop, and then you kind of backtracked and decided that you were going to do coffee, but before this was even an idea in your head, you worked in banking and finance.

I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about your, I guess let's call it your past life in that industry…

Nigel: Yes, past life.

Ashley: Yeah, let's call it a past life. I know that I like to look at my life—which is a little silly—as almost two chapters, and it's pre- and post-coffee. It's not even really about coffee itself, but it's just about me as a person, which I know that we're going to dig into. So I was wondering if you could tell me about that. Tell me about Nigel's life before coffee.

Nigel: Nigel was a totally different person, as I alluded to earlier. A lot of, I guess you would call it, where I am now in terms of the way I thought about life and the way I thought about relationships and just people in general was so skewed.

I really attribute that to where I worked and the school that I went to. [To say that] a lot of people were antisocial would be an understatement. They were just very not empathetic towards people's feelings or what other people's needs were. Even their approach to business—it was never from the perspective of the consumer or the workers. It was almost always from the perspective of dollars and cents and profitability.

I guess a lot of that got imparted on me because I felt like, “This is how I need to conduct myself if I'm going to work with these people, if I'm going to work in this industry.”

I think the struggle I had with not liking my job—because quite frankly, the money was great—but I just was not happy. I didn't know what it was, but I knew something was missing. If you dread going to work as much as I did, it has to be something else. It wasn't until I started asking those kinds of tough questions. And then I realized that I'm going to have to find an alternate course. It can't just all be about money, which my sole purpose for studying finance and studying economics was because, in my mind, what's more important than making money, you know?

Ashley: Right. And it seems like that perspective was totally normalized for you in the banking world and in the educational systems that you were in.

Nigel: Exactly.

Ashley: I was going to ask: What prompted you to even start asking those questions of yourself? I have to imagine that that's hard to challenge—essentially challenge your entire worldview.

Nigel: I don't think it was one specific instance. It would be like, after work, everybody would go for drinks and for the most part, everybody on the outside looked like they were extremely happy and they were enjoying themselves, but I absolutely hated it. I just did not enjoy that.

I got to a point where I just didn't enjoy it, but it was one of those things I had to do because you don't want to be the weird guy that doesn't hang out with everybody else. It wasn't one specific thing. It was a combination of a lot of different instances. Also, this is over the span of more than a decade of being in situations and sitting down with people that I just didn't enjoy being around.

I had a manager I worked with for six years. I worked at Chase and then they merged with J.P. Morgan and became JPMorgan Chase. And I moved over with him. We were together for my entire tenure at J.P. Morgan. And I didn't know one single thing about his life.

Like he would come in after the weekend and he would say, “Hey, how was your weekend?” “Good.” I’d say, “Oh, how was your weekend?” “Good.” We would never have any serious, in-depth conversations about anything other than the work.

Ashley: That’s so unsettling.

Nigel: I know I keep saying this over and over, but the Nigel that was in university and coming out of college and in a lot of these training positions that I had, that was perfectly OK in my mind. I was perfectly OK. I don't need to get to know you, I'm here to do a job. I'm here to make money and that's it.

But a part of me got to a point where I was like, “I cannot work or be around people that I'm not connected to or I don’t have a genuine connection with.”

Ashley: Was it obvious that opening your own business would be the way to solve that problem? It's an interesting jump to me. I wonder how you went from, “I need to get out of this,” to, “This is the thing I'm going to do next.”

Nigel: It wasn't until working in cafe settings for other people. I kind of always knew I was going to do my own thing. Initially, it was supposed to only take maybe six months—that sounds super arrogant now. I was like, “Oh, for a couple months, I'll work at some coffee shops. And then I'll just open my own [cafe], do my own thing.”

But it was working in cafes. The people I worked with, a lot of the guests that would come into a lot of these places, I would just listen to people and we would have in-depth conversations. And some of these people, I didn't even know their names. But we would talk about life, spirituality, what you actually want to do with your life, not what you do for a living or what you do to make money, but what do you want to do with your life?

These were questions that I just never pondered myself. So it was very interesting to hear people—and unfortunately, a lot of these people were young, a lot younger than I was—but they already were in that mind space.

Ashley: I like that you articulated that, because I felt some of that same anxiety too, when I first started working in coffee, honestly. I had a very similar experience to you where I define my life in kind of these two phases of, “This was my career before and now I work in coffee.”

I remember—I don't know if this is the right analogy for it, or if this is the right way to describe it—but I feel like I remember so much more of my life in the last 10 years than I ever did of the 20-something before that, because it feels like I'm actually living it.

I am physically in a space and I'm interacting with what's around me versus—

Nigel: Going through the motions.

Ashley: Exactly! Or almost being out of body in a way that’s like, “Who's that person doing those things?” That's not me, but it is. And I remember being almost mad about it? Being like, “What took me so long to get here?” Did you feel that at all?

Nigel: Not only did I feel that, but I don't get upset about it because I just think about the amount of people in this world currently who don't even realize that there’s another place to be. They haven't even come to the realization.

Sometimes I cringe thinking about, “Wow, what if I never took that leap of faith and said, ‘You know what? I'm just going to do something else.’”

It's not like I had a ton of money to rest on—which is another regret. I kind of wish I did a better job of saving money or maybe just sticking it out for a few more years so I can actually save some money because I had no idea how financially burdensome it can be trying to work in coffee shops where you're really not being paid a ton of money, and you're still trying to save money and pay bills.

Ashley: Tell me about that first coffee shop job that you got. What do you think were some of the biggest shocks or realizations that you had in that first job?

Nigel: I would have to reiterate what I mentioned earlier: the actual connections with people. I still feel like, even at that point, I was apprehensive about dealing with people one-on-one and having these [conversations] because in my head, I'm like, “Hey, I'm just going to make you this coffee. You’re gonna pay for it, and then you're going to leave. And then I'm going to play with this espresso machine and I'm going to learn what I need to learn so that one day I could open my own coffee shop.”

But I do feel like, with the exception of one or two bad managers, every place I've worked, even if the shop itself wasn't run really well, I learned a lot about what to do and what not to do. I never felt like I was wasting my time.

There were a few times where I actually would be working at two different shops at once. But I was never beat down or like I was carrying some burden because I approached it from the perspective of, “I need to learn this. I need to get this.”

Again, like I mentioned, I worked with some people that, to this day, if they left to go start green buying or roasting or even if they're still baristas, they're still actual coffee professionals. I owe a lot of my career to some of these people.

Ashley: You mentioned that you thought it would take you six months to learn all you needed to know before opening a coffee shop. How long did it actually take you, or how long did you work in shops before you took the leap to open your own space?

Nigel: It took more like six or seven years. Unfortunately, I wasn't necessarily ready financially. So I ended up sticking it out for another four or five years. So we're talking like 11, 12 years after leaving corporate and finally…

Ashley: Finally deciding to take the next step.

Nigel: And honestly, it probably would have taken a little longer. I kinda got lucky because my last main job was in a hotel. It was a union job. They paid almost 30+ dollars an hour, plus tips and benefits and everything like that. So if I didn't have that job and I was still trying to put it together little by little with two or three different barista jobs, I probably wouldn't have been able to open at all.

Ashley: At what point did you decide that you felt—maybe not ready, ready is probably not the right word—but what was the moment where you were like, “OK, I'm going to try to do this thing on my own. I'm going to go ahead and try the thing that I set myself up to do almost a decade ago?”

Nigel: I think the main catalyst was a lot of those positions were being eliminated. A lot of these hotels, specifically for unions, they were trying to—there’s really no nice way to say it, but they were trying to kick these union, pension guys out of their jobs.

It got to a point where they said, “Well, we can put you in this pool and we'll try to find you another position at another hotel,” or they would pay a certain amount, depending on how many years you were in the union. You basically take a package and you leave.

I was like, “You know what? I think this is it.”

Ashley: Why a cart first?

Nigel: The cart? I think I just wanted to prove the concept.

I wanted to see if people would gravitate towards just pour-over coffee. If people had a problem waiting three, four minutes, sometimes five minutes for a cup of coffee and if there was an appetite for it.

I think if it wasn't for that cart, if I just went right to opening the shop, I don't know if people would have really understood what I was trying to do. I think I would have just been another coffee shop with some pour-over drippers in it. I think the cart made it where I'm putting my flag in the sand and I'm saying, “This is what Drip stands for.” And luckily it worked.

Ashley: I was thinking about what you said earlier, about having this idea to open a coffee shop and then you were going to work in a coffee shop for six months, obviously that extended to 10 years. Then you opened the cart and I'm wondering—so you have almost these three distinct phases of what Drip Coffee could have looked like in your brain.

You had the first iteration back when you were thinking about leaving your finance job.

You had the second iteration right before you opened the cart.

And then the third iteration, I'm imagining, is the transition from the cart to a physical space. How has your business plan or your vision changed over time?

Nigel: I wish I could say I had this grand master plan, but I just know, especially in the last four, five, six years of working in coffee, I had like my “nine to five,” which was the hotel, but I always moonlighted because there was a ton of really, really cool specialty shops in the city that I wanted to work at. A lot of them were Stumptown accounts and Counter Culture accounts. But a couple of them were independent shops and I just really loved what they were doing.

What I took away from a lot of these shops was they would offer pour-overs, but it was always an afterthought. It was almost one of those things where if you were a barista and you were on bar all day and someone wanted a pour-over, you would immediately get angry because now you have to break your flow to make this pour-over.

That's when it dawned on me. I was like, “But that's the best way to have a cup of coffee.” Instead of building a shop around just the espresso machine, you can build a shop around pour-overs where it doesn't necessarily break the workflow for the barista on bar.

Ashley: You just saying a customer comes in and orders a pour-over harkens in me a feeling that I thought I didn't have any more, but I'm like, “Oh my God, why'd you order a pour-over???? There are seven people behind you! What's going on?”

Nigel: Exactly. Another thing is I could easily be that person in line because I just really love pour-overs, but I almost always would never get what I wanted because knowing what that barista's going through, I just wouldn't order it. And I was like, “I think it would be cool if I integrated pour-overs into the service.”

Ashley: Right. Which is something that is so great, especially because we were both mentioning, we've both been baristas. We both have been the barista who gets that order for a pour-over which interrupts service.

But you've also been the barista who, on your Saturday off—Who am I kidding? Saturday is not your day off—your Tuesday off, you go to another coffee shop to go visit your friend. And you're like, “I'm not ordering a pour-over. I don’t want to f**k with their s**t,” but that's actually the thing that you want. It's really cool to take a step backwards and say, “How do I design a system where this is front and center versus this is a throwaway thought on a menu?”

Nigel: Exactly.

Ashley: You've worked in New York coffee for over a decade. I worked in New York coffee around the 2010 era. I think that you've seen the shifts in coffee and the way that New York coffee shops have approached trends in general—in the early 2010s, pour-overs were a really big deal.

Then towards the end of my tenure in New York, it was like we were trying to eliminate them. We were like, “It's all about batch brew. It's all about fast efficiency.” As you worked in coffee and saw these different things come and go, what were you excited about? What were you bummed about? Because it feels like we never, we just never really incorporated pour-overs [well].

Nigel: Never, never. And I think like you mentioned, that's when I started realizing that I'm going to try to build a model around the pour-overs. I still didn't really have a clear, concise way in which I was going to do it— I really still don't know—but I knew that was going to be my niche, so to speak.

Once a lot of these shops started going, “Well, yeah, you can get really good quality with batch brew too,” I immediately pushed back on that because typically it was a lot of these people who were coffee geniuses, but I also realized that they were now coffee shop owners and they are trying to think of ways to streamline business. Or they're trying to think of ways to not necessarily have three people on because they’re thinking about labor costs.

I've had owners say things like, “If he's doing this pour-over, how is he going to empty the trash, or how's he going to wipe the tables, or how's he going to do dishes?” In the back of my head, I'm like, “It's a coffee shop. You hired well-trained, quality baristas to make coffee, not to wipe tables down, not to do the dishes. So if I'm paying you to make coffee, I want to create an environment, a situation where you really don't lose focus on anything. Your main focus is the coffee.”

I'm lucky enough to have people who want to work as coffee professionals. This is not just, “I need a job while I do X,” or “I need a job while I do Y.” The people that work with me now love coffee to the point where they bring in their own coffee. They bring in their own equipment. They're trying things that even when the shop closes, they sometimes all meet up there.

It became exactly what I envisioned it to be, which is a space for people who want to learn more about coffee, a place for them to feel comfortable about it, but it’s not unapproachable to the layman or unapproachable to the person who doesn't know much. They may make a French press or make a pour-over at home, but they want to learn more about it.

Ashley: I love that because I feel like for so long, and I know that I've especially felt this in my coffee career, there were times where I felt like liking coffee wasn't cool. To nerd out on coffee was not encouraged sometimes.

I feel like I started my career as that barista who would bring in their own coffees and [say], “Let's try this, let's do that.” But then there was a time where I felt like, “Oh, this is not a thing that I should care about. I should care about efficiency. I should care about just making money.”

I have to imagine for someone whose background was in finance, that had to be an interesting dichotomy to balance. How do you make a profitable business, a responsible business, but at the same time, something that feels true to what you want? You're like, I want to invest in pour-overs, I care about pour-over coffee. How do I make this work?

Nigel: Therein lies the dilemma. Ultimately, like you said, if you're not making money, if you’re not profitable, you're not going to be in business long.

I think I was telling somebody just this morning, the first buildout for the location in Bushwick, I built a space out so that it can quickly [be disassembled], like if I had to close the shop, it would literally take a day to disassemble everything and just walk away. I was not planning on the long-term.

I'm just now talking to the individuals who built out my second location about going back to Bushwick and doing a proper build-out because—OK, it's working, we’re going to be in business for a while, so I should probably set things up correctly. But I had no idea if it was going to work at all, but I did know that I'm either going to do it right or I'm not going to do it at all.

Ashley: It seems like you were very concept-driven. You knew what your concept was going to be and you designed the space to address that.

I was looking at pictures of Drip Coffee Makers before we hopped on and I was like, “Oh, you can see the pour-overs. They're right there. They're in front and they are facing the customer. Therefore, as a barista, I do not have to turn my back and go make a pour-over,” which was the setup that a lot of the cafes that I worked at versus other cafes where—this was actually a really ingenious move—the espresso machine was right next to the register.

So if I was steaming milk, I could ring up a customer and I was like, “Oh, well, this makes sense for an espresso-forward cafe,” but I've worked in a hundred cafes where the pour-over bar is somewhere else. Which doesn't make sense if you want to invest in pour-overs—if you want people to celebrate it or see it or be excited about it.

Nigel: It was a lot of trial and error, even, even something as simple as dialing in coffees, having them pre-dosed.

I wanted to get it down to three minutes, three-and-a-half minutes. I didn't want it to be longer than the time it takes to make a latte. Because in my head I was like, “If you can get people used to waiting three minutes for an espresso with steam milk, then if they really enjoy pour-overs, they'll wait two to three minutes, three-and-a-half minutes for the pour-over.”

Ashley: Right. And it takes that intentional type of thought. “Oh, this is a timed event. People might not be used to waiting a certain amount of time, but maybe they're used to waiting, like you said, three-and-a-half minutes for a latte. So how can I make those two experiences—one that people are familiar with, one that people maybe aren't as familiar with—as easy to understand as possible?

Nigel: Exactly. And after spending a summer with that cart, and noticing that people had no problem waiting, because they know what you do and they know you're doing something special, they know this is not generic, that is away from what they typically would get in the coffee shop—the waiting part becomes a part of the show.

Ashley: Right, especially because you're facing them. So you can talk about what you're brewing. You can discuss whatever's happening in the day.

I was reading that article that you were interviewed for in Taste, and something you said that really resonated was about value and how value is created. You're literally, through the physical choices that you make or the way that you're talking about coffee, creating value, and people will buy into that as long as you create that option for them to buy into it.

One thing that is kind of miraculous in the face of all of this is that you opened your brick-and-mortar location two months before COVID hit.

Nigel: (laughs) Yeah.

Ashley: So what was that experience like for you? Did you stay open throughout the pandemic?

Nigel: I stayed open throughout. It's funny, because I would always jokingly say when I first opened, I put on the front door: Every day, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Throughout the pandemic, I couldn't hire anybody. I think legally in New York you couldn't make somebody come to work, but you can keep your business open if you were the owner. So the only way I could stay open was if I was the only one working.

People would come in and they’d be like, “Hey, nobody would be mad at you if you closed a little early, if you left a little early or if you didn't open every day,” and I'm like, “I already put it on the door. I gotta show up.”

A lot of things happened that I feel, I guess it was good karma or just good timing, or like all the stars were aligned. That location is maybe two or three blocks from the train station, but it's around the corner on a pretty residential block. That's probably why I got such a good deal on the rent.

Initially, going back to my quick escape in case the brick-and-mortar didn't work, I was like, “I'll be on the sleepy block. It won't be too busy.” To me, this was supposed to be the next step up from the cart where I'm just going to keep proving this concept to see if it actually works. But because we were on a residential block, when the mandate came down and people stopped going to the office, I had a captive audience. I had a two-, three-, four-block radius of people who needed to get out of the house.

There was literally nothing else, nothing else opened. There was a juice bar that served coffee, but no one went there for the coffee. I think people needed an outlet. They needed to take a walk. And I didn't realize how much I needed [the coffee shop] until after things started to settle down and opened back up a bit.

I wasn't in the shops as much as I was before. I would still wake up in the morning. I would still go to the shop and I would sit around and talk to people as they came in. I thank God for it because I really believed that during COVID, in its peak, I got to ignore it because I was completely inundated with keeping the doors open and keeping the lights on at the shop. By the time I got home, I was too exhausted to really pour over the news like a lot of people did. Just thinking of the death toll and the amount of people who were losing their livelihoods and their jobs and family members … when I think back on it now, I could easily see somebody can slip into a super dark place.

Ashley: One thing that I have to imagine the pandemic proved to you, and maybe you knew it just based on your dedication to pour-over coffee, or maybe this came afterwards, but I have to imagine that the power of connection and the power of connecting over a cup of coffee really became crystal-clear to you. Tell me about that experience, about what it was like to serve coffee to people during a time when a lot of people couldn't connect with most other people.

Nigel: Like I alluded to earlier, coffee was probably the reason why they started coming, but it was so obvious that people needed to connect on a physical level with other human beings.

I spent so much more time talking and counseling people and not necessarily telling them what they need to do, but just giving my opinion on what they could do or what they should do if they needed X, Y, Z…

I was able to talk myself out of despair because I had this extended family of people that I had to show up for. As difficult as it sounds, looking back on it now, I think it would be difficult for me to now start that up again, but I can't remember one morning where I had difficulty getting up out of bed to get to work. I felt obligated. I have to be there for these people.

Anytime I speak about it, I start getting emotional because, going back to old Nigel in the past life, just to see what type of person I am now is amazing.

Ashley: I think it's really special to get that opportunity to almost live two separate lives. Like you were saying earlier, I don't think a lot of people get to experience that. So to see your life in these two very different planes is—I don't know.

I have that same thought a lot of, “What would have happened to me if I had never quit teaching? If I had accepted this was going to be the path that my life was going, if I didn't get to know me?” I think about that a lot too, and I think about it, especially in these moments of testing the choices that you've made or testing the limits of your potential. I don't know…

I totally get where you're coming from, and I'm really happy that other people have experienced this because it's just really cool. Sometimes it's scary, but it's really cool.

I was wondering too—this is a little more tactical versus emotional—but do you think that these last 18 months have proven the value of pour-over coffee to people? I can imagine now that people are so excited to get something special at a place that they’re like, “Yeah, I'll wait four minutes for a pour-over. Cool, great!”

Nigel: Right. And it's an affordable luxury; it’s one of those things where it's not like a fancy dinner. It's a fancy cup of coffee.

The team that I have of coffee professionals, people look forward to coming and seeing these guys the same way they look forward to come to see me. I spent all morning at the shop and I've spoken to people who were given a sign to go meet someone.

For example, one of the baristas would say, “Hey, I know somebody who's selling cameras, if you want to start taking pictures,” or, “Oh, I know someone who plays a guitar and they're looking for someone to play a gig.” The coffee shop didn’t lose its actual purpose, which is for people to meet and connect. But to have them connect around really, really good coffee, to me, is important. It’s tantamount. It's nice to have a good space, but it's also even better if you are getting what you paid for.

Ashley: Is there anything that you'd want people to know about you listening to this episode?

Nigel: Nothing in particular, just that I’m somebody who found what they love doing—and as corny as it sounds, that should be everybody's goal in life, no matter what that thing is.

One of my guests started making jewelry during quarantine and she would come in and she would joke about it: “It's just something I need to do to take my mind off of what's going on around me.”

Within six, seven, eight months, she has this ridiculously crazy big following on Etsy and she made a business out of it. And this is just from finding something you enjoy doing and just pursuing it with a passion. I always feel like the money or the success will come as long as you chase your passion.

Ashley: Nigel, thank you so much for taking time to chat with me. I really appreciate it.

Nigel: Well, thank you. I appreciate you asking and I apologize for the rain. It started raining again.

Ashley: It's like it came in at the perfect time.

This Boss Barista episode is brought to you by Urnex.

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We’re re-airing an episode form June of 2020 with Erica Chadé (you may hear them referred to as Erica Jackson in the episode). Erica talks all about intention, getting to know yourself and offers some wonderful tidbits about slowing down and how working in service can offer moments of presence.

Also, we have shirts available now! Here are photos of Erica wearing them—order yours now.

There are a lot of reasons I continue to do Boss Barista, especially as the show has evolved and changed. One of the reasons is to connect with people I wouldn't have met otherwise. There are at least a handful of folks I know and consider my friends because of the show—people I've become closer with through interviews, through sitting down and having a really focused conversation.

Doing this show has also made me a better listener—I’m still learning how to listen, but I also listen for other listeners. That’s a little silly, I know, but I’ve learned a lot about how people listen by doing this show. It’s the moments where I hear others give people space to explore ideas, or repeat a question to make sure they really understand it.

And I noticed all these things when I listened to another podcast featuring today's guest, Erica Chadé. Erica is a barista, originally from Birmingham, Alabama but currently based in Charleston, South Carolina, and she was recently a guest on a show called Nicole's Hen House and their perspectives on identity and getting to know oneself really intrigued me.

In this episode, we talk about Erica's journey into the world of coffee, but we also delve deep into how we communicate and how we remain present in our own lives. A lot of these themes are mimicked in our coffee work—being a good service worker requires being present, and many of us are drawn to coffee because of the potential to build community and make connections with others. I think, more than anything, this episode is an encouragement to remain present in your own life and notice what's happening around you. Here's Erica.

Ashley: Erica, could you introduce yourself for everybody?

Erica: Yeah. I'm Erica Jackson. And is that it, or did you want me to say where I work or…

Ashley: You can say whatever you want.

Erica: Oh yeah. I'm Erica Jackson.

Ashley: I'm always really touched when people reach out to me or engage with me on social media, and I feel like you and I have actually engaged a lot on social media. I was telling you before we started recording that one of the reasons I wanted to have this conversation was a little bit selfish on my end: I really wanted to get to know you better because you and I exchanged messages or we see something on each other's social media and we’re like, “That's cool,” or “that's interesting.”

I was wondering if you can take us back to the moment right before you started making coffee—what did your life look like before you decided this is the thing I'm going to do?

Erica: Yeah, sure. Well, I want to say that the feeling is totally mutual of wanting to know you more. I feel like we kinda know each other in a weird way through social media, but it's great to have a conversation with you.

Life just before coffee? So I had graduated from grad school. I was studying occupational therapy and I was trying to decide what I wanted to do career wise. I was living in an apartment downtown Birmingham and in this transitional phase.

Ashley: What brought you to coffee?

Erica: That's really interesting. I actually had a lot of interest.

Okay, so I had a classmate in occupational therapy school. Her name was Kelsey and she found a roastery and had bought coffee from the roastery and she shared it with me and she was like, “You should go to this roastery and check it out and support these people because they're doing some really great things.”

By the time I got around to finding that roastery, it had opened a cafe and I really loved the atmosphere. I think this is a feeling that people can sometimes get when they walk into cafes that's intangible. It's like, “Wow, I really, really dig this place. I really like this place. I can't quite put a finger on it, but there's something special about this place.”

And that's how I felt when I walked into that cafe—and that was actually Seeds [Coffee]. I ended up volunteering for Seeds, I don't know if many people know this, but Seeds is a non-profit. So I volunteered for Seeds. I had a lot of fun. I was actually in their first group for volunteer training.

So I volunteered and then I went back to school and then, like I said, I got out of school and then I was really, really interested in tea and I went to India. I visited a tea garden, visited a tea factory, had the most exquisite cup of tea I've ever had in my life. I thought I was going to help my friends start their tea business, but I ended up back in coffee.

Those are kind of my beginnings of coffee, just being in awe of the atmosphere of the cafe and having fun, learning something new and just being fascinated with those parts of coffee before actually getting into some of the more nuanced parts of brewing and all of that.

Ashley: What was your relationship to coffee like before that?

Erica: Before I started volunteering?

Ashley: Yeah. Did you drink coffee at all or was it like a sudden moment of like, “Oh my gosh, this world?”

Erica: No, I didn't drink coffee. My mom drank coffee a lot, so it was around in our home, but I actually was a tea drinker. I still am a tea drinker. So no, I didn't really drink coffee before I got into it.

Ashley: I love those moments of something ineffable happening, something that you can't describe where you're like, “This is the place that I want to be.” Have you ever been able to look back on that moment and figure out like more of what that feeling was, that intangible feeling?

Erica: Hmm. I think what that feeling is for me is spiritual and I think that's linked to the ritual of coffee, which I don't think we talk about a lot in our cafes.

I think it's the ritual and people being centered and fixated on a ritual of someone preparing them coffee and then preparing to drink that coffee. Then the conversation and the being that happens as you're drinking coffee. I would say it's a ritual. It's spiritual.

Ashley: That's really cool. I just listened to an episode of the CxffeeBlack podcast and he just did this whole episode with a guy who talked about the ritual of Ethiopian coffee and just telling people to slow down and the way that we consume coffee in America is almost the exact opposite of that—it's fuel or it's a thing that you get before the workday or something like that. It's really cool that the thing that drew you was that ritual.

How did your coffee career progress from the moment of, “Oh, this is an industry I want to at least kind of work in,” into, “Oh, this is the thing that I want to do?”

Erica: That's a great question. So I actually didn't make coffee my thing until about two and a half years ago. I got into coffee and I was still questioning, “Is this what I want to do with my time? I do like this, I enjoy it. But is this what I want to do longterm?”

There were two people that I worked with that I would say really facilitated that shift for me. So one of those people was Jeff Healey and he told me—he, as a white man told me that coffee was a part of my heritage as a Black person. And that was really, really formative. I was like, “Wow, like I never thought about it that way.”

Coffee originates in Africa and I'm African-American, I don't know my African roots, but I did originate from there. That's when I started thinking, yes, it's really important for Black and brown people to be on this side of coffee and its consumption and its preparation. So that made me feel like I should really be a part of coffee.

Another person that was really influential was Blake Nail. When he got hired at Seeds, it was a very interesting time in that company because he came in with a lot of enthusiasm about coffee. Seeds, being a nonprofit, there's a lot of moving parts that are really beautiful and really important, but he was just really passionate about coffee and he really drew me into that.

He's actually how I got into coffee competitions—and why I know you and other people in the industry, he got me out of that Birmingham bubble and into the industry. I would say like having ownership of coffee in a way, maybe it's like a social ownership, and having awareness of the industry and other people in the industry that I can learn from that really catapulted me into a coffee career.

Ashley: Those are two really powerful moments—obviously for you specifically—but I think reflecting in general for people who are maybe still trying to find their footing in coffee or understand what the industry looks like, because the fact that you mentioned you could be working in a coffee shop and not really know what the industry at large looks like…

It's what I sit up at night thinking about, especially now living through a global pandemic obviously. I think about a lot of the baristas who maybe don't have access to the industry at large and how transformative that can be, but also being able to tie coffee to your personal identities is so absolutely powerful. It's something that I struggle with being Cuban: something that I'm actually trying to figure out is coffee grown in Cuba? It is, but I have never been able to get my hands on it.

It's really interesting finding those parallels in identity that are so powerful. I'm just so touched by the stories that you shared.

Erica: Yeah. I just think that those two things are really important and that's very insightful for you to bring up with our current situation. If I was a barista that didn't know about the industry and I didn't have my job and I wasn't connected to other people or other places where I could eventually get another job, that sounds like a really, really hard situation to be in. I didn't even think about that. So thanks for bringing up.

Ashley: No, thank you for inspiring the conversation to go in that direction.

I'm wondering about other transformative moments. We were talking about this a little bit earlier but I feel like you're someone who really pays attention and can make really big connections. So I was wondering if there are other moments in your coffee career that have felt really, really impactful or really important to the development of your career?

Erica: I think my experience on the tea farm, actually. It's a parallel industry and I think that roots and grounds me. Even though that was before I fell in love with coffee, I always think about that experience.

I think that propels me to keep looking at the world differently because on that trip, I got to meet some of the people who were picking the tea and I got to go into their homes and have conversation with them. That just that humanizes—we just see a lot of things in America as products. I have this experience where I've met someone who's working really, really hard to get this from point A to point B.

I would say that was really formative. I'm trying to think of some other “aha” moments.

Ashley: They don't have to be big “aha” moments and sometimes they're just not there.

I'm having a little bit of an “aha” moment, but again, I was telling you about this before we started recording. I really wanted to set the mood by having your bag of coffee here. I was wondering if you could talk us through that a little bit because I want people to be able to picture this too in their minds. You have a coffee that has your name, your face on it.

Erica: Yeah, that's a really big honor. I took this random selfie one day and that is a picture that the coffee bag is based off on in, in that picture. Also on the label I'm wearing a purple bandana and it's actually The Chocolate Barista.

There's no words to describe seeing your face in different shops and in different places, in a well-known shop in your hometown. It's really cool. It's really amazing to have a Black woman on a coffee bag. I mean, you just don't see that anywhere.

Ashley: Totally. How did this happen? What was the conversation like? Did one of the owners of Seeds just come up to you and were like, “We're gonna put your face on a bag?”

Erica: My friend Jonathan, we were coworkers at the time, he was my manager and he's a really, really talented artist. He's the one who designed the label. So it was his idea.

We were trying to think of specific branding for—[the coffee] is called Iron Fist. We were trying to think of what do we want to put on the bag?

He was throwing out ideas and he's like, “Erica, I have this one idea where you’re a cartoon and this is what you're doing.” And he told me his whole like vision.

I was like, “Oh, that's a cool idea. That's a fun idea.” I literally thought it was one idea of many ideas. Then he showed me the mock-up I was blown away and I was like, “Oh, you actually drew this it's actually a thing.” And it turned out it was the idea.

So it was a very big surprise. So yeah, that's how it came to be. He just had this vision and he drew it and there it is.

Ashley: As you were saying before, the power of seeing a Black woman on a bag of coffee, and as you mentioned, it was the main espresso blend for Seeds and seeing it all throughout Birmingham or at other wholesale accounts must be just so incredibly powerful. But also I would imagine, a little bit like, “Oh s**t, that’s me. That's me right there.”

Erica: Yeah. It is really powerful. I love it. I love it so much.

Ashley: The name Iron Fist: was that the name of the blend specifically, or was that something that you folks collaborated on that was meant to encompass a part of your identity?

Erica: It's actually a part of Birmingham's identity. So Birmingham was an industrial city and it created steel—it had really big steel mills and part of that is iron ore. So this is a homage to the iron industry and the steel industry and all of that. So Iron Fist is actually honoring Birmingham.

Ashley: But you’ve also kind of taken it to be part of your identity too—I mean, maybe I'm extrapolating a little bit but it's your Instagram handle. I wonder how do you see that interweaving into how you view yourself or how that is expressed in your identity?

Erica: Well, it started off as a joke because my friends—I'm just a big personality. So my friends are like—I just feel I had become a character, but they're like, “Yeah, you're Lady Iron Fist.” We just laughed about it. It was just a joke.

Then my friend Chandler—he still works for Seeds—Chandler was like, “Yeah, you should make that your Instagram handle.” His Instagram handle is @latteartcan, by the way. But he's like, “You should make that your Instagram handle.” And I was like, “Okay, cool. I'll do it.”

So I did, I think it is more as a joke now. I think that it does encapsulate me because I was born in Birmingham and I'm actually pretty intense. And I think it's important for women to to self-actualize and come into their power. That's what I've been trying to do.

So yeah—and I love cartoons, so it’s a part of me. Not that I think strength is like purely physical, but there is also something about a portrayal, even if it's just like a portrayal in that actual real life, but a portrayal of an image of a woman that strong and a woman that will stand up for herself and a woman that knows her worth. You know?

Ashley: You mentioned self-actualizing your power. What does that look like for you? Because I imagine that that process isn't always linear, right?

Erica: Yeah, it takes a lot of reflection I would say. It's really hard to look inward and to hold yourself accountable for your actions—even hold yourself accountable for your thoughts, because thoughts lead to actions. Not that you can control them, but just recognizing them.

I think it begins by starting inward in holding—at least for me, that's been the processes—looking inward, evaluating my thoughts, evaluating my speech looking at the way that, like I enter a room or that other people enter a room.

Just taking note of when I say something or when I do something, how the room is being affected, or how other people are being affected, because we all have influence. We all are affecting each other's lives, whether we want to be or not. I think self-actualization, part of it is just taking stock of literally how your actions affect other people and affect spaces.

Ashley: You're someone who pays a lot of attention. I know that I've mentioned this to you before. Have you always been that type of person? Have you always been someone who's acutely aware of their surroundings? Or do you think that that's something that's maybe come later in your life?

I know for me I feel like I'm someone who likewise pays attention. That's one of the reasons I think that I'm very drawn to you. I don't think I was always that person, like by no means I was a stupid idiot until I was like 24.

Erica: I think I've always been this way and I've actually tried to reflect on that in the past couple of weeks and figure out why. I wonder if it's a middle child skill…

Ashley: I'm all about birth order.

Erica: Yeah. So I'm middle-ish. I have three sisters and I’m the third of four, so I think from a young age I just had to observe, “This is what my older sisters are doing and this is what my mom is doing and this is what I'm doing and my younger sister,” but we're all connected somehow.

There's actually a really big age gap between me and my older siblings. I have a sibling that's 12 years older than me and a sibling that's 11 years older than me. Then the next sister is just 11 months apart from me, not even a whole year.

Ashley: Oh, wow.

Erica: We were born in the same year. So I wonder if it's from just trying to bridge age gaps between me and my siblings and that's maybe the start of my observation…

I'm [also] a very physical person and what I mean by that is it kind of goes back to what I was saying about observing the way that you take up space or a observing way that your voice or your body language affects a room or affects other people.

I've always been aware of that and I think I'm just like a physical person—in the Enneagram, they break it up by body, heart and what's the other one….gosh, and there's another one, but I'm definitely like in the body category.

Ashley: I love talking about birth order because I love all of it. I love astrology. I love Enneagrams. I love Myers-Briggs, but I do think that probably more than anything, the person that I am is because of my birth order.

I'm an eldest child through and through. My sisters—it's interesting that you mentioned the age gap because my sisters are eight and nine years younger than I am. So I definitely lived in this world very separate from them for a long time, because our experience is completely different when I was 18, they were nine and ten.

I think so much of this insularity that I lived with for a majority of my life comes from that fact that like I was essentially an only child in certain ways. Then when I started working in service it forced me to interact with people in a way that I never had to.

So I think for me, that's why I'm interested in knowing if people are always inquisitive or always in tune with the world around them, because I owe that all to service. I owe that all to working in coffee. What do you think about coffee or about working in coffee that really speaks to you as a person?

Erica: I'll go back to spirituality. So another thing that my friend Jeff told me that was really formative was that providing a beverage to someone is also a spiritual service. The exchange of energy that takes place in that moment of me preparing a coffee for someone and then giving it to them that really attracts me and keeps me—I just love to make coffee for people.

Hopefully they will enjoy it and if they don't enjoy it, I want to know why they didn't so that I can make it better next time. Spiritual interactions with people, for sure is really important to me, whether I'm aware in that moment or the other person is aware in that moment of it being a spiritual experience.

Maybe it's not even that for them, but I always see it as a spiritual exchange. I really like all the smells and sounds and just like being able to use my senses. And again, I think that goes to me being grounded in my body, being a physical person. God, being a barista is a lot of work, being a barista is taxing sometimes. But the other thing that draws me to coffee is being able to move my body and use my body in a meaningful way. And while I'm doing that, I'm having this really awesome sensory experience at the same time.

Ashley: Yeah, that totally makes sense. I can imagine that the actual physicality of being behind the bar and serving people was really, really gratifying, but at the same time and something that I think is really powerful is that you seem to be really interested in those moments of exchange—of, “I am giving you a thing that I've made.” And that requires a lot of presence.

I know that for me sometimes, I kind of have to like zone out and I feel the best shifts for me are those ones that go by really, really fast and you're just like, “Wait, where did nine hours go?”

I feel like you're speaking to the opposite moments. The moment where you’re like, “Look at this thing that I've made for you. And this is a moment of connection, even if we don't know each other.”

Erica: Yeah, I do. I have a love/hate relationship with rushes at a cafe.

I love challenges, so that active, “All right, we have to get out these drinks and we have to get them out really fast and they need to be well done.” I love that feeling of doing that really well. Sometimes I don't and I get to take apart why I didn't. I love rushes because of the challenge, but I hate rushes because they lack intimacy to me.

In that moment I just have to get drinks or whatever out as fast as I can and try to still make eye contact with the person or thank then but it's a rushed exchange at that point. I would much, much rather be aware of the flow of the cafe, the literal flow of people in and out of the cafe and how they're experiencing it and how they're experiencing other people in the cafe.

I would rather be able to slow down and notice all those things and give someone their coffee and have time to talk about it with them or talk about something else that they want to share.

I know this is a can be really hard for a baristas—the emotional labor of it. I think boundaries can be crossed and sometimes people will treat their barista like their therapist. I think for everyone who is fine with that time being taken and who wants to take time to have a conversation with the customers, I want all of that space. I would love for that to just be a consistent thing in cafes.

So yeah, you're right. I'm speaking to like the slow moments.

Ashley: Those are still really beautiful moments. I think about those, even though I'm definitely a person who finds a lot of gratification from crushing a rush. That's really exciting for me, but the moments I remember, the moments that I go back to are the slow moments, are the moments where I took a moment…

The moment I took a moment? That was silly, but the moment that I was able to pause and see what was happening around me, I think are the most gratifying. So it's interesting to kind of think of those two moments, because they are part and parcel with being a barista. And you can get gratification out of both.

Erica: Totally.

Ashley: What does the future look like for you in coffee? What would you like to be doing in the next year, two years?

Erica: I would love to get back into a space where I can use more of my skills at my current job. My role is to be a really good barista and I can do that, but like you've been saying throughout this podcast, I usually am looking at big picture.

I'm in a frustrating place of like, I can't affect the big picture. I can't even speak into the big picture. So I would want to get back into a role where I can have an effect on the big picture of what's going on. That's the thing that comes to mind. I don't really have a specific job or job description I think right now, but I would love to just be able to have a more holistic approach to my work.

Ashley: I do love that you focused on the big picture as opposed to a specific job, because I don't know that we train ourselves to think about the conditions that make us happy versus the linear thing that makes us happy.

I'm not sure if I have the right language for that, but as as I get older, I think about less about “this is the job I want to do” versus “this is the environment I want to be around, and these are the skills I want to utilize.”

Thinking about what's your dream job is not as important to me as much as I want to utilize my ability to think big. I want to utilize my ability to be quick on my feet. Those things matter to me a lot more. So it's really cool to hear you talk about like, “I'm good at these things, and these are the things that I care about. How do I work backwards as opposed to that's the job I want?”

Erica: I think I got spoiled in a previous job where I got—he position didn't exist before I took it on. So I got to shape it and make it what it was going to be. Now, I give myself this permission to say “these are the things that I want to do.” I just need to meet the right people, get in the right space to do that. I don't need a title to do that. I do you want to be paid to do that work.

Ashley: Yes, definitely.

Erica: The title is not very important. But my actual work is really important to me.

Ashley: One of conversations I think about a lot in my coffee career is when I was working with this wonderful person, her name is Rachel. We were talking about the things that we're good at. I mentioned to her that I was like, “I think I'm good at this. And I'm good at that.” I kind of named some things. I was like, “I don't think I'm good at this other thing.”

I asked her, “What do you think you're good at?” And she was like, “I don't know.”

I was like, “That sucks. How has no one ever told you?” Not to say that you discover what you're good at through people affirming yes or no. But what I love about this conversation is that I don't think a lot of people are trained to think that way.

I hope that this conversation leads people to think like, “Who am I as a person? And what am I good at? Or what do I enjoy?” As opposed to like, “What jobs do I want?”

I don't know. I'm still forming these thoughts, but what I love about talking to you is that it feels like you think very critically—like, this is who I am, and this is the way that I'm going to move around the world and obviously learn and keep engaging. But at the same time, what's important to me is to honor like the person that I am.

Erica: What you're saying goes back to those concepts of self concept and self-actualization, and I think in my process of self-actualization, I'm just at that place of “this is who I am and this is how I'm going to exist.”

So I need to make a space, find a space to exist in that way. I do wish that more people were able to invest in that and to think about their formation and their self-concept and they're worth.

You're right. Knowing what you're good at doesn't just come from people affirming those things. But that is also important. I think that's a big part of self-concept because people can say that thing and then you can think about it and then you can either agree or disagree. But I think it's important—as much as I've been talking about looking inward—it's important to know how you are seen by other people and perceived by other people.

Again, even if it's false. I think it's important for you to have your self concept and how you want to be and who's the person that you want to be and how to get yourself there.

Ashley: I hope that people listen to this and feel empowered to have those conversations with themselves and think deeply and think inwardly.

Erica, it has been an absolute honor and pleasure for you to agree to be on the show and to talk to me, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for stopping in. I feel silly saying that because we're not in the same place.

Erica: Yeah. Thank you for having me, Ashley, thank you for your time. I've really, really enjoyed this time. So we can have more like meaningful conversations like this.

That was Erica Chadé. A quick note—we talk a lot about their Instagram account, but you can now find them at @blkcoffee4life.

This Boss Barista episode is brought to you by Urnex.

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