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Let’s face it: Learning about coffee is hard. There are so many things to know, from elevation and varietals to processing and more. Technically, all those aspects do contribute to a coffee’s distinct character, but they can be very hard to perceive and identify when you’re just starting out, and difficult to explore on your own.

From the moment Suneal Pabari got into coffee, he wanted to know why others didn’t share his excitement, and he came to a pretty simple conclusion: Coffee is hard! Baristas are busy slinging drinks, and it’s not like the coffee roaster is sitting and waiting to answer your queries about why Coffee A tastes like strawberries and Coffee B tastes like milk chocolate.

Suneal wanted to learn more, and he decided to start a game. Leaderboard Coffee is a seasonal coffee experiment where participants receive 10 unlabeled bags of coffee alongside a set of guiding questions to help them deduce where each coffee is from and what makes it unique. Leaderboard doesn’t just offer the opportunity to become an at-home sleuth, but also to learn about coffee in a way that a cafe environment can’t replicate.

Folks like Suneal represent the exciting potential of consumer education in coffee, harnessing moments of surprise and joy to share knowledge and expertise. Leaderboard, as well as number of other projects Suneal has been part of, have all stemmed from his curious spirit and desire to learn more. Here’s Suneal.

Ashley: Suneal, could you start by introducing yourself?

Suneal: Yeah, absolutely. My name is Suneal Pabari. I'm the co-founder of The Roasters Pack, Leaderboard Coffee, as well as a couple of other things. I'm up here in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Ashley: Suneal, what are your first memories of coffee?

Suneal: That's an awesome question. I specifically remember my first year of university. I was going to school and my sister gave me this pro tip—an elder sister pro tip. She's like, “Suneal, you need to start drinking coffee. It's going to give you extra hours of studying time. It's such a skill or a hack for being able to study more.”

And that was my first memory of coffee, and I started drinking triple triples from Tim Hortons up here in Canada.

Ashley: Wait, what is a triple triple?

Suneal: Three sugars. Three creams. Yeah.

Ashley: I thought that meant espresso shots. And I was like, “Oh no! Suneal, did you die?!?!”

Suneal: No, it's like, how can we make this Tim Hortons coffee tastes like a dessert? So I began [drinking] extra larges of those and started drinking them at 6 p.m. Helped me power through the all-nighters for my really poor studying habits.

Ashley: At what point did coffee start to become something that you were actively interested in?

Suneal: Several years later. So I had graduated and I had started working my first job after university. There was a little roaster kind of close to my house and that was my introduction to specialty coffee. I started trying some stuff that I was like, “Oh, this is different. I don't need to add three creams or three sugars to this.”

And that kind of sparked that whoa moment. I think everyone in specialty coffee sort of has this moment where you're like, “Whoa, coffee can taste like this?” I lived an hour outside of Toronto and there really wasn't much good coffee around and that was the start. It was like, “Okay, I want to see what else I can get. How else can I learn more about coffee? How else can I discover other interesting coffees around?”

That basically led me to starting my first coffee business. I probably started it a little bit too early, meaning that I wasn't really a coffee pro, but I started a subscription called The Roasters Pack.

With that, we'd send people three different coffees every month. That was my way of fulfilling this need that I had of wanting to try more coffees and learn more about coffee. I turned that into a service through a subscription to hopefully help other people solve this problem that they may or may not have been having.

Ashley: I love that that was your idea—that you were hungry to learn more about coffee and not only did you design a system where you could try more coffee, but that you could disseminate more coffee to other people. How did that first look for you? What was it like to start a business like this?

Suneal: Yeah, so, super fun, super exciting. I kind of feel bad for the first few subscribers that took that leap of faith because I wouldn't say I knew a ton about coffee. So probably the first few products or shipments were a little bit rough around the edges, but it was such a cool experience for me. Because I was able to reach out to some of the best roasters in Canada and I was able to ask them a lot of questions about coffee under the guise of being a wholesale client.

It really accelerated my learning and it was a super unique experience that I think is actually the best way to learn about coffee, but it's just not the most practical for most people.

Ashley: I just wanted to highlight this a little bit more because I was just on a phone call a couple of hours ago. I was telling you that I was on the phone at 8:30 in the morning, which is uncharacteristic for me. I would be in bed usually until like … right now.

But one of the things that this person was asking me was about my job as a freelancer, and trying to figure out different pathways in the coffee industry. And yours is a totally different pathway in coffee where maybe a barista or someone who's interested in coffee can start their own business and be their own entrepreneur in a way that feels very low-risk.

Suneal: Yeah, totally. When I started The Roasters Pack back in 2014, roasters weren't selling coffee online. That was a new concept. I think I filled this hole or this gap that was there in coffee that I think was really useful for roasters and really useful for people who wanted to learn more about coffee or wanted to try more coffees.

It was really challenging to do that back in 2014. So for myself as a coffee drinker, I solved that problem. And it turned out that there were other people around Canada that maybe didn't live in one of the hubs of Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, but also wanted to try good coffee from different craft specialty roasters. So yeah, it worked out really well. I'm super grateful for all these roasters that were patient with me when I would ask them ridiculous questions about coffee.

Ashley: What did you do after that? When I first connected with you, I think we connected in 2017 or 2018, you were doing Toronto Coffee Tours.

Suneal: Once you get into coffee, I feel like it's this rabbit hole that just sucks you in—I'm sure you can relate to this. So you start drinking specialty coffee and you're like, “Well, why don't more people know about this?”

And then you start going to local cafes and you're really impressed with some of the things that they do from all different angles, whether it's the entire culinary experience or just making really great espresso or doing really cool things like cuppings or pairings.

The local “media” here in Toronto, I didn't feel like was really giving the love some of the shops deserved. There were some under-the-radar coffee shops that were doing really amazing things in specialty coffee, but just weren't necessarily getting the love, maybe because they didn't have a ton of money to throw into making their design aesthetic great. They were just nerdy coffee people.

So I made this thing called the Craft Coffee Tour, and it was a self-guided tour of some of the best specialty coffee shops in Toronto. It was my way of being like, “Hey, if you're into coffee, this is a really cool way to try 13 different cafes around the city.”

And I kind of stepped on your toes a bit. I made little podcasts for, I think about seven or eight of the different shops, just because I know how much effort goes into making a really cool coffee drink or experience, whether that's the green buying or the roasting, or the dialing in and trying different things on the brew.

But when you go to a coffee shop, sometimes it's really busy. You don't get to hear that full story. So that was my thought behind the podcast associated with each drink was that we can finally tell the story behind all the effort that went in to making this delicious coffee that you have in front of you and get that primo experience that you maybe wouldn't get if it was a busy Monday morning service.

Ashley: I love that so much as a person who, anytime I go to a new city, I will take a walking tour. I will look for a podcast that explains the city—I actually tried to do that for Madison, where I just moved to, and I couldn’t find a podcast. But now I'm thinking, “Oh, that's a good idea. Maybe I'll do it.”

I feel like this is secretly a template for how to be your own entrepreneur.

Suneal: I will say, and I'm sure you can relate to this, but podcasting is a lot of work.

One of the biggest challenges I think with getting new people into specialty coffee is getting them over that price hurdle.

As much as we don't want to admit it, it is a challenge, right? For people, if they can go to their local coffee shop, that's serving some, I don't know, questionable coffee we'll say, for a really good price. [People can] put their three creams and three sugars in and they're happy. So how do you get them to try and take that leap of faith?

With the Craft Coffee Tour, we asked cafes to give a little bit of a discount, which doesn't feel great, but the hope was that it will grow the market.

It's kind of a chicken-and-an-egg thing. Once people try really good coffee, hopefully they'll learn to love it. You won't be able to go back. I think once you start drinking, like eating good food, if we use that as a parallel, it's really tough to go back to frozen dinners, you know?

So that was the hope. But I do know that as a project point of view, it was just really challenging to keep up with all of the coordination and the work, especially for something that we're not going to be making a ton of money on because we wanted to try and grow specialty coffee.

Ashley: I mean that's, number one, super benevolent to invest in the future of specialty coffee within your own space. I think you're absolutely right. Going back to the thing that you said about price, no matter how much we talk about how coffee is undervalued at the consumer end, it is shocking to see that a coffee might cost $4 or $5 versus what people are used to seeing in maybe not a specialty coffee shop.

It's really hard for people to differentiate—what's the difference between this and that—especially if we don't give them the tools to understand it. So I think making some sort of audio kit, which is accessible and easy, and folks being like, “Oh, I can listen to this, learn more about what I'm experiencing or what I wish to experience without bothering a barista, without being fearful that I might ask a stupid question or maybe it’s really busy and I can't ask a question.”

So that's a really interesting concept and a way to tackle that barrier between customer and coffee industry that I think is really interesting.

Suneal: I honestly think that coffee shops or coffee roasters should do that. The green buyer is not going to be able to talk to every customer, but if you're making this coffee on pourover, I think it would be really cool if a barista could say, “Hey, if you scan this QR code, you can listen to our green buyer talk about how they sourced this coffee when they were down in Costa Rica.”

These green buyers have these really cool stories, and these roasters have really cool stories, but they just don't necessarily get shared. I fully think each cafe or roaster should steal that idea and make little podcasts about each coffee.

Ashley: I love that idea. It seems like the work that you've done in general has really focused on you as a consumer trying to get other consumers excited about the things that you like and bridging that gap between people who are excited and interested about coffee and the people who have these stories, but maybe just don't know how to tell them.

Has that always been sort of your vision or goal, or do you think that vision cleared up for you as you continue to do work in this field?

Suneal: Honestly, I just think there's so much cool stuff going on in coffee. Coffee is super fascinating to me. I always ask the question: What's going on here? Why don’t other people not see this as exciting or fascinating as I do?

Then it's just like, okay, how do we break down some of those barriers to entry for coffee? So some of that might be on storytelling. That's why I focused on that for some of the projects that we do. Some of them might be about branding or accessibility, some of that might be around education.

So yeah, I dunno. I think there's just multiple ways to attack the problem of sharing how cool coffee is. But I will say that it feels like we're trending in the right direction.

I think as scary and bad as the pandemic was, I think a lot of people had to learn how to make coffee at home. I think that opened up a lot of eyes for people to be like, “Oh, I can make really good coffee at home. And oh, this coffee could taste like strawberries.” That's really exciting. So I think that there's definitely been this perception of coffee that's growing.

I think craft beer had this happen maybe 10 years ago. And wine's always had this, I think coffee is … like, it's happening, which is really exciting and cool to see.

Ashley: What made you want to start Leaderboard Coffee?

Suneal: Yeah, Leaderboard Coffee, I’m super stoked about.

I've always been a huge fan of Cup Tasters. I really like that competition as a concept, but there are some things about it that I wasn't a huge fan of. Every time I would see Cup Tasters, it would excite me, but also scare me.

It was always in the back of my mind like, “What could we change about Cup Tasters to make it more accessible, educational, less scary?” Because I know I would be quite terrified to go on stage and have to taste coffees in front of my peers. Leaderboard is a culmination of all of those things that I love about coffee, trying to combine it into one cool experience.

Ashley: Just for context: Cup Tasters is a competition where you have three cups of coffee in front of you. And it's kind of a game of “one of these things is not like the other.” You have to taste these three cups and figure out which one is the one that's different. And you do this timed in front of people. They might be cheering you on. They might not be, it depends on what the crowd is like.

Then you get evaluated right then and there. So you're right—that is petrifying to think about. I don't think I could taste a single thing when I'm in front of people and [the coffees] get progressively harder too. So you might get an origin difference like, “Oh, this is from Colombia. And the one that's different is from Ethiopia,” but you might get something that's like, “This was roasted four days ago. And this was roasted two days ago.”

Suneal: Or like this is from the neighboring farm. Good luck!

Ashley: Let's see if you can figure it out! These two people are brothers and they own farms next to each other, figure out which one's which—which is wild!

So it's really cool to take the concepts that are very interesting and applicable to education from Cup Tasters and essentially make it safe to do at home.

I'm interested by the questions that you ask—how do you design questions or design guidance? I imagine that the questions [you ask] are used to guide people to think about what they're tasting. How do you think about designing almost a whole kit that you send to people because they have to figure it out on their own a little bit.

I know that there's guidance and there's emails and things like that, but you have to think about, how does someone experience this thing when they get it at home?

Suneal: Totally. So we have the fundamental questions, our base-level questions, which is part of Section A. With each coffee we ask people: Where is it grown? We ask about the altitude, a question about the roaster, whether or not it's a decaf, what varietal, and how is it processed.

With each of those, we wanted to make sure that you don't feel like you're in the dark. We reached out to some of the smartest people that we know in coffee, and we asked them to put together coaching videos. So it kind of ties back to my experience in coffee when I was new to coffee.

Let's say I wanted to buy a Costa Rican white honey-processed coffee as a wholesale client. I could then ask that green buyer, “Hey, how does the white honey show up in the cup?” Then they’d be like, “Hey, do you taste that little bit of brown sugar in the finish? Notice how it's a little bit sweeter?” and then I'd be like, “Oh, wow. Okay, cool.” That was how I learned.

With Leaderboard, we're trying to tie the sensory question to coaching, trying to take that one-to-one experience I had and bring it to a one-to-many. So we've got some pretty amazing coaching videos. People like Tim Wendelboe, just to name-drop a bit here.

Ashley: This is the name-dropping section of the episode.

Suneal: Ben Put, former Canadian barista champ; Cole Torode, another Canadian barista champ; Sarah Ball—she won the Cup Tasters in Canada and she placed sixth in the world. A lot of really, really talented, amazing coffee professionals have put together coaching videos on different topics.

And so the goal is, if you're trying to differentiate between a washed honey and a natural, you can taste those coffees, but then you can also throw on a couple of videos diving into how to differentiate between processing and then hopefully that will guide your tasting.

The goal is we can hopefully teach people more about coffee in a guided manner. For myself, I find self-guided coffee education is pretty tricky. And so this was the hope to try and help solve that. I have a few coffee books and I love reading them, but I find it's hard unless you're pairing it with the sensory. The goal is to have the education tied directly to the sensory.

Then we also have our Section B questions, which is our way to highlight certain things in the coffee that we want to showcase. One of the things we asked a question about last season was one of these coffees was frozen in 2019—which one do you think that is?

That's just another really interesting thing about coffee. People are freezing green and then taking it out of the freezer and then roasting that coffee as a way to preserve freshness. That's a conversation that we wanted people to be aware of. We also had some really interesting anaerobic-fermentation processed coffees. That was another question: Which one of these coffees was anaerobically fermented? We’re trying to put our spotlight on some of the really cool things that are going on in coffee through the game design.

Ashley: [It’s so great that] you're making these things accessible to people, because when I think of going to a coffee shop and seeing an anaerobically fermented coffee—obviously I know what that is. Ashley, a coffee writer who's been in the business for 10 years knows what that is. But I have to imagine that Ashley, an alternate universe Ashley who never worked in coffee would be like, “What the f**k is that? What does that mean?”

So creating a way for people to learn about it, see it, is really special because I think the only way that most consumers would ever learn about it is that they were bold enough to ask a question in a coffee shop, which, like we were saying, isn't always possible or can be really, really daunting.

Suneal: I wouldn't even be surprised if some baristas too … I think to educate yourself as a barista, a lot of it really relies on whether or not you have a really good team around you or a manager who wants to take education as a priority in their coffee shop. But we all know how coffee shops are. They always feel understaffed and there's a million things to do.

So education may not necessarily be a priority, but if you want to develop yourself in your career as a barista, how do you set up these interesting tastings for yourself? Or how do you learn more about coffee on your own time? I think this hopefully can help solve some of that too, just for budding coffee professionals or people who want to learn more.

Ashley: What is the mix of people who sign up for Leaderboard? Has it been mostly baristas or consumers?

Suneal: It's actually pretty fun to see. So we've got a lot of, I would say nerdy home consumers, but then we also do have the most professional professionals: people who've won Cup Tasters in the past. To me, I think that's the beautiful thing about Leaderboard, is that every season we post the top 20 scores and the top five scores win prizes, and that could be anyone—it could be a former Cup Taster, it could be a coffee green importer, or it could just be someone at home who's super nerdy and loves tasting a lot of coffees. It allows you to compete against the best, which is kind of a fun thing to do as a competitor.

Ashley: Right. And it takes the spectacle out of it in a way. So you could taste the coffees over and over and you can kind of learn at your own pace. As a former teacher, that's something that I really like because people learn in different ways.

Suneal: Totally. Yeah. Going back to having 10 minutes on stage, that would be so terrifying. Hopefully this is an opportunity for people to even maybe try cupping, learn about cupping, practice their brewing with the coffees to figure out how to make it the most expressive. Yeah. I think there's a lot of cool things that people could do that'll help further their coffee education with Leaderboard.

Ashley: So you mentioned that you've done this in seasons, so you're on Season Three right now, I believe. Or you're prepping for Season Three.

Suneal: Yeah. We're shipping out Season Three in six days. I don't know when this podcast will go live, but July 19th is when we're shipping out Season Three and we're doing seasons every quarter.

Ashley: Oh, cool. Yeah. This probably will go live after that. I was wondering—what are some of the lessons that you've learned from season to season?

Suneal: It's been interesting. At the very end of the quiz, we ask people for feedback. It's a new concept, Leaderboard. So we want to continue to make it better. We think we're onto something, but we don't know how each person is truly experiencing this in their home. So we want to get as much feedback so that we can improve on it.

Some of the feedback that we got was, “Hey, I wish there was more room for notes.” So we included a little notepad with each box for Season Two. People have asked for more resources, so we reached out to more coaches and we got more resources on specific topics that people were asking for. Yeah.

It's honestly though, Ashley, it's been pretty crazy. I've done a few different coffee projects, but the amount of love that we're seeing in the feedback form—maybe people are just really nice—but it's super heartwarming to see how much people are loving Leaderboard.

We've gotten a lot of people say like, “Hey, this was so much fun. Please don't ever stop doing this.” Or like, “I loved it. It's super hard, but this was awesome.” I don't know. I think it's really cool to see it. It makes all the hard work that we put in on the back end worth it when we see comments like that.

Ashley: Has anyone gotten them all right?

Suneal: I think the highest score from Season Two was something like an 87. That's the thing about coffee, is coffee is pretty tricky.

Ashley: It is!

Suneal: I feel like there's been times where I've tasted Colombians and been like, “Oh, that's definitely a Kenyan.” And then you're like, “Whoa, what's going on here? Why is this Colombian tasting like a Kenyan?”

When we're designing the coffees, we try to make sure that there are coffees that fit the terroir and our expressive representations of what a coffee from that region should taste like. But there are curveballs.

We included a Chinese coffee last year. I don't know how many people have tried Chinese coffee, but by including it in the game, we feel like it really forces people to taste that coffee, to think about it. What are the sweetness characteristics? What's the acidity like? What's the body like? Hopefully that taste experience of that Chinese coffee will be one that they remember because they'd had to really think about it and really analyze that cup.

So coffee's tricky. So 87, I think, is the top score so far, but hey, you never know. We've only done two seasons. I think anything's possible.

Ashley: Do you design the box to address different levels of coffee know-how? I imagine that there are some coffees that you want to include because you want people to have some, not necessarily easy wins, but you want people to feel successful as they do this so that they're not like, “Oh, I got zero right, I feel like a jerk.” I'm sure it's never happened before. How do you think about difficulty levels when you’re designing these?

Suneal: There's a lot of coffees that we could include that are curveballs. Just with the way that interesting fermentation is becoming a thing or varietals being planted in different origins.

For us, we do want to make sure that there are some coffees that are figure-out-able, hopefully very expressive of their terroir. I think that makes for an interesting learning experience for someone who maybe isn't as nerdy, but it also does force the people who do know a lot about coffee to really stand firm with their beliefs. Can they pick a Kenyan out from 10 coffees? Can they pick a Guatemala out from 10 coffees? I think the challenge in itself is quite tricky regardless of the coffees.

I think if we tried to pick the 10 easiest coffees, I still think it would be pretty tricky.

Ashley: I agree.

Suneal: For us, we do make sure that there's, okay—we test ourselves, Grant and I, we do cuppings and we see, okay, can we figure these ones out? So we're kind of a gauge. But we want to make sure that there's coffees in there that people can figure out. Even though we say this, there's been times where Grant and I have been like, “Oh, that's definitely a Brazil.” And then when we look at the feedback, not everyone thinks it tastes as much like a Brazil as we thought. So coffee is just tricky in general.

Ashley: It's interesting to almost compile this data and see where we stand as an industry. Obviously this is never going to be a perfect sample size because it's going to be the people who subscribe to Leaderboard, but it's interesting to get that feedback and see like, “Oh, where am I calibrated? What do I think tastes like a typical Brazil versus maybe the hundred or so people I sent this box to?”

Suneal: Totally. It's still early, we've only done three seasons of this. But our goal is that hopefully we’re able to take some of that data for people and be like, “Okay, you're really good at identifying decafs, but varietals is maybe something that you should work on. So here's a couple of coaching videos that you should check out on varietals and maybe think about those next time when you're tasting,” and just try and give people that feedback loop that helps them develop their palate or their career in coffee.

Ashley: One of the things as a teacher that I think about a lot is: Do I give students a test that they can figure out? Not necessarily in a straightforward way, but does the answer tie back to the question?

I was wondering if you think about that when you think about the coffees—obviously you were saying some coffees are curveballs and they throw you for a loop, but do you try to identify one thing in them, like this [flavor note] speaks to the varietal and you could have figured this out—not could in a pedantic way—but this is the thing that ties it back to a known entity. Does that make sense?

Suneal: Totally. And that's where our resources come into play. Do we feel like we have equipped our players with enough information that they can figure this out, even if it is a tricky one?

We've reached out to a lot of people to get some really interesting videos and I'm super excited to release the Season Three videos that'll be coming out soon, just because they're really great deep dives on certain origins. And so the hope is that it may be a tough question, but the resources are there that they can taste the coffee, watch the videos, and feel more equipped to answer these questions.

Ashley: Why do you think that your businesses, the ones that you've done, the podcasting and the tours and even Leaderboard, they seem to be not necessarily solitary things—there may be a couple of other businesses that do similar things, and I'm thinking about Populace Coffee when they do their Flight of Fancy which is kind of similar, where you get four different coffees and you have to figure out and they give you guidance.

It's all very, very interestingly designed. But [these kinds of games] still seem to be far and few between. It seems like there's not a lot of investment done in this bridge between coffee folks and consumers. I wonder why you think that there's this gap between us?

Suneal: I don't know what the answer is, but my guess would be if I was a coffee roaster, my main source of income is coming through cafes. Coffee shops are where they should probably be spending their focus and their energy. I think that's where roasters have been spending their focus and their energy: making sure that they have really good training for baristas. Making sure they're checking in with their wholesale clients, making sure that everything's going well and coffee's still tasting great. And that's because 90% of their volume is going through those channels.

They need to make sure that those people are successful. Now, I think for me, I don't sell to cafes. So my focus is on the people that I do communicate with and talk with and send coffee to, which are the consumers and understanding what are they going on? What's the challenges that they're having in their day to day with their coffee?

I think that forced me to just think a little bit differently than most roasters. That being said, I know I've seen some really cool things come from roasters over this past year. I think they are starting to realize some of the stuff that I was realizing just because their focus has switched over the past year: They weren't able to spend as much time on their cafe partners because of the pandemic. They're putting a lot more effort into their consumer-facing stuff, which is cool to see. I think it's really interesting to see some of the product development stuff that's happening by roasters.

Ashley: What are you excited about?

Suneal: What am I excited about? I'm really excited for Season Three to see how people respond to it. We've added another element to the game, just to throw a little bit extra in there and change things up. We gotta keep people on their toes.

I'm really excited for cafes to reopen up in Toronto. We've been very much doing takeout and as someone who's self-employed, I'm that guy who sits in cafes. So I can't wait to do that again. I'm actually really excited to see where coffee goes over the next few years, just because I feel like there's been this exponential growth in coffee and specialty coffee, at least up here in Canada specifically. I've noticed a lot more people be interested in coffee and specialty coffee. I've noticed a lot more coffee roasters launch and I've liked it. I've noticed a lot more interesting coffees being sourced. I think that's only gonna push coffee as an industry forward. I'm really excited to see where the next few years take us.

Ashley: I think aesthetically, Leaderboard Coffee is really interesting. I'm looking at your Instagram page now, and it feels like a 1980s arcade game where you're trying to get your name up on the board. You're playing and playing and playing until you can put your three initials into the top 10 of your board. How did that come to be?

Suneal: My partner on this project, Grant, he's got a fun aesthetic that he likes to use in his project. He's actually known for putting on some of the best coffee events in Canada and that's his thing.

When I reached out to him with this idea, he put his Grant spice on it and made it this fun, ’80s arcade theme. I don't know if you've ever been to a coffee event up here in Canada, but it was likely held by Grant. He's got a really good eye for how to put together fun experiences and events. His creativity shone through there with the brand vibe.

For us, I think with the coffee competition, there's a few angles you can take. You could make it a very serious coffee competition and experience. That's what Barista Competition feels like—it's the most serious competition out there for us. We really care about accessibility and we want to make sure that people can learn and it'll feel comfortable to learn. By wrapping it all around in this fun game vibe, I think it really hits the feeling of what we're trying to create with Leaderboard.

Ashley: Where do you see Leaderboard Coffee going in the next couple of years? What does growth look like for you?

Suneal: That's a good question. For us, I feel like we're doing a really good job of getting the word out locally. We've done a good job getting Canadians involved. I don't know the exact numbers, but I'm going to guess 50 to 75% of our participants are within Canada. The rest are international, which is cool. We have about 30 different countries participating, which is kind of mind-blowing to me, to be honest—we're shipping coffee to Mexico, Scandinavia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Slovakia—it's all around the world, which is really cool for us.

We'd love to find a way to have this become more of an international competition. I think with Grant and I being in Canada, we've done a really good job of letting our local network know about what we're doing, but I'm still trying to figure out how to get the word out there to let baristas know internationally that there's this really cool coffee competition that will help you learn and you can taste some cool coffees.

With Grant grounded in very much physical events—that's his whole background—that's definitely something we've kicked around as a potential concept for us [in the future]. Can we turn this virtual competition into something in person? Maybe we bring back all the seasons’ winners and we do an in-person competition, or maybe we do a qualifier in person.

I think there's some creative ideas around there. But for now, we just want to keep working on, how do we make Leaderboard the coffee game a really cool experience? How can we make coffee education easier? And how can we make this game just a ton of fun?

Ashley: I think what's always interesting for me when I'm doing these interviews is trying to tie back the thing that someone does to the person that they are. I wonder for you, how has Leaderboard been an expression of you? How do you see yourself being reflected in this?

Suneal: That's a good question. I've always loved the idea of Cup Tasters strictly from the competition point of view, so that excites me. But coffee isn't really a competitive thing, and it feels quite subjective anyways, right? Some people might enjoy some coffees, other people might not.

But Cup Tasters is an objective thing. You can either taste it or you can't. So that's super fascinating to me. The challenges with that were, I think, very much my challenges—I would be terrified of going up on stage. I can just picture myself grabbing a spoon and my hand just trembling and all the coffee spilling out of a spoon, me trying to bring it to my mouth to taste. I would be terrified. I was like, “How can we fix that and bring that into Leaderboard?”

Education was such a key part of my coffee career, and I wanted to find a way to bring that to other people who are maybe not as deep into coffee as we might be. I think it's totally a reflection of my experience in coffee and some of the things that I enjoy personally.

It is fascinating to look at Leaderboard as a project, through that lens of being like, “How is this me?” But to be fair, I think it's an ever-evolving project, right? I had the concept, I reached out to Grant and Grant threw his Grant spice all over it. And then after Season One, we heard from all of our participants—how could we make this better?

Now it's taking their feedback and building it into the product and trying to find ways to use their input as well into the game. It started off as me and Grant, and now it's very much a thing of the people who participate because we're totally taking in their feedback, trying to figure out how we can make this project even better.

Ashley: Is there anything else you want people to know about Leaderboard or about you?

Suneal: Well, we'd love for people to participate. If you feel like trying 10 really tasty coffees and learning more about coffee, check us out on Instagram at @leaderboardcoffee. We try to make it a pretty fun experience. We have coaches, but we also have each roaster do the reveals. You get to see 10 different faces of people around the world.

We also have a pretty interesting community that's developing. So when we're doing the reveals too, it's really fun to hear how people are finding the coffees, whether they were like, “Oh, I nailed the variety on the processing, but I totally thought this was not a Kenyan. I thought it was from Uganda.” How people are interacting with the game itself, I think is really fun to witness.

I would love for more people to play and I would love to hear like what their thoughts are on the game.

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

Suneal: Thank you for having me. This was awesome.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

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Baylee Engberg is a roaster who wants you to embrace past crop coffees. 

That’s still a pretty novel position—coffee is an industry that touts freshness, which means “past crop” can feel taboo. Most coffee is harvested just once each year, and it’s generally thought to be at its peak for the year following. A past crop coffee is more than a year old—the coffee that you still have on hand when the new year’s harvest comes in. 

Most roasters and importers avoid large stocks of past crop coffees by making projections. Even if they’re imperfect, those estimates help such businesses put a figure on how much coffee they’ll need and consume in a year—especially if their job is to import hundreds of thousands of bags of coffee annually. But the COVID-19 pandemic has upended expected buying and consuming patterns, meaning there are more past crop coffees sitting in warehouses than ever before. 

This is where an opportunity arises to change the received narrative. Just because past crop coffees are older doesn’t mean they can’t be roasted well and still drink deliciously. Does green coffee really have to be at the peak of freshness to be enjoyed? Is it sustainable to ignore past crop coffees? And don’t roasters have the power to highlight different flavors that maximize the full potential of a past crop coffee? 

Baylee thinks so, and she has a lot to say about how we talk about past crop coffees. This isn’t the first time I’ve interviewed her—like some of our guests who also happen to be roasters, I interviewed her for the Matchbook Coffee podcast in 2020. She brings energy and passion to everything she dedicates time to, and this conversation is a dynamic look at how roasters can embrace past crop coffees—and why it’s essential for our industry to do so. Here’s Baylee. 

Ashley: Baylee, I wanted to have you on the show for, I'm going to say three reasons. I could probably think of more as I keep going. 

Number one, you're one of the most dynamic people on audio that I've ever interviewed. 

Number two, I loved interviewing you the last time—we interviewed you while you were sitting on a motorcycle, which you're not now because of the heatwave in Portland. 

And three, you're a person who is not afraid to share what you're thinking, which is going to make this interview really exciting. I'm also excited and nervous for our listeners who are just going to hear the two of us just go, bam, bam, bam, bam. Really fast. I was hoping you could introduce yourself to everyone really quickly.

Baylee: Hey everyone. I am Baylee Engberg. I have been in coffee for 13 years, starting as a barista. And then after seven years, I became a roaster. I sit on the leadership council for the Coffee Roasters Guild. I also run #ShesTheRoaster and I am the U.S. chapter Social Accountability Coordinator for SCA [Specialty Coffee Association].

Ashley: When I got the email from you—when we were going back and forth on like, “Let's do this interview,” I looked at your email signature and I was like, “Oh s**t, Baylee does a lot of stuff!”

Baylee: It's a lot of hats. Yeah, it's a lot. 

Ashley: How'd you get into coffee? 

Baylee: It was actually my first job. So it's kind of funny when people talk about how they got into coffee. I worked in a drive-thru, which is prominently a Pacific Northwest type of thing. Although we serve specialty coffee, nothing about it was measured or scientific or precise. So then from there I bounced into a cafe, learned some latte art and found myself a coffee roasting job shortly thereafter and never really looked back. 

Ashley: Was that something that you were always interested in? Did you find roasting to be something that was compelling to you or did you kind of fall into it? 

Baylee: I don't know. It was kind of both, I guess. So me at 16 years old, I have to go get a job. So I'm like, “Yeah, okay. I'll be a barista. That sounds like something I can manage with school and everything else.” So I do that. 

I'm close with my dad and he ran a construction company, so power tools and being hands-on isn't lost on me. So when I start seeing this machine in the corners of certain cafes, it's like, “Oh, what does that do?” And then as soon as somebody opened a door for me—and honestly it involved a lot of elbows to get that door to open—I couldn't imagine not roasting. 

Ashley: I love that it was almost part of growing up, touching things and trying to figure out how they work, or “How does this thing work? What does that thing do?” I can't say that I am of a similar mindset. So I really love when people share those stories and have those experiences. At what point did you decide, “Oh, this is a thing I want to do. This is the part of the coffee industry I want to occupy”?

Baylee: I mean, I think—so it all kind of stems from passion, right? We all like drinking coffee and I mean, that doesn't even need to be an industry-specific thing. But as soon as I realized that as a roaster, you're in control—I mean my favorite part of being a barista was manipulation of espresso, right? 

And I think as soon as I got into roasting, I realized that I have a lot more control than I do on an espresso machine with a grinder. It's almost even better then because it's so similar to cooking and baking—and realistically like barbecuing. I feel like I can pull things out, draw things in, taper things … If anyone's a baking aficionado here, [roasting] is really in line with baking to me.

Ashley: That's really interesting. I really like that analogy. Being able to manipulate one thing and be like, “Oh, how does this work? How does this change this variable?” I would imagine, even in certain ways, a little more gratifying than baking because roasting takes what? Like 12-16 minutes? 

Baylee: Yeah. It depends right now. I'm probably 10-15-minute batches on a 12-kilo. 

Ashley: Killer, killer. Tell me a little bit about your career. How did you end up where you are currently?

Baylee: Wow. What a large question. 

Ashley: Big question. Let's go for it. 

Baylee: I'm like ... a series of terrible employers. No, I'm just kidding. 

Ashley: That's the name of the game on this show, so…

Baylee: It kind of is, and I really like that that gets talked about so often now, because I've been around 13 years in specialty coffee and a lot of different facets of it and I'll say it needed to get talked about sooner. So thank you for always running that conversation. 

How did I get to where I am? Wow. What a weird question, Ashley. 

Ashley: Do you want me to rephrase it? 

Baylee: Yeah, let's rephrase.

Ashley: Okay. So let's start where you are right now. What is your job currently?

Baylee: My day job is that I'm the head roaster at Trailhead Coffee Roasters in Portland, Oregon. 

Ashley: What does that entail for you? Are you roasting every day, or are you more making profiles, helping other people roast coffee, sourcing green? What does that look like on a day-to-day basis? 

Baylee: D) All the above, but definitely less. I'm the only roaster for Trailhead. So I would say it's less helping other people to roast. But I definitely do all of my volunteer work pretty much directly working with helping new roasters kind of get a balance. So yeah, I buy green coffee. I profile [coffee], I run the cuppings. I make the buying decisions. The only thing I don't think I do is send the check to be invoiced.

Ashley: That's great. I love that you were able to [state your job] through process of elimination. It's like, “This is the one thing I do not do.” 

What was the journey to this point for you? Like, did you...hmm...

You're right. That is a weird question. I'm going to rephrase it again.

Baylee: It’s a good question. It's hard. It's hard to get there.

Ashley: It's hard to get there, especially because you've been in the industry for so long. So like, what were you looking for to get to the point that you're at now? 

We obviously don't have to talk about specific employers or any specific experiences. I want this to be more about you and what personal fulfillment looked like for you as a roaster. What was the journey for you from starting out roasting to getting to the point you are now?

Baylee: I think from when I started roasting, because that's when everything changed, it became short-term goals. And I remember ironically, I wanted to do Matchbook [Coffee Project]. That was one of my goals. 

Before I didn't feel like there was an outlet, so I couldn’t reach out and say, “Hey, I'm interested in this, pick me, pick me!” I had to do a short bio for Goodwill—the thrift store has a barista training program, if anyone didn't know. It's an awesome program, but they usually look for mentors. So I was doing my bio for them. And there they asked what my goals were and I was like, “Oh, I just want to do this Matchbook Coffee Project thing. That's really my big one.” And it came to fruition two weeks later. I don't remember.

Ashley: I remember that happening! 

When I reached out to Baylee to do Matchbook, Baylee said, “That was actually one of my goals that I manifested,” which is incredible. And for people who don't know what Matchbook Coffee is, it's a monthly roasting project. You should check out the interview that we did with Baylee on that platform, because that's also very exciting. So just wanted to make sure that people knew what Matchbook was, but keep going.

Baylee: For sure. So short-term goals, I think, are what kept me busy, because ultimately if you're a production roaster, it becomes a very monotonous thing that you just do. I'm not going to say you can do it in your sleep because you probably shouldn't fall asleep by your roaster, but you can definitely go on autopilot and just be fine with punching a clock for a company. 

So it's kind of those extracurriculars that get you excited about things. Also for me, I wasn't part of buying decisions early on in my career. Green buying honestly is a new thing for me. But I was involved in profiling and I think when you get a new coffee, that excitement—and if you don't have that excitement anymore—I'm going to urge all roasters listening to go find that in some capacity, because if you are at a spot in your career where a new coffee doesn't excite you, there's not much left in roasting, you know? 

So I think getting the opportunities to try things and then especially under the veil of like, somebody basically just gave you a puppy and they're like, “Okay, you get to do whatever you want with this. You get to raise it however you want.” That should excite you. So yeah, through that I kept elbowing my way and working and here I am.

Ashley: What an analogy—roasting is like getting a puppy. I don't think I've ever heard anything like that. 

Baylee: I hope anyone listening to this is just going to crack up because I'm pretty notorious for roasting analogies. There's a fateful Coffee Roasters Guild retreat. And I say fateful because I was—I was inebriated. I was really, really inebriated. 

I made this analogy about roasting where I'm like, “How do I explain it to people that don't even understand that coffee can be roasted? Like, they think it grows brown.” 

I'm like, “Okay, no, I roast it.” 

And they're like, “Oh yeah. Barista?” 

And I’m like, “Okay. Yes, but no, I do this other thing to it.” And I was like, it's like cooking a frozen pizza. So I'm like, you could put your oven at 200 degrees Fahrenheit and cook it for an hour. Or you could go to 500 degrees Fahrenheit and cook it for two minutes. But you just want to find that ratio. 

Yeah. I don't know that I ever stopped replaying that in my head. 

Ashley: That’s actually a surprisingly good analogy now that I think about it. Because you don't want to eat a pizza that you roast at 200 degrees, it's going to be baked—that's how you bake coffee, right? 

Baylee: Yeah, slow and low. 

Ashley: Yep, slow and low. But then you also don't want a coffee that you just burn the s**t out of because the top might be super brown, but then the inside is still frozen, going with the pizza analogy. 

That's actually a really good one. I think you should, I don't know. I would like to see you teach one of those MasterClasses, those things that you get Facebook ads for, I'd love to see you do one of those.

Baylee: And just start with roasting coffee.

Ashley: “Roasting coffee is like cooking your frozen pizza…” and then the music comes in and that would be delightful. 

Baylee: I’ve done the frozen pizza analogy. I've done the marshmallow one. Anytime I go to a barbecue, I try not to eyeball the grill the whole time. But I mean, when you look at a Weber grill, you basically have a heat source, you have airflow. Then you actually have two air flows. You have an environmental one up top and then down low, you have airflow, so you can adjust your coals. 

I try not to eyeball grills all the time and people using them, but they're little roasters, they just don't have a drum.

Ashley: That's so funny. Let's talk a little bit about roasting now during these times—which I feel is such a cliche way to refer to it—but COVID-19 has certainly affected coffee on all levels. 

I think it's easy to see it on the consumer and retail level. We see coffee shops close or people get laid off. But what I haven't heard a lot of people talk about is how COVID-19 has affected green coffee and roasting. So I was wondering if you could give a little bit of an overview of what those first couple of months were like for you.

Baylee: Currently, just the ports alone are a nightmare. I mean, it's kind of been a whole domino effect on the green sector of things. And I'm certainly not a green coffee importer, so I'm probably not the best person to ask. 

But when COVID hit Trailhead, there were a lot of products not being able to get moved. I think every company puts in their best effort to find a pivot or a way to make it better or easier or just to survive. But I think a lot of the conversations around sourcing—they're just chaotic right now, my email inbox with green importers—no, one's having a good time. So I started buying a lot of past crop [coffee], which is a super sensitive subject for some reason. Just speaking out of the U.S. for roasters, I'm not sure how any other part of the world deals with past crop. But we kind of have a tendency to put our noses up at past crop and I'm just not really sure why. 

Ashley: Can you talk a little bit about what that means, what past crop means, and maybe talk a little bit about—maybe there's no clear definition on this, but what would be an ideal window for green coffee, just for people who haven't bought coffee or maybe don't deal with green coffee?

Baylee: Sure. I'm probably not the best person to ask, but someday we'll maybe talk to an importer that is. 

So coffee is harvested seasonally, right? Different countries have different months and some countries have multiple seasons so they can get two harvests in one year. They get packaged, shipped, go to the mill, all the things. And then they come to us by the time that they come—I say us, the U.S.—by the time they come to the U.S. at whatever port, they already have some age on them, obviously from when they're harvested. 

But we have kind of a standard that we call “fresh crop” and “past crop.” There's also “current crop,” but we’ll not go there, or “future crop.” So when it hits the port, basically when we say past crop, it refers to [the fact that] you're still holding onto a coffee from Colombia while Colombian coffees are coming in. So your bag is now deemed a past crop bag because there's a fresh crop already arriving. 

Ashley: The designation “past crop” and “fresh crop” doesn't necessarily have anything to do with any sort of flavor component. It seems to be a timing designation?

Baylee: I mean, there's science, right? And so the hard science is that yes, old coffee will have some volatile acids, I guess, which are kind of the big ones. So wow. How to not get too deep on this? 

Ashley: No, go deep. 

Baylee: So roasters, we manipulate volatile compounds, right? And those are the things that we can apply heat to, take heat off of, air, all those things. It's how you roast and which volatile compounds you can change, right? So volatile acids seem to be the big ones with past crop. The coffee acidity is the thing that's getting muted and tamed and less prevalent.

Ashley: Okay. That makes sense. So when we're talking about components in a coffee, like a malic flavor, or citric acid or something like that, that would be maybe more present in a fresh crop coffee—fresh crop coffee, say that five times fast. But those components would perhaps be more prevalent in those fresh crop coffees versus a past crop coffee, that’s right? 

Baylee: Absolutely. 

Ashley: And those are things that, as a roaster, you think about when you're applying heat to coffee, because those are the components that you're manipulating. 

Baylee: Yes. 

Ashley: So what does roasting a past crop coffee look like for you?

Baylee: See, and that's the thing. You don't know what you're losing with past crop. You don't have some kind of a temperature gauge or an acidity reader gauge on a bag of coffee. So it's all kind of speculation outside of that. 

And there's so many variables, like, how was your coffee packaged? Is it in GrainPro, is it vacuum-sealed? There are transportation [questions], temperatures, was it ever exposed? Has it hit sunlight ... there's so many factors to that, that there is no hard metric on how fast your coffee is quote unquote “decaying.” 

So that's why I think past crop is almost an eye-roll because we all assume that it's just becoming this terrible thing in our warehouses. And it likely isn't, but for whatever reason, I think the U.S. has this connotation with past crop where they're like, “Oh gosh, no old coffee, never,” and I just don't think it's sustainable.

Ashley: Yeah. And especially now I have to imagine that you've really had to think about that.

Baylee: Right. And as far as sustainability with coffee goes, we all, I hope, care about farmers and we all talk about caring about farmers, but frankly, if there's coffee on the ground, why are we not buying it up before we produce more? 

I think that that's incredibly wasteful and I'm not necessarily pitching for everybody to go buy some past crop right now, but it usually is cheaper. And why would you waste it? I'm sure there's a menu offering where you can plug that in whether it's your cold brew or... 

So backtracking to when we talked about volatile acids, right? So if acids are the things that are escaping from past crop, why don't we focus on sweetness? 

Ashley: I don't know. Why don’t we? 

Baylee: I don't know. I've been a huge fan of buying past crop, especially through 2020 and 2021. And honestly, no consumer has complained. It tastes pretty much the same to me. I would never offer a past crop as a single origin, like a bright, fresh look at this thing, but it's in my blends. And I think that that's really important to continue doing.

Ashley: Talk a little bit about sweetness, because I think that you're right. We talk a lot about acidity because that's what makes coffee super special, but sweetness still seems to be a component of coffee regardless of its freshness. And we're still manipulating coffee to have these Maillard reactions, to turn from green to brown and develop these caramelization flavors. So how does dealing with the past crop coffee make you think about bringing out other flavors in that coffee?

Baylee: For sure. I'm trying to not do this from a hard roasting standpoint because there would have to be some years of education here before I just start rattling off. 

So it's less about if you have a coffee, let's call it a Colombian, and you have a strawberry note and a milk chocolate note, and you're buying past crop. You need to understand that that strawberry note might still be there, but it won't be as prevalent because you have past crop. So you should be focusing your time and energy on that milk chocolate and how to make that do better. 

And honestly, I'm not going to say you can't have a dark-roasted acidic coffee, but if we're talking about sweetness, those are always more on the sugar browning side of things and less on an acidic fruit pop side of things. So they will tend to be more medium-dark roast.

Ashley: Totally, totally. That makes sense. 

Something else that you mentioned earlier too was that there's really no hard and fast science to how we evaluate a fresh crop versus past crop. The designation that we made earlier was mostly based on a timing issue and it’s not necessarily like, after six months, all of the acidity has gone from this coffee. 

You highlighted all the different points in which coffee freshness can be preserved. The way that you package a coffee, the way that a coffee is shipped, the way that a coffee is stored. And I wonder as COVID-19 has affected green coffee habits—maybe we're not buying as much green coffee anymore because coffee shops are closed, people are not consuming as much. 

So have you seen people pivot the way that they store coffee? Have you seen people be like, “Oh, we're heading to have all this excess green coffee,” because that's a conversation that I've heard people talk about—that there's more green coffee sitting in storage because there's not as many people consuming it and coffee depends on a futures market, right? You buy coffee six months ahead, or you buy coffee with predictions.

Baylee: Right. So are we talking about storage in a roasting space or a green warehouse? 

Ashley: Either one, I think. Whatever you feel most adept at talking about. I just want to know if there are conversations even happening around that. 

Baylee: Around green coffee storage? 

Ashley: Around the idea that, “Oh, we're going to have a lot more green coffee now because consumer habits are different. So what does that mean for us?” 

Baylee: Right. And I think, as far as green storage is concerned, it's kind of a coin toss because as a roaster, especially a small roaster, you have storage fees attached to your green coffee if it sits in a green warehouse. So you don't want to waste money just having it sit there. Although those warehouses are temperature-controlled and as far as preserving coffee there, they're literally designed for that. But nobody wants to pay those fees to just have your coffee sit. 

So I think a lot of smaller companies are avoiding that cost and bringing it in-house. But at the same time, a lot of those companies don't have space. I think green coffee right now is chaotic. And no one has an idea of what's coming and what they can afford to sell it for because a lot of companies are struggling. 

These finer coffees that we offered and we used to love using in [coffee] competition, well, competition hasn't happened. I think we'll end up seeing the effects of 2020 much later from now, but this is a good taste of it. 

Ashley: That’s interesting because like we were saying, coffee is bought on future predictions—that you know what 2023 will look like in terms of your consumer habits, that you know what your needs will be for the next year, because coffee comes from afar. Coffee comes from a different place, at least in the U.S.—we don't grow it here. 

Then we have to think about the months it takes to go from a coffee being harvested to a coffee showing up in our warehouses, in our coffee shops. So it's really interesting to think about how the pandemic will have effects on the coffee industry for years to come.

Baylee: Oh, absolutely. Circling back to the past crop thing, you're right. We don't have a metric. There are so many studies, I'm sure of it, of where they test these—scientists, not roasters—test these things and can give you hard metrics, but I don't think it's an across-the-board thing. 

And I just keep thinking about—I was like one of those pandemic people that bought a bulk bag of rice and it's still in my cabinet right now, maybe two pounds gone out of the five. And I'm like, if this were coffee, this would be almost two-year-old past crop at this point. You know? And I'm still eating that rice. It tastes totally like rice. It's fine. It's great rice. 

So I guess I just asked myself those questions. As a roaster, I believe that the coffee is degrading in some way. I know that. I know it's not bad, though. I am hard pressed to believe that I can't do something with it. I think if we continue to look for these nice coffees, these beautiful 90-point coffees while there are still 84-point coffees left on the ground, I don't think that this industry can sustain.

Ashley: Something you mentioned, using both your perception of the rice that you've been eating for the last two years, but also talking about consumers. I think you kind of said this offhandedly, but consumers aren't necessarily noticing a difference, or if they're noticing a difference it may actually be for the better. 

We might actually be making coffee that's more accessible, especially if we're focusing on sweetness, which is a way easier flavor note to perceive than acidity, which takes a little bit more explaining, a little more time. And so I wonder, since you guys are a roaster that serves retail coffee, what has been the attitude of your consumers? Have people noticed that coffee is different or it tastes different? 

Baylee: I actually, very intentionally—it was actually the coffee that I used right after my Matchbook Coffee Project. It's a natural Colombia caturra, and the farmer's name is Rodrigo. And that's what we've named it at Trailhead. It tasted in the cafe like those flash-frozen strawberries that you would get inside of cereal. It was a very specific thing to me. 

And then I bought that same coffee past crop this year, the same exact coffee. And it's much more like juicy grapefruit, like grapefruit juice literally. And I wouldn't say one is better than the other. They don't taste vastly different. I mean, they don't taste vastly different in the way that I can tell it's the same coffee, but they have two different things going for them. It would just be a mood-dependent thing for me. I couldn't pick one.

Ashley: Right. But when we serve this to customers, it seems like we don't lean into that experience enough. That, “These are different and let's celebrate that” versus, “These are different, so we have to sell it at a different price point” or “This was past crop, so it's not as good, so we have to put it in a blender,” or something like that. 

It seems like there's an opportunity for us to acknowledge how the pandemic, or even just how buying past crop coffee, can change a tasting experience and make that a really positive and interesting thing to present to consumers.

Baylee: Right. I wish that we talked about it more. I wish that I could slap “past crop” on a label and not feel shame about that as a roaster or not feel like my peers are thinking less of me, or I wish that we could just be very transparent about using all that we have and not have a negative connotation. 

Ashley: Where do you think that negative connotation comes from? I know that's kind of a broad question, but even thinking about the word “past crop,” that sounds icky. That sounds bad.

Baylee: Yeah, definitely. I don't know. And maybe it's all made up in my head. Maybe I'm just like, “Oh, it's probably not that my peers are thinking like, ‘Eww, past crop,’” but it's true. It doesn't get ordered very often. Most importers have a past crop sitting in their warehouse, somebody backed out of a contract, something like that. But I don't know. 

I don't know why we're not more forward about it. 

Ashley: Well, something that I think we ignore—I feel like we use the wine analogy in the worst possible times, but it feels like wine could actually serve us in this instance. You age wine, you don't necessarily always want the freshest wine, that would [sometimes] taste weird and funky. Maybe for some wines you do sometimes, sometimes you don't. 

So I wonder if there's a way for us to borrow from that world to be like, “This was harvested in 2018,” or like the way that George Howell does it where he has a 2018 Mamuto Kenyan [coffee]. And then he can compare it to 2019. But that seems like a lot of intentionality as well that maybe, I don't know. I don't know if our industry is ready for.

Baylee: Right. I think that's the worst part about it, is that we don't know if we're ready and—oh, that's where I was getting at. Wow. What a shift. 

My same qualm that I feel about past crop is also around the freshness parameter that we all put on coffee. I can't tell you what an eye-roll I think companies stressing the freshness of their coffee is. 

This whole idea of a fresh-roasted coffee stemmed from what feels like a Peet’s and Starbucks shift in the ’90s. Peet’s and Starbucks had all these young employees that were working for them, but obviously fell in love with coffee on a small scale because Peet's and Starbucks weren't these mega corporations back then. And so then they branched shop and then they want to open up their own shops.

And with that, they're like, “Well, so Peet’s and Starbucks, we would roast coffee and it would sit around for like six months before it hit a grocery store. We're going to make a coffee roaster where it's like, two weeks.” 

I feel like every year since then, everyone keeps trying to push that freshness. “Oh yeah, your coffee's fresh? Mine's only four days off-roast.” You know what I mean? And we pull coffee out of grocery stores and we don't allow our consumers to buy them when arguably, I would say that some of my coffees don't taste as good as they would until day eight. 

So the idea of past crop being like, “Oh, it's old—eye roll.” Whatever. It's kind of as ridiculous to me as like, “Oh, your coffee's 10-days fresh. That's old.” I just think everyone needs to be a lot more relaxed about time and coffee and when we're agreeing is too late or too soon to drink something. Obviously let your coffee off-gas, but I just don't think there's anything wrong with a 10-day-old roasted coffee. 

I just don't think I ever will, unless it's a French roast and it's obviously sitting in its own oils, we should just be consuming these things. 

Ashley: Right, especially in the niche that we occupy, the specialty market—no one's roasting coffee that dark. So you don't have to really consider coffee going rancid. Unless, like you said, it's super oily and that's what causes coffee to go rancid quickly. It seems like, and you pointed this out, the idea of freshness is almost a marketing tool that we haven't utilized correctly.

Baylee: Right. Agreed. Yeah. 

Ashley: I just did an espresso machine review for a website and one of the things I was really wary about—I would buy these machines and they'd be like 17, 18 bars of pressure. And I'm like, that is unnecessary, but it's the idea that more is better. And the idea that fresh is better. It's these signifiers of quality that we don't know how to present correctly. 

So we sell it in the most straightforward way possible. So then we're like, “Oh, people think fresh is good, let's sell this as the freshest coffee,” even though that might not actually be a good quantifiable quality.

Baylee: Right. Absolutely not. I think that one-upping thing, I think it's one of the most toxic things I see as a roaster all the time. I don't define a good roaster by the people that work at these very—I mean, they're talented, I'm definitely not saying otherwise—but I define a good roaster as somebody that can take an 83 or an 84 coffee and make me think I'm drinking an 86, not somebody that's getting access to 88-, 89-, 90-point coffees. And I just don't think a dollar mark equates to talent. I think good roasters are people that can take something moderate or average and make it taste spectacular.

Ashley: And it seems like it's also working with what you have in front of you. So if you have a past crop coffee that maybe doesn't have as much acidity, what does that mean? How do you approach that coffee and how do you adjust the way that you would roast that coffee to accommodate for what's in front of you?

Baylee: Every coffee's a first date. What works with one—you could get the same coffee, the same farm, the same farm at the same altitude, you could do all the things right. And they still won’t roast exactly the same. 

I think a lot of the weight that we put on metrics as far as moisture content and water activity—those are great things to measure and no data is bad data kind of a thing, but I just don't think depending on these arbitrary rules that we have … you really just have to try it. 

Ashley: How would you market a past crop coffee differently? What's your dream to see on a retail shelf? Because I'm imagining you having two coffees. One is from this year, one is from last year, and they're somehow marketed as a special experience because they are—how exciting would it be to be able to taste two different coffees, the same coffee from past years? What would that look like on the shelf for you? Or how would you market that differently?

Baylee: I'm seriously two people in one brain. So part of me is all chaos and would want to be like a fresh crop/past crop, the good s**t/the bad s**t, and just be really dramatic about it and vulgar and crass in the way that I'm trying to make fun of my own consumers. Being like, “Look, they're both good. But one's old and you still went for it.” 

Honestly, I wouldn't do it that way. That's just my own little brain. 

The way I would probably go about it is if you focus on sustainability and talking about using what you have before you have to buy a new thing. Or if your farmers maybe haven't collected money on the past crop, they may still be waiting for that. So it's like, if you do care about your farmers and you do care about the progression of this industry, you would care about somebody being like, “Hey, listen, this was the last five bags of whoever's farm. I bought them. They're old, but hear me out, I believe in zero waste, here's what I'm trying to do.” 

So if on the bag you explained that this is the last five bags of a farmer's crop, and now this farmer has sold 100% of their product from last year. And I mean, even if you made it less from a farmer's perspective, but just a little more of like, “There is no waste.” Anyone that has a recycle program in their city is going to care about that.

Ashley: Right. It seems like we have a lot of ways that we talk about sustainability in the coffee industry. But we talk about it from the two ends. We talk about it from the consumer end, where we're talking about paper cups, straws, the things that we all use and dispose of. And then we talk about it a little bit from the farmer's perspective about climate change. 

But we don't talk about that middle ground. I think that idea of zero waste—you wouldn't buy another, I don't know, vacuum cleaner. I don't know why that's the first example that came up. But like, you wouldn't buy another vacuum cleaner unless you used the one that you had and you repaired it or you took care of it and then it was no longer usable. You would use everything that you had before you bought a new of something.

Baylee: And I mean, I wouldn't even say—I like the vacuum analogy. Don't get me wrong. Because I definitely worked on my vacuum not too long ago, but I think it's less because the vacuum sounds like something that you can't use, but more like cell phones. Yeah. That's a good one. Because it's like, every year you're not buying a new Apple iPhone or whatever that comes out. That's just ridiculous. One: Who can afford that? But two: What was wrong with your phone? 

Ashley: Right. How can you make do with the thing that you have and then treat it as something different? It might not be the same thing it was last year—it might be different. So how do we adapt to that? Especially with something like coffee, which is so malleable. You're a roaster, you change coffee, so it's going to be different and you have the skillset to change that coffee based on what it's presented.

Baylee: Right.

Ashley: Is there anything else you want people to know about you or about past crop coffee that we didn't cover?

Baylee: No, just—I want people to be more inclined to buy past crop. That's all I got.

Ashley: I think they will be after hearing this conversation. So thank you for taking time to chat with me. It's always a pleasure. It's always a delight and I have so much fun talking to you.

Baylee: Thank you so much, Ashley. Thanks everyone.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity. Cover photo by Appetite.For.Color

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If I could sum up this interview with one quote, it would be: “Everything you do is better than what you didn’t do.”

That line was written by today’s guest, Brittany Sims, a barista and coffee writer who runs the Non-Binary Barista blog. Brittany uses their blog to talk about gender in the workplace, but also to discuss accessibility issues, neurodivergency, how to deal with trauma, and big feelings at work. Essentially, Brittany’s blog humanizes service workers, and shines a light on the real experiences people go through on the job.

Brittany is a person who tries things. They’ve been writing for almost two decades, spanning genres and platforms, including a recently published novel. In this interview, they demonstrate their willingness to explore and be vulnerable. They buck the traditional ways we view customer service—the “leave your feelings at the door” mentality—and talk about how interactions with customers can be authentic and true to the way both actors feel.

Change begins with having a conversation, picking a starting point, and being open to new ideas. Brittany has a talent for being present, acknowledging both the humanity of others around them and also within themselves. Here’s Brittany.

Ashley: I was hoping that you could start by telling me who you are, your pronouns, where you're based, and what you do in the coffee industry.

Brittany: My name is Brittany Sims. I use they/them pronouns. I am based in Williamsburg, Virginia, but I'm originally from California and I am a barista as well as a coffee writer.

Ashley: If you were in an elevator and you had to explain The Non-Binary Barista, how would you describe that project to someone?

Brittany: The Non-Binary Barista is a website that talks about workplace dynamics—gender, being disabled, and neurodivergent—and kind of being a marginalized individual working in the coffee industry. So I talk about a lot of things, as well as some random coffee experiments like stacking pour-over cones.

Ashley: That we're going to get into—which I'm really excited about. I'm going to ask you more questions about how many things you can stack on top of each other or how many filters you can put in something.

I was wondering what prompted you to first start the Non-Binary Barista?

Brittany: When I started the Non-Binary Barista, I had a lot of thoughts about just working in the coffee industry—about how I wanted it to look like, the support for baristas that I didn't feel like we had. It's kind of becoming a topic of conversation now, but it wasn't really at the time.

And at first, I was a little nervous. I had been blogging since 2008 with various projects and decided to write down different blog post ideas that I had and was like, “Let's see if I have even enough for a blog.” And I filled three pages in 20 minutes.

So it was like, “Okay, clearly I have a lot to say,” and I decided to make a blog. It was January of 2020, so pre-COVID, and then it became what it is now and was kind of my link to the coffee industry, both when I was working in coffee, as well as when I wasn't.

Ashley: I love that your blog is this reflection of what working in coffee has been like and what experiencing the coffee industry has been like during COVID, which I definitely want to talk a little bit more about as we move on. But another thing that you mentioned that I really liked was that you weren't sure if you had anything to write about, so you gave yourself an exercise to figure it out.

I think that that's probably one of the biggest hurdles—I write a lot too, and sometimes I'm like, “I don't have anything to write about,” but oftentimes I have to use an exercise or a technique to get my creative ideas going. I like that you mentioned it’s not just like, “Oh, I have an idea and I woke up and I'm going to write about this thing,” but there are exercises, there are ways that you approach writing to get that energy going.

Brittany: Yeah. It comes from almost two decades now of writing where I was just—I've definitely had blogs where I was like, “I'm going to do a cooking blog!” And then it was like, “Okay, I posted two recipes and I hate taking pictures of food. So this is a bad idea.”

So after many, many blogs that either took off and then had technical issues or didn't take off, I was like, “Okay, before I start this massive undertaking, I get really excited and then kind of drop it. Let's see if I have enough to actually do this.”

Ashley: You mentioned over two decades of writing. So have you always been someone who's wanted to write and capture experiences?

Brittany: Yes. I started writing when I was 10. I started off with really terrible fanfiction and then moved on to regular fiction. I have done poetry, I've done journalism. I went to college for writing. And now I mostly write articles and science fiction and fantasy novels.

Ashley: And you’re a published writer in that arena, which I also want to touch upon a little bit, but I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you first got into coffee?

Brittany: I had graduated from college. I was working in theater, but mostly internships, so I wasn't getting paid and I was trying to figure out, “Okay, how do I make money off of my writing, off of working in theater?” which I love.

A coffee shop near my house was hiring. I had gone there for a year, almost every day, and applied—I wanted to work there so bad that I even had a panic attack the night before hoping to get the job.

I'm a very nervous sort of person, but I got the job and originally it was just kind of this cool gig of working in a coffee shop while I figured out what to do with my life. While I was working there, I fell in love with the craft of making coffee. I fell in love with getting to know regulars because I worked there for two-and-a-half years. So I got to really form deep relationships with them.

Because of working there for that long, I also built really good relationships with my co-workers, with the owners, and really just fell in love with coffee shops as a whole.

Ashley: Something that I really love about your blog is that it feels like it talks to a lot of different people, but without alienating anybody. I think that if you're somebody who is a coffee shop owner, or a boss, or somebody who's in charge, you could go to your blog and be like, “Oh, these tips are for me to make a more welcoming space for my employees.”

But then you also talk to people who are directly affected by discriminatory practices or marginalization, or even just people not understanding what it means to be neurodivergent for example, or what it means to be non-binary.

I was wondering if that was always your intention, or did you start the Non-Binary Barista with a different sort of perspective on who you wanted to talk to? And then that perspective started maybe growing outward a little bit more?

Brittany: I always wanted the blog to be mostly a place for baristas, and for baristas to find support, but I also didn't want it to be this very insular, kind of baristas just talking about what everything should be like without actually having a step up.

I’ve had a lot of bosses that I worked for that were very open and honest about their business practices. I wanted to incorporate what I've learned from bosses. I also wanted to talk to bosses that I've had and be like, “Hey, here are resources, here are what baristas are saying. Here are actual things that you can fix,” but also like, “Hey baristas, here are ways that you can help yourself. Here are ways that your shop can be better. Let's have a conversation, not just between us, but also with owners, with management.”

So it's always been this conversation where I didn't necessarily want to exclude anyone by making it just this inner world of baristas. And that was it.

Ashley: Something that you do really well in your blog is that things are not prescriptive. Nothing is like, “You have to do things this way,” or “You have to do things that way,” but you invite conversation and you talk about frameworks of understanding and creating safety for people, as opposed to saying you have to do X, Y, and Z, which I think is incredibly helpful.

One thing that you wrote that I even wrote down was, “People don't know what they don't know.” Maybe you wrote some version of that, but if somebody doesn't know to ask somebody, like, “What do you need because you are neurodivergent?”—if there's no conversation, then there's no place to start.

Brittany: Yeah. I've worked at, I think, seven shops now, and they all run slightly similarly, but there are so many variances between them—I obviously knew there are so many ways that a shop could operate that I didn't want to be like, “Okay, this is exactly how you need to run your shop. This is exactly how you're going to make baristas happy. This is exactly how owners should be.”

I was like, “Some are going to run differently than others, and that's okay.” I just need [them to be] a safe space for baristas, however you make that. I want to open up conversations between baristas, between owners, between management. I wanted management to come from a standpoint of, “Okay, how do people learn? How do people function? How can we make this a safe space? How can we ask better questions?”

For baristas too—how can we ask better questions or start these conversations with our managers to make it a good space for everyone?

Ashley: How have your own experiences behind the bar informed the way that you approach your writing?

Brittany: My own experiences behind the bar? I kind of didn't think about that they informed my writing until I stopped working in coffee because of COVID, and I was like, “Oh, I'm just talking about past experiences. I'm just talking about what I've learned.”

Then I stopped working in coffee and it was like, “Oh, so much of what I do is just informed by day-to-day interactions, by little things that I noticed, by relating one instance from one shop to another instance at another shop.”

It was very much a struggle during my unemployment moment of COVID where it was just like, “I miss being on bar. I love being on bar.” That's kind of who I am. I love interactions with customers making coffee, and I need to get back on bar. (Laughs)

Ashley: I know what you mean. I feel like—I don’t know if I remember how to steam milk. I know I do, but I don't know. Maybe. Who knows?

You've also been a manager—at least you've been in charge of the space—and you've been the person who's in charge of a group of people around you, and you've been the person who's like, “I'm gonna make sure that you folks feel safe and welcome here.”

I wonder where did you learn that? Or what part of your personality identifies with this idea of taking almost an outside lens, taking in a bigger-picture overview of what's happening, and saying, “This is what we need to do,” or, “This is what I think we need to do to make sure people feel welcome here.”

Brittany: I've always been the mom friend of the group and that ties into every coffee shop that I've worked at. I've been one of the older people on staff, but I was a stage manager in theater for a while. I was managing everything—trying to take an outside lens of everything was literally my job.

I started working in coffee and after working in coffee for about two months, I became a shift lead and graduated up to supervisor barista. So it became my job to make a safe space for everyone. I wanted to always make sure that everyone was good. It was kind of my catchphrase that I'd be like, “Hey, you good? Hey, you need anything? You got it. Are we good?”

That informed a lot of where my blog comes from and how I interact in shops now is just making sure: Does everyone have what they need? Do I have what I need? Does everyone feel safe? Is everyone feeling heard? What can we do to make the shop better for everyone and make it a safer space?

Ashley: I do love that you're talking about this like it's so natural. Like it's obvious. I think that when we have these conversations, it's easy to think that these things are obvious, but I don't think that that's intuitive.

I don't think that a lot of people who ascend to a management position think their job is to take care of the staff. I think they think—I know that I did as a manager when I first started, I was like, “My job is to order stuff. My job is to increase sales. My job is to make my bosses happy.”

It's really refreshing to hear that instead, you stepped into that position and you were like, “Oh, my job is to care for the staff in a holistic way.”

Did that evolve for you? Or did that change for you over time? Or did you realize that maybe what you thought that meant was different over time?

Brittany: I think when I first started, I was very much like, “Okay, if I make sure everyone else is good, they'll like me.” That like, “Okay, if I take care of everyone, they'll be happy with me. They won't be mad at me.”

A lot of that stems from my own insecurities, my own symptoms of mental illnesses that I have. Then as I grew as a person, as I tried to better myself, I also realized that, no, that's part of management. That's part of me wanting to take care of people. If I take care of people, if I do my job as a manager and make sure that everyone feels good and feels safe, then the shop runs really well. Everyone is having a good time, including myself. And we all just have fun at work.

I think that most of the time, work should be fun, especially at coffee shops where, yes, customers can yell at you, but other times, there are days where we're all listening to fun music and making coffee and having conversations with regulars that we like. For the most part, that's the atmosphere that I want to create as a manager—is making sure that everyone has what they need and to do their job and do it well. And having the resources to do that.

Ashley: I love that you mentioned that a coffee shop job should be fun. I feel like people who are … I mean, I don't know why I'm veiling this—Augie's Coffee, and other union-busting coffee shops are like, “Well, if we have a unionized workforce, work won't be fun. We can't be like loosey-goosey, relaxy-waxy.” I'm like, “That's not true?”

It's interesting how that language has been co-opted by people who want to retain control. The idea is that, “I am the arbitrator of your experience. And when that’s lost, when you assume that control for me as a worker, suddenly it's not fun.” [And people like the management at Augie’s] threatened all these things. So I love that you mentioned that coffee jobs can be fun if people are well taken care of and their needs are considered.

Brittany: There are the people that do coffee just because it's a fun gig or because it's just a nice job to have. But for a lot of people who do love coffee and love making coffee and the industry itself, I think that a lot of us find our passion with this. And when you're doing what you're passionate about, you should be having fun and enjoying yourself.

I feel like when it becomes, “No, we're at work, you should only just be doing this head down and with your customer service smile on and nothing else,” that's not practical because you're a human being and you're doing something that you love. But also you're a human being with feelings and a life. You have to go home at the end of the day. If you are working at a job where owners are being like, “No, you can't have fun. You can't get paid a decent wage,” it's not going to be fun and you have to kind of go home and then come back the next day. It's just exhausting and a little bit depressing.

Ashley: It seems like this cycle that just feeds into itself—that you're at work and you can't be your authentic self or your boss is saying, “Leave your personal life at the door,” but then you're not getting paid enough. So then you go home and then that's depressing because maybe you're struggling to pay rent or you're struggling to figure out, “Where is money for this, this, and this going to come from?” And then it just keeps going.

And at no point it seems do a lot of employers realize their role in that cycle. I think that's one of the things that I really love about your blog. Like we were saying, it speaks not just to baristas, but it also speaks to managers and people who are in charge and gives them tactics to be like, “This is what you can do to help your staff feel like work is a good place for them to be.”

Brittany: I think there is a balance of like, I mean, you are in a professional environment, you are working in customer service, but then there are times, there have been days—I mean, I literally came into work the day after my marriage ended and I was not okay. That's not something you can leave at the door and just turn on your [customer service act]. It's like, okay, we need to make some adjustments here.

I think if you're a good business, if you have a good staff, if you’ve created a safe space that you can work around that, that you can have the kind of support for people to still do their jobs, but still feel like it's a safe space. They can communicate their needs and it works well still.

Ashley: Have you seen that in practice at all? Have you ever experienced a moment where—I guess I'll zoom outward a little bit—but have you ever felt there was a moment that you could be vulnerable about the feelings that you were having or the situation that you were in, where you felt like your staff or your bosses supported you?

Brittany: Yeah. Like that instance where I came in and I was just crying, I was supposed to be on cash [register] that day. My manager at the time who was just a gem of a human was like, “Okay, if you want to go back and work on dishes, we will try and handle the front as much as we can. And if we need you, we'll come get you.”

It was very much, “Okay, thank you for handling the front while I deal with this on my own.” In between some orders, one of my co-workers was like, “Hey, there's no one here. Do you need a hug?”

A couple of years ago, I was just having a really rough time. It was around Valentine's Day. My coworkers decided to buy me flowers from a pop-up that we had. They were like, “Hey, we know that you're having a rough time. And we all just wanted to make sure that you felt loved and that we value you as an employee.” And I was just like, “Okay, I'm going to go cry now.” I don't really cry in front of people, but I can't hold it back anymore. Thank you for loving me.

Ashley: I love that you mentioned the Valentine's Day story because you wrote an article about working on Valentine's Day and other holidays. I think that's what was really fun about digging into your blog. I was reading through a lot of the posts last night and this morning—it's not just about one thing, even though it's called the Non-Binary Barista. You talk about ableism. You talk about neurodivergency. You talk about the pain of working on a holiday that maybe you don't feel very good about.

You also talk about trauma and how trauma isn't linear, which I really want to break down a lot more, but let's talk a little bit about the diversity of the articles that you write. At what point did you realize that you wanted to talk about more ideas, and did you ever feel limited at all? Were you ever like, “Well, I called it this, I have to run with this?”

Brittany: Yeah. Very much so. When I first started out, I was like, “Okay, I can veer away and talk about neurodivergency or talk about ableism, but I have to talk about gender mostly.” As I evolved, especially now that I moved to Virginia—moving across the country is a lot, but it was more a lot than I thought. So I’ve been taking a break and trying to rebuild and work on this new life that I have for myself. But it was like, “Okay, I'm the Non-Binary Barista. And I deal with being non-binary, but I also deal with ableism and neurodivergency and how that affects my work in coffee and I don't always have to talk about gender.”

I want to talk about being a marginalized person in coffee, because I felt like when I first started in coffee, I didn't have these resources. I would've loved to read an article about how to get through Valentine's Day or how ADHD affects your work as a barista—I would've loved to read those articles when I first started out.

Ashley: I love that you have so many different articles because there are so many different situations that we can be thrown into where we maybe don't have all the tools or know what to do.

What your blog I think does really well is say, “I don't necessarily have the answers, but I know that this could be an issue. So let's at least talk about it.” I actually just did an interview with somebody else for a different podcast project that I do. They mentioned that while they were on bar, while it was really busy, they were allowed to listen to headphones. A customer mentioned to their boss, “Oh, that person's wearing headphones. That seems unprofessional.”

The boss was like, “That's my best barista. If this person needs headphones to focus and get their job done, then that's fine with me.” That was just a way for them to cope with the busy-ness of the coffee shop. That was the first time I had ever read something like that or ever heard something like that. What your blog does really well is give these practical situations that maybe not a lot of people are equipped to deal with, but at least it gives people a starting point to start talking about it.

Brittany: I've only worked in the coffee industry for four years. I know I don't have all the answers, but I want to at least start these conversations and let people know that these are issues that baristas deal with. I want owners to know that they can start this dialogue. I want baristas to know that they can have these conversations with their manager and they're not going to get fired for proposing an idea.

Ashley: Yeah, totally. I think one of the things—since we were just talking about that before—one of the things that doesn't get talked a lot about, and I think I've really only read it on your blog, is neurodivergency within the coffee sector, and specifically behind the bar. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about some of the articles that you've written on the topic and why this was important to you.

Brittany: Yeah. So over the last couple of years, I have been realizing that I have ADHD and I also have Borderline Personality Disorder. That comes with anxiety and depression. So that makes for a very interesting cocktail when I am in very stressful situations, but also informs just how I go about my life.

I remember having conversations with other baristas about ADHD in general, as I was realizing that I had it. The conversation, because it was usually with coffee people, was like, “Oh, well, it helps having ADHD when I'm working on shift because of this,” or, “Oh, it's really overwhelming when all the noise is going around and I get ADHD overwhelmed and I don't know what to do.”

It became this passion of mine. Like, “Okay, let's talk about neurodivergency in coffee because this affects a lot of baristas. It affects a lot of the baristas that I know personally, which means that there are many other baristas that I don't know that this will also hit home for.”

Ashley: Especially because there's such an expectation of how customer service interactions are supposed to go—they're supposed to be like this. They're supposed to be like that. You're supposed to do everything that customer asks you to do, et cetera, et cetera. But what you're writing highlights is that it's really easy to make accommodations that are not that hard to implement.

Brittany: Exactly. Sometimes, there are accommodations that can be met and people just don't know that those accommodations are necessary.

I have ear dampener headphones or ear plugs that I wear that I can still hear customers. I can still hear my coworkers, but it just dampens the sound. It makes all of my shifts so much easier for me. And most people don't know that those are a thing. I didn't know those were a thing until a couple of months ago.

Other times where my ADHD hyper-focus will kick in and I'll be working on bar and I literally can't hear customers talking to me because my brain just filters them out. I've had it where maybe a boss just doesn't understand that that's what's going on. They're like, “Hey, I really didn't appreciate that customer interaction just now. We need to fix it.”

And I was like, “What customer interaction?” So just starting that conversation of, “Hey, these accommodations are very necessary, but maybe you don't know that they're needed until we can talk about this.”

Ashley: Right. Like we were saying, you're not going to have the answers to everything, but the onus is on the people in charge to at least make it so that you can bring up an issue. Or that there is safety in a situation where you're like, “Hey, I'm feeling this. Is it okay for me to talk about it?”

Like you were saying, if you don't feel safe enough to even bring it up it often falls on the person who's affected—the barista, the person at the bottom of the workplace situation—to either bring up a situation that might feel potentially unsafe to them or to be quiet. Then their performance is reflected on poorly because that manager hasn't made the space to hear them out.

Brittany: Yeah. I’d also like to mention: What I may need as far as accommodations are not necessarily what the barista next to me will need as far as accommodations. So that's why I usually on my blog, I'm like, “Hey, start this conversation. Let's talk about this. Let's ask your baristas what they need, if they need anything.”

Ashley: Right. And that just opens up your toolkit too, right? You just get so many other tools that you can approach a situation with. And instead of feeling like, “Hey, I didn't like that customer interaction,” maybe your response is like, “Hey, look, I noticed this—is there something that I can do for you to help you in this situation?” Or even just saying, “I noticed this, let's talk about it.”

One thing that I think you talk about that doesn't get talked about enough in coffee is the idea of leaving your feelings at the door, especially in customer service interactions where part of the experience is your personality. You are almost an offering in a way. You're talking to people, you're talking to customers about their days, their lives. I think it’s virtually impossible to leave your feelings at the door. I was wondering—what does that evoke for you? What prompted you to write about this topic?

Brittany: I think it's something that I just think about a lot because I am very much an internal person. I can very much have customer service conversations very easily, but I will go and internalize everything that happens.

I just internalize a lot, but I think that my personality should come through in my job because I'm at my job for 40+ hours a week. I think customers are going to see me, and not just see me as just another employee at a shop they go to. If they see my fun glasses—I've had customers compliment me on my nerdy T-shirts or whatever—but my personality comes through and they're going to see me four to five times a week.

They sometimes see me more than their friends because they have to make an appointment to see their friends. They come into my shop all the time. I very much have to be comfortable with myself because I'm very much in a person-facing job, and so I'm perceived a lot.

Ashley: Right. You even mentioned a specific time where you weren't feeling very good during the 2018 Brett Kavanaugh trial. And before we started recording—I do this every time, where I mention [something we talked about] before we started recording, and it doesn't matter because people weren't listening because we didn't record it—but before we started recording, I mentioned the 2016 election and how tough that was for the staff that I was working with at the coffee shop I was at.

I think something that I want to pull apart a little bit, and I wanted to see what you think of this, is that being your authentic self and being upfront with how you feel is not mutually exclusive from providing good service. I think that's where that conflation happens, where people are like, “If you don't check your feelings at the door, then you're going to provide a bad customer service experience.” I think what you are writing is almost implying the opposite.

Brittany: Yeah. I very much agree that there is this notion that in customer service, you have to be happy all the time and therefore customers will be happy all the time because they'll match your energy. Sometimes customers come in and they are unhappy. Sometimes they're unhappy in a way that you can't really handle.

But other times there are ways … I've had people come in and one of them was thinking about dumping her boyfriend because they just weren't working. And so she was not okay. It was one of those situations, with me coming up and being like, “Hi, what can I get started for you?” would not help in that situation. Instead, it's like, “Hey, I noticed while I was taking your order that you were a little down, is everything okay?” And you start that conversation.

You start these relationships. Or during the 2016 election, I wasn't working in coffee at the time, but there was definitely this relationship between me and my customers, where I was like, “We're both not okay.” We recognize this and we can bond with each other about that. We're not okay.

Around the same time that COVID was starting to shut things down, me and my co-workers were like, “We're having the same conversations [over and over] about COVID and how nervous we are.” After a while, some of the customers started to notice that we were tired, even though we tried not to show it. We started this little game where it was like, “Hey, tell me something non-COVID related about your life while I make your latte.” And they would do it.

They were like, “Oh, I just got a new dog, or whatever.”

They were like, “Wow, you must have these same conversations all the time.”

And we were like, “Yeah, but you know, it is a part of life, but we’ve got to make it fun for all of us and do what we can to make the best of it.” I think that you can have the energy that you have without making it affect how you relate to people.

Ashley: Absolutely. I think it's like you were mentioning with the person who was about to dump their boyfriend, meeting them with this high level of energy—which I would say most bosses would define as good customer service—was not appropriate in that situation. So how do we think about service as a circular, holistic experience between you and the customer?

Because you're part of it too. You're 50% of it. So how do you bring yourself into a situation that feels organic and true and real, but still provide good service? Like I said, those are not mutually exclusive things. As I read your blog, that's what I think more and more about. We're trained to think, “Oh, always put a smile on and the customer's always right.” It's like, no, that's bad. That's not good. That's not sustainable.

Brittany: I think what gets lost in the customer service mentality is that not only is the customer human and they're allowed to kind of get angry or sad or whatever, but we're human too. And we are at a job. We can still maintain that professional integrity and that professional standard, but we're also human. There are going to be days when we're not feeling it.

I've definitely had customers be like, “Hey, how's it going, Britt?” And I'm like, “You know, I'm not really having such a good day, but I'm here at work and making lattes,” and usually customers pick up on that and it's not necessarily a downer like, “Oh, well I'm not going to tip them because they were having a bad day.”

Instead, they're like, “Oh, I'm so sorry to hear about that. I hope it gets better. Thanks for my latte.” Even just seeing each other at that point and being seen like that—it's okay, you're human. We can both have bad days, and it’s really validating and it makes it so that I'm not just putting on this mask all the time.

Ashley: This is the part of the interview where I'm going to ask you some meta questions and they might be weird, but whatever, let's go for it.

So I write a lot too. And I often think about why I write—what the point of writing is for me. I read this quote once by Anaïs Nin, who wrote a lot of erotica. I'm not 100% sure if it's from her, but I think one time she wrote, “I write not to capture something, but I write not to forget it.” [Ashley note: The quote is, “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”]

The idea is that I'm not writing to generate new stuff. I'm writing to remember what's happening to me. I wonder as you're writing, what kind of thoughts come into your mind? What are you thinking about as you're sitting down and writing down an article or a story idea, or even the sci-fi/fantasy writing that you do—those are not the same. I know that I made a faux pas there. But how do you feel writing generates your soul? I think for me writing is all about remembering.

Brittany: I went to a writing workshop for a poet named Arielle Estoria and she actually summed it up really well. How she feels about writing is she writes down everything on the page to help heal herself and to put everything that she's feeling down on a page and sort through it in her own mind. And then she gives it to people. She shares her writing to heal, to help other people heal. Once it's released, it's not hers anymore.

Her healing has already been done in the act of writing. And ever since I heard that, I'm like, “Yes, that is exactly how I feel,” because there were so many times where, whether it's writing that I'm going to publish, writing that I'm working on, or just writing [because] I don't know how to process this situation, I'm going to write down all of my feelings that like, I need to just write it out.

I express myself so much better in writing than I do talking to people. Or like when I internalize it, it can all kind of get jumbled and lost. But when I write it down, it just makes so much more sense. It's exactly what I'm feeling. And I just feel better. It's a sigh of relief once I write it that then when I'm sharing it, I still have that insecurity that I think all writers have of like, “Oh, will people like it?” But at that point, it doesn't really feel like mine anymore. It's like, “Okay, I wrote it. I had all the feelings about it then, and now it's for other people.”

Ashley: I love that. I'm going to have to look up that author that you mentioned.

Something else that you do a lot on your blog is that you interview people a fair amount. I was wondering how you approach not getting information from people, but how do you approach an interview where you're trying to find out something new or different from somebody—maybe something that they've never said out loud, or something that they didn't even know that they thought until they said it out loud? Have you ever had moments like that?

Brittany: I, for the most part, I have taken journalism classes and I've kind of learned how to interview people. I really hate “how to interview people,” how you're taught in college or how you're taught through journalism, and I think some of the best interviews come from just having an honest conversation.

As I dove into the coffee industry, I realized that there were so many fascinating people that I was just like, “I want to be their friend. I want to talk to them. I want to find out what makes them tick.” And so at the beginning of the Black Lives Matter protests last year—I wasn't working in coffee, but I still wanted to connect with other coffee people. I realized there were people that were combining their love of coffee with their activism, and so it was just like, “Hey, I want to interview you. But I also just want to talk to you. What are you doing? How are you as a person combining these loves, because I just find that amazing?”

I just think that the best revelations come from talking to other people and having conversations and letting them talk, say who they are.

Ashley: There's something very generative about you—which is not a word that I think one could use as an adjective, but I'm going to go with it. I actually wrote this quote down from one of your articles. You wrote “Everything you do is better than what you didn't do.”

That seems to be true in a lot of the work that you do. You seem to be the type of person, again—this is where I get meta and try to analyze people—but it seems you're a person who tries things and you're like, “Let me just try and see what happens.”

And I admire that so much because it's so easy to get in your own way, but there's not a lot of risks sometimes. Like, “I'm going to make a cooking blog. And I only do two blog posts, and then I don't do it again, like so what?”

Brittany: Yeah. I have all these ideas that I'm going to go for it. I'm going to do it. Because I'm so excited about it. Sometimes they just don't work and I'm like, “Okay, that didn't work out, but it's fine because I have this other idea, right?” So I always have more and more ideas.

I've learned very quickly that it's okay, the worst that can happen is that it didn't work out. I have this other thing: Sometimes I worry that I'll run out of ideas, especially with my fiction writing, but then a month or so goes by. And I'm like, “Oh, but what about this? I could write a story about this. I could write an article about this.”

Ashley: One really wonderful thing that I love about your blog is that you'll have these very serious, very important blog posts. And then in the middle, you'll have these amazing brew recipes, but then you also have these fun, ridiculous experiments. How many pour overs can you stack on top of each other and still make coffee?

I was wondering if you have any fun experiments in the offing, anything you're coming up with soon?

Brittany: I'm actually working on a little coffee booklet where like, okay, so you're making coffee in the morning. You're tired. You don't really look at your grinder and you grind it on the wrong setting. I feel like so many people are like, “Oh, well crap. I just ground for a French press when I was trying to make espresso,” that I'm trying to make a booklet where it describes how to make coffee with different brewers on the wrong grind settings so you don't waste coffee.

I've been brewing V60s with French press ground coffee. And it's really interesting to have multiple filters or controlled channeling or really low temperatures or really high temperatures, because it really messes with your brain. Because in the coffee industry, we talk about like, “Okay, you have your three pours, you have your 30-second bloom. This is the grind setting for this brewer.”

But what if we could own it—like, we couldn't change the grind size and we still had to brew coffee? How do you make a somewhat decent cup of coffee? So you don't waste it?

Ashley: I love that. I can't wait until that comes out. Before we close out, is there anything that you would want people to know about you?

Brittany: You can find me on Instagram where I typically talk about not only just coffee and my love for coffee, but I talk a lot about my own issues with mental health, with being disabled. That's kind of how I live my life.

I'm also incredibly nerdy, so it doesn't really come up a lot on Instagram or in my coffee relationships. But when people actually meet me in person, they're like, “Oh wow, you love Dr. Who and Lord Of The Rings and Star Wars and all of these nerdy things. Wow. You’re a huge nerd.”

I'm like, “Yes.”

Ashley: I also love that you mentioned your fun glasses because they are very fun. I was wondering if you could describe them to our listeners.

Brittany: I have two main pairs of glasses that I wear. One is pentagon-shaped and they have little jester hands that hold the glasses frames in place. They have pearls for nose pads. Then I have another pair that are basically the Bi-Pride flag. The edges are purple, the inside are pink and where my nose goes is blue. They're very sparkly and fun. I love expressing myself through really fun glasses.

Ashley: That's delightful. Well, Brittany, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. I really appreciate it.

Brittany: Yeah. Thank you for having me.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

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You’ve probably picked up a bag of coffee or a bar of chocolate and observed some sort of certification on the label. Maybe that certification promised that the product was made in a sustainable way, or that the workers were paid more than they had been previously. But beyond the quick snippets, there is more to how these products are made than meets the eye.

My guest today is Vera Espíndola Rafael, a development economist working within coffee-producing countries. Recently, she wrote a paper called, “A Business Case to Increase Specialty Coffee Consumption in Producing Countries.” Coffee is a good that’s grown in one country, and then is traditionally—thanks to centuries of colonialism—exported somewhere else. Globally, coffee is a $200 billion industry. Vera was struck when she found out that only 10% of that value actually goes into the economies of the countries that grew the coffee, while 90% of that $200 billion stays in consuming countries.

You can hold that bag of certified coffee, or read a story about a roaster that promises to pay more for its beans, but Vera says that the solution to low coffee wages cannot depend solely on exporting a valuable product to traditional consuming countries. Instead, she argues that people should work to grow the value of coffee within their own countries. Not only will more of the value stay within producing countries, but more of that value will also go directly to the producers themselves.

Vera is based in Mexico City, and she got her start in coffee by working for Guatemala’s national coffee organization, Anacafé (Asociación Nacionel del Café). Later, she moved to UTZ, a label program that certifies products grown through sustainable agriculture—you’ve probably seen an UTZ label on something you’ve consumed. Now, Vera is working to find ways to increase consumption within coffee-producing countries, with the goal of raising farmers’ wages and giving them more agency in the global coffee supply stream. Here’s Vera:

Ashley: Can you tell me about some of your first memories of coffee?

Vera: Yeah, I think coffee for me is linked to Guatemala. It's there where I got acquainted with coffee. I started to work at Anacafé (the country’s national coffee association). For me, the memory is twofold. It's walking into the building and always smelling coffee. It's also specific visits I made to farmers in several regions during my time there.

The sense of smelling that coffee, smelling the aroma, and then knowing that I was coming back from several visits to farms and entering the building again—it always reminded me of how amazing [it is] to see how this product just goes from one hand to another.

But then ultimately the hand that I see farmers [have in growing coffee] is basically in very poor conditions. How is it possible that something that I'm drinking on a daily basis is causing—or at least it's not helping farmers get out of those vicious poverty cycles? That’s one of those things I’ll always be reminded of.

Ashley: That perspective probably informs a lot of the work that you do in coffee currently. I was wondering if you could tell people a little bit about your background working in nonprofits and how you applied that to your current work in coffee now.

Vera: The reason I started to work at Anacafé was that I was part of a research group. We were trying to understand better what was the percentage of the consumer price for several types of crops. This would be vegetables—and this would also be coffee.

In coffee at the time, and this was 2005, we calculated that around 6–8% of the consumer price went to the farmer. That for me was also a motivating piece because it allowed me to start thinking about other commodities. I was very interested also in cocoa and in tea. When I saw a job opening at UTZ for a cocoa position, they said, “Great, but we don't see you as a cocoa person. We see you as a coffee person.”

So they invited me to join the coffee team. At that time we were a very small organization—12, 13 people in Amsterdam, and the same number of people in other countries [UTZ was in]. It was great because it allowed me to have a better understanding [of coffee] not only from a research perspective but to see, OK, how can we can actually influence the consumer angle to say if you have a certified product, you will probably pay more—and that added value will actually reach the producer?

And over the span of, I would say of eight years, I got to understand better the realities of coffee producers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. I also got to understand what the roles are of an NGO as well as other producer organizations and other entities within the sector, right? That really was a great opportunity to live through that.

Ashley: It's funny that your position at UTZ could have been different. Your whole pathway could have been different, if they had said, “Yes, you could be part of the cocoa team.” It's funny how those little decisions change the trajectory of our lives because here you are now as, I would say, one of the leading thinkers in the coffee industry and a lot of … I'm always tickled by those little moments where you're like, “Oh wow. My whole life could have been different if a decision might have gone another way.”

I was wondering, can you tell me a little bit about your time at UTZ? If you could explain what that is first and foremost, and how that informed the way that you started approaching agriculture and the problems that you were seeing at farms that you mentioned before—being able to drink a beautiful cup of coffee, but knowing that the people who were producing this coffee were living in poverty or were in pretty dire straits.

Vera: UTZ is a nonprofit organization. We started with setting up a norm, or what we called at that time a code of conduct, where you mentioned good agriculture practices, and these practices had to be fulfilled by producers or producer organizations. Different at that time was that we focused very much on those agriculture practices. And of course, we had social and environmental [practices].

I think in the timeframe of three years, a lot of these social and environmental practices slowly coincided with these pillars that all of the standards at the time were putting in their codes. In the beginning, I think there was much more of a difference [between certification organizations]. You’d see Fair Trade was much more social, and Rainforest Alliance was much more environmental. We were the ones that had focused more on the agriculture and economic piece. And that was very helpful.

It was helpful, but at the same time, you could also sense that there needs to be in some way more working together between organizations, especially these ones, in order not to overlap so much. I think that's why it's very good that Rainforest Alliance and UTZ [merged], because at one point there was a lot of overlap, and there is also a lot of overlap when it comes to implementation sites.

You need to be very smart on that, because the last thing you want to do is to burden a producer. And I still think that a lot of the things that we did in some ways are a burden to the producer. I really was also of a mindset that in order to actually have more practices that we believe are sustainable, we need to definitely have more of a bigger voice of people within the countries themselves.

This is still a criticism that I have. A lot of these [certification] organizations are not based in producing countries. At the end of the day, you do miss out on evolution and developments in a country, be it from a political point of view, or be it from a social point of view [because the organization is not based there].

You really need to factor in that these are not only labels for consumers in consuming countries—these are labels that producers need to understand what it means for them. What I'm sometimes sad to see is that we do not value the labels that much anymore. I think Fair Trade is the one that gives the biggest premium to producers, but the other standards—it’s very small, the value that implementing these practices [gives to farmers] in terms of price. It’s very small.

That is definitely sad to see—that we were not able, or the organizations are still not able, to share that added value sufficiently, and to share the fact that we need to pay more for these products to consumers.

Ashley: I liked that you mentioned value because I think that that's going to be a theme that's going to come up over and over in this episode: What does value mean? Where does value come from and who takes value?

We'll define that in a minute, but another thing that you discussed that I also want to highlight is that we define a lot of problems in global systems—that's essentially what nonprofit work is. Then we have these organizations that come up with solutions. People are well-intentioned with these solutions, but like you said, a lot of times these solutions don't involve the people that are actually affected.

What I loved about this paper that you wrote—so Vera wrote a paper. It's called, “A Business Case to Increase Specialty Coffee Consumption in Producing Countries.” What I think is really unique about the article that you wrote, as opposed to so much of the discourse in the coffee community right now, is that it really focuses on people within producing countries. The solutions come from them because the problems affect them. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what prompted you to write this paper?

Vera: So after UTZ, I got this great opportunity to work for the Secretary of Agriculture in Mexico—a lot of people I remember were saying to me, “What are you going to do at the federal government level in Mexico?”

And for me, it coincided with that belief that if I really want to—I was living in Costa Rica for the last few years before I left UTZ, and then I had a year in Amsterdam, which gave me that reflection of, “If I really want to be part of the solution, I really want to be in one of these countries that I very much appreciate.”

And since my family lives in Mexico I was clinging to the fact that I would say, “That's the culture I most understand.” So that's where I want to head towards, to run back to—back to Mexico, and go back to an understanding of, “Okay, so what does it mean to live here actually now in the city, and what is happening in the coffee sector and in the coffee scene?”

I went back in early 2016, and although I've always visited Mexico and my family, it's never the same when you actually live in a city—it's never the same when you actually are immersed on a day-to-day basis. The struggles, the political tendencies, the cultural aspects. With that said, I was also working on coffee solutions for Mexico and not just for a region—just for the country itself.

A piece of this was linked also with me being part of the board of the Specialty Coffee Association [SCA] for the first time. For me, it was an unbelievable position to be in. One of the things I mentioned to Ric (Rhinehart, former head of the SCA) and to Kim (Elena Ionescu, chief sustainability and knowledge development officer at the SCA) at the time, I was saying, “Sometimes I cannot believe that I'm going through this path of going back to Mexico, feeling so happy to be back here, and then also working more in coffee and specifically also in specialty coffee.”

And one of the things I said is, “What I'm seeing in Mexico City is so many beautiful coffee shops, people so passionate about coffee, and also talking very much about the producers. [People are sharing] exactly which region a coffee is from, and talking about producers that we both know, so we know which region [the coffees are from]. We know how far it is. We know most likely what cultures they fall into, and also from an economic point of view.”

So it was very nice to know that the conversation doesn't stop at “Oh, it's from Oaxaca.” No, we can talk more because we know more, because we are citizens of this country. I know what's around it. So the conversation becomes completely different.

I was mentioning this to Ric and he was intrigued, Kim was intrigued, and at one point I said to Ric, “Well, there will be an event in Mexico City. You need to come over.”

So he came, and this was the International Coffee Organization’s meeting that we organized in Mexico City in 2018, and he came over and I, of course, took him to a cafe, which was open until 9 p.m. And he had this beautiful espresso from Michoacán. We started to talk more about that. I mentioned to him what I was seeing and what I was hearing. And one of the things that I was hearing was that producers [in Mexico] were receiving a good price—a really good price [for their coffees when consumed in Mexico]. So we started talking more.

Then during the event—Let’s Talk Coffee hosted by Sustainable Harvest—I got engaged in a conversation with IDB, the International Development Bank. They were very interested in the topic because they said, “One of the things that we're looking for is this circular economy aspect that we believe needs to happen in producing countries.”

I mentioned the topic of coffee, and then also Safe Platform was interested. I managed to get funds and they said to basically start the study, start doing this. And of course, this was not only from Mexico. I wanted to also understand better if this was also the case for Colombia, for Brazil, and ultimately Ric said, “Well, let's study an East African country.” This case, it became Rwanda—let’s do a case study to understand if this is more widespread than we think. Of course, these are just a handful of countries. I do believe that other countries are heading in a similar direction. It's great to see that that topic has evolved over the last two years in a very short timeframe. I'm very happy to see that.

Ashley: Yeah, I think you're right. I think in the last couple of years, this topic has come up more and more. And even on the last episode of Boss Barista that I just aired—these might not be sequential, maybe they will be, who knows—but I talked to a woman named Ana Sofía Narvaez, and she talked to a coffee producer in Nicaragua and they were talking about increasing in-country consumption there. So it's something that's on the mind of a lot of different people.

I was wondering if you could really plainly state the thesis of your piece and what you were hoping to explore, because you identify a pretty major problem when it comes to how coffee is valued and how that value is distributed.

Vera: I think one of the best studies—I would say definitely the one that gave me more to think about—has been The Coffee Barometer. I was floored by one of the key points that they were stating: Basically, 10% of the value of coffee is for green-coffee-producing countries. And then seeing that's just $20 billion of $200 billion just floored me.

So here we are producing these great coffees in all these countries. And then the only reward, so to say, is 10% of this $200 billion value. So apparently 90% of the value is being produced in consuming countries. So here I am, and I am thinking, “How do we ever change that?” Because that's just this big question.

I'm in a city here drinking my coffee, and we understand the value of our coffee, and other people here sitting with me in the cafe are also equally enjoying, as I am, this coffee. So I wanted to really understand: How can we, as a strategy for promoting coffee consumption in our countries, how does that strategy translate into more value for a producer? That's what I wanted to understand in this study.

Ashley: Why was that the thesis or the hypothesis that you came up with? Did that come from the fact that so much of the value that's created in consuming countries—that 90% value that we're talking about—almost primarily has to come from roasting and cafes?

Vera: Yeah, because I think at the end of the day, I'm attending these events and I'm listening about consuming trends in the U.S., other countries. This is a common topic at a lot of these events—to share what the coffee culture is in other countries. So in the U.S., and I call them traditional consumer countries. And I'm sitting there, and I'm like, “Well, fantastic that this is happening. But if the value keeps being 10%, what is it for us? So what does it mean for us as producing countries? Why are we not able to change this narrative?”

I was also trying to understand the export markets of several countries in Central America—I can’t remember what I was doing with that, maybe nothing to do with this? But I was understanding from the numbers that certain countries solely depend on the U.S., let's say, and 90% of their coffees go to that market.

And then the rest is distributed to other European countries, or Asia—it goes all the way from 70-90%. So you're completely dependent on these countries to buy your product, and just from a business point of view, that's not really smart. I was thinking, “We do not do enough to understand our own coffee cultures.” Here's me trying to understand how many cafes are in Mexico City, what are we doing in this sector, share an interest to see what is happening in my country, but there are no big studies about that.

So what we need to change is to say, “Well, this is a market that we need to understand and where we need to invest in. But before that happens, we need to also make the case for this.” And that’s part of the pieces that I tackled within this research.

Ashley: I think one of the most—I wouldn’t say damning, but I want to say damn because it's not a bad word, but just a shocking word—but I think one of the very first lines that you write in this piece that I had to stop and reread again was, “Considering these trade patterns of volatility and recent low coffee prices with no immediate long-term improvement on the horizon, producing countries must actively respond to mitigate the impact of their populations.”

So basically you're saying here that the solution to low coffee prices has to come from producing countries, because no one's f*****g changing their behaviors, essentially. Which I thought was really poignant, because I think we go to so many of these coffee conferences in traditional consuming countries like in Western Europe and the United States, and we're talking constantly about the price crisis, and yet we have not fixed it, and it is a problem that we have created.

I think it's really interesting that you’re like, “Well, then let's scrap that way of approaching it,” and not excuse us any way—we in consuming countries obviously need to consider how we approach coffee buying and start to correct our own behaviors. But basically, your paper is almost saying, “We can't wait for that.”

Vera: Yeah, definitely. We cannot wait for that. It's so frustrating to see that we are dependent. You don't want to be in that position when you're traveling, just, what? Two hours from here [Mexico City] and you see sheer poverty? Come on. I'm definitely one of the people that’s like, “Okay, so where can I have influence on this? And is that even with a cup of coffee?” And the answer is yes. So let's try to understand that better.

I think that that applies to many of these countries. I just saw some quotes from the podcast [episode you mentioned] that is out there right now from Nicaragua. It's completely true. We are not only coffee professionals, we are also consumers. And that is very strong here.

We are, at the end, able to influence what we consume right now. Even if that, for me, is just three cups a day, for me, it’s a start—but it needs to be understood also in your own country. You need to understand how we consume, and you need to understand where we consume. And I do think that's still a lot of work in progress.

For me, that was the important piece of it—I think that we still underestimate the value of the work that's being done [in producing countries]. And I see a lot of value created at the end, and I think it's great for you guys. I want to focus on creating value at this end for the producer, and capture that for them.

Ashley: I like the way that you phrased that because I think there's something about the idea of value where we think it's a finite amount. We have this one coffee bean, and it will be worth this amount and that's fixed. So it's a distribution problem. How do we distribute more value on one end of the spectrum versus the other?

But I think what you're saying is that value is not fixed. If we can create value on both ends, that's good. That's what we're trying to do. And that's why that idea of dependency, of creating value in a totally, completely different way, by focusing on in-country consumption, is really interesting.

I don't necessarily care too much about consuming countries [in this conversation], because we have a ton of other problems that we need to address here. Lots of other things there, but I want to focus on specifically what you wrote. So let's talk a little bit about how you approached solving this problem. What did this research process look like for you, and what were some of your findings that you were surprised by or intrigued by?

Vera: The most fantastic thing about doing this study is basically to hear the stories behind all these coffee shops. So I had the opportunity to do several interviews in Brazil and Colombia, and a bunch here in Mexico. [I went to] Rwanda, that was thanks to Sustainable Harvest. I was able to go there and present part of this study already, and also had the opportunity to talk to several people in Rwanda, in Kigali. And a lot of the stories are similar. A lot of these stories are about people wanting to influence their immediate community by offering the best coffee of their country—and not wanting to wait for something.

If you [have to] go over to the U.S. or Europe to try that fantastic coffee—no, [people want to have] the tools here to serve that best coffee, and then make sure that that value also goes back to the producer. It's a very short supply chain, and it's also in terms of scale, it's small. So it's a small percentage of our total markets, but it's a valuable one.

That value, the understanding as consumers of what it means to drink fantastic coffee here, is slowly getting understood by more people. That passion and that eagerness to do, I saw in all of these countries. For me, that was very motivating to talk about.

Aside from the interviews, I also had several visits with producers where I interviewed them based on, “How do you see the national markets? What is your take on this?” That for me was also very insightful, because that means that we have enough room to grow and room to improve as a sector here. And those issues are not the ones that are being discussed.

For example, at an international event, at a very global event, these are issues very much from here [and nothing is done with that]. I think that is something that we definitely need to do something more with, because at the moment, we leave it just in a paper or undiscussed, and we will not be able to grow and understand better [the farmer’s] point of view when it comes to selling their coffee on the national markets.

The most important thing that I was surprised by was definitely the results I processed when it comes to price. Those were the ones that very much surprised me, because I did think that there was very similar or competing prices going on between the national sector and the export opportunities for producers. I did not think that, in some cases, [the national sector] would be equal or more.

I say that with a smile because it's great to see that, because that means that there is an additional strategy for some of the producers. I say some because this is something that we need to work on more, and understand.

Ashley: That's interesting. So there's a lot to unpack there. I think there are two things I want to identify.

So first off, the value of in-country consumption seems—there's a lot of reasons, but it seems twofold, two big ones. Number one, you shorten the supply chain. So instead of paying an exporter this or that, this person to get coffee from one country to another, you cut that supply chain. There are fewer people to pay, so more of the value naturally will go to the farmer. So that's more of a distribution issue. If we cut out some of the actors, some of that money goes somewhere else.

But then there's also the idea—and you mentioned this in the paper—of being able to interact with somebody face to face, being able to interact with somebody of your culture, being able to speak the same language, having the same cultural norms and understandings so that when you do negotiate, you're like, “I understand this person. I know what their needs are. They're better able to communicate their needs to me. So we're able to agree to something on terms that we both understand.”

Those two things kind of work in tandem and that's where that idea of value creation happens, as opposed to distribution. But it seems like those two big things are the reason that in-country consumption can improve the lives of farmers.

Vera: Definitely, definitely. And I think when you touched upon the shortening of the supply chain, many people think, “Oh yeah, that's a given. So what else?” I think the most important thing, and it goes in hand with the second point you mentioned, is the fact that when you have a person that talks the same language, the same slang, says the same type of words we use, which you will not find at a Spanish school in Antigua, that's the pieces where you start building that relationship purely because you're from the same group of people.

Then, when you're able to also share some insights about what you know—so there are, for example, certain people that are roasters that are also cuppers and then go to producers, and they have a better insight into the science of coffee and what happens when you ferment coffee for so many hours, and if you do it in certain bags … and when they start transferring this knowledge, and when there is an interaction between them and the producer says, “Yeah, I did that, and I saw this and then I saw that,” and there is that back-and-forth in your own language, and you don't need to shy away because this white person came to your house and you do not know him and you do not understand him.

That's great to see, that producers are having access to more knowledge and understanding of what they're doing, but also feeding back what they're seeing and hearing what the potential could be, and seeing also a bag of coffee with the name of their farm and seeing that in their own language—that is very valuable.

I think the combination of those two things are of value. I will definitely hear from producers that say, “It's fantastic. I go up to a certain town and there I see my coffee and I see my name.” It's something that’s very close by, and that helps constantly in the relationship between these two parties.

Ashley: Early in the conversation, you mentioned the idea of a circular economy. I had not heard this term actually until very recently. I've been writing a lot about sustainability for some of the clients that I work for. But when I read about this and when you mentioned it, it totally clicked.

So the idea of the circular economy is that instead of a good or a service being handed down linearly with very little interaction between the actors, that everything is almost reused, everything comes back full circle. People experience or interact with products and ideas over and over and over, as opposed to creating waste. That's kind of the framework from a sustainability perspective, but from a producing perspective, when you're thinking about coffee consumption inside of a country, I think the idea of the circular economy is really a powerful metaphor as well.

I imagine that reinforces quality or that reinforces what the potential of specialty is, because when we alienate people from specialty, if we say, “Hey, specialty coffee only happens in traditional consuming countries. Let's export all this coffee over there,” there is no reinforcement of what specialty coffee is, right? A farmer doesn't ever get to taste it. They don't ever get to experience the fruit of their labor—which is kind of a cheesy metaphor, the fruit of their labor.

But when things are happening within your own country—when you can drive to a coffee shop that's maybe a couple of hours away and see your coffee and see people that you identify with and interact with—that builds that idea of what the potential of specialty coffee can be, because you're able to experience your product and take that knowledge and say, “Oh, I tasted this and this espresso, I did this to the coffee this year. What if I do this to this coffee next year?" And I can get that experience again and see what happens.”

I wonder if that's something that you've been thinking about too—what is the potential for the future of specialty coffee as in-country consumption increases?

Vera: It was definitely one of the questions that was asked to me multiple times, because they say, “Well, you're talking about specialty coffee.” And at the end of the day, when we look at the pyramid of consumption, I would say the top of the pyramid is the specialty coffee consumption. Then the other big group of [coffees], let's say clean coffee, that's not related to any particular origin reference. Then you have at the bottom, the ultimate bottom of coffees, a lot of the time that happens in our countries because I think when we are in specialty coffee, we sometimes hope that everybody starts drinking specialty coffee. I think it's okay that not everybody does because not every bean of coffee is specialty coffee quality.

That's okay. It doesn't mean that that producer who produces coffee not for the specialty market and barely makes it, it doesn't mean that he deserves a not sustainable, not prosperous life. That's not what I'm saying. We need to get [to the point] that everyone who produces has a prosperous life.

What I'm trying to say is that we need to understand in our own countries how we can influence and how can we share information and knowledge, so that consumers can say in our countries, “Oh, I actually want that. I don't want this. I want that.” And are able to understand what the difference is.

I do think that sometimes we're very far away because we have been … I would not say miscommunicating, but over-communicating a lot of things at the same time. That has costs for a lot of consumers, to not understand even what a [certification] label is, or what's the intent, what does it mean and what part of the price does the [premium] cover, and what does it not?

We almost think that everything is okay. I understand that as well. I, as a consumer, sometimes just want to know, “Can I drink or eat this? Yes or no.” And then you've seen so many labels like that and you’re like, “Yeah, let me forget it. I will not buy anything off it.” So there's a lot of things that we can improve in terms of communication.

But the thing is, my communication and my country are not the same as yours, you know? I think that we sometimes think that we can just copy/paste. We need to learn how to communicate in our own language, in our own words, and learn also from other examples that have existed for years in other countries.

I would say that the potential for specialty coffee definitely is going to grow more in our countries. I would like to think that the efforts that people are making—I'm not referring to to national strategies, there are several already in place and several being executed—but that people are doing this in their own community, that is having a great outreach and impact.

Even if that's small, I think combined, that's becoming bigger, and it’s great to see how much that is. I think here in Mexico, we can go up to 10% [of coffee grown in the country being consumed in-country]. I think we're now at around 5%. I do think that we can go to 10% and then—and I’m referring to specialty coffee in its pure sense. I'm saying [coffees that score] over 85, specific quality parameters.

We do need to think more and talk more about the sustainability of the full supply chain. I'm also referring to the living income for baristas in our own countries. That's what I'm also aspiring for. But yeah, I think that there is sufficient space to grow.

Ashley: I was going to ask you for any final thoughts, but I feel like you really captured a lot of big themes in that last answer. So I guess to kind of close things out, I was wondering, is there anything—reading your paper, what would you want somebody to take away from it? What would you want somebody reading it to feel empowered to do or think critically about after reading this piece?

Vera: I remembered it also, Brian [Gaffney] also asked me a similar question. What I would like this paper to achieve is that there are more conversations about consumption in our countries. But not only about the consumption itself—what is needed is to have producers have more tools to decide on where they want to sell their coffee.

I would like to see us start thinking about and start acknowledging the needs of our professionals and our supply chains here. So that means the barista who is making a minimum wage and wants to be a professional. Currently, the tools out there and materials out there are not always focused on them or focused on a different group of people. And sometimes not even in Spanish.

So I think there's a lot to uncover there. If you really want to have more consumption in these countries, we do not need to think only about consumption strategies and how to reach the consumer. We need to think about our sector. We need to think about our professionals that need to have more materials, more information, more knowledge made available to them. And we need to be smart about it. Not everything needs to be about business—I refer to the business making a lot of money out of these materials.

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

Vera: Thank you, Ashley. I appreciate it.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

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Welcome to the Boss Barista takeover!

A few weeks ago, I put a call out to coffee folks, fans, and drinkers across the globe to pitch ideas about the podcast they’ve been dreaming of making—and today we’re turning the mic over to the last in our series of guest creators. 

Because this episode is guest-hosted, I’ll leave today’s contributor to introduce herself and share more about what’s coming up. The next voice you’ll hear is Ana Sofía Narváez.

Hello amigos, welcome to Boss Barista. I am Ana Sofía Narvaez, a coffee professional from Nicaragua. This episode is part of the open call Ashley Rodriguez put out a few months back for contributors looking to make an audio story. Today on this episode, we have Sara Corrales from Finca Los Pinos, a certified organic farm in Nicaragua that is doing things differently—while having passionate women lead its production, growth, and diversification. They produce and export their own coffee, and recently started selling roasted coffee and coffee beverages within the country, too.

Sara, like many other coffee professionals (including the sons and daughters of farmers), is part of the new face of the specialty coffee industry—one that’s dedicated to promoting internal coffee consumption, a topic that’s not often covered or promoted.

Typically, we think that the best beans are exported and consumed far away from where they have been produced—and this, as Nicaraguans, makes us proud. However, in Nicaragua things are slowly changing. We are seeing more coffee shops popping up, and more people learning about the coffee we produce. We see a coffee community growing and moving away from bad coffee (or, coffee that doesn’t meet health and export criteria).

Now, here’s Sara.

Ana: Hello Sara. Thank you for joining us today. I am very glad that you are on board with this project, and that you wanted to share more about coffee production in Nicaragua, coffee culture, and your work at the farm—and your coffee shop, too.  

Welcome to this episode! 

Sara: Thanks, Ana. Thank you so much for inviting me to this project, and I really appreciate all the effort that we do together, just trying to share information, trying to share knowledge. And everything that is going on in Nicaragua. If you may, I can introduce myself.  

Ana: Sure, we can start with a short introduction about yourself, what you do, how you ended up working in coffee. I leave it up to you.  

Sara: So, I am Sara Corrales. Nice to meet you, everybody. I'm 28 years old, and from Nicaragua. I am a woman producer, marketing girl, and I am working at Los Pinos farm as the sales manager—and I am a partner of a coffee shop in Managua. And the name of the coffee shop is La Tostadería. We are working with specialty coffee, and we are trying to do different social projects on the farm. I am really involved in all that.  

Ana: So happy to hear that. So basically, you have two hats. One that is strictly related to your job at the farm and the other one at the coffee shop, right? Can you tell us a bit more about the dynamics behind each of them? 

Sara: Thank God! That is a really good question because these two jobs are at two different places. So, the farm is located in Matagalpa, in a community pretty close to a nature reserve. The name of this nature reverse is El Arenal, so the farm is located over there. And the coffee shop is located in Managua—in the capital of Nicaragua. So, I need to travel a bit. I have this crazy and busy job between two different places, and the dynamic is completely different on a farm than in a coffee shop.  

But—it is like an engagement between these two different places. For example, on the farm we just produce—not just—we produce the coffee, we produce everything that we use at the coffee shop. We use the oranges and everything that we have at the farm. We are trying to keep with this concept, that everything that is produced on the farm goes back to the farm.  

So it is the same in the coffee shop. Everything that we are trying to make in the coffee shop comes from the farm. So, the dynamic is a complete circle, if we just saw it like that. On the farm, we work 365 days a year, and at the end of the year, we receive the harvest. It is a little crazy because we only have one harvest season for the year. But that means we have to drink coffee every day because of all that coffee on the farm.  

This is like a really nice relationship, because we run the farm, we do all the processing there, we dry the coffee, and later we roast the coffee by ourselves. And later, we just go to the coffee shop and serve the cup of coffee directly to the consumer. So, if you think about it, we are involved in all the channels, in all the steps to make a really great cup of coffee.  

So if you ask me, it is a biodynamic process between the farm and the coffee shop. 

Ana: I like what you are mentioning because from my understanding what you have created is this family business, right? You have created a system where everything integrates. It goes beyond being a coffee producer, but taking it to the next level where you can process your own coffee and have the opportunity to serve your own coffee to customers in Nicaragua. Same product, different experiences, different models, but in a way integrated.  

Now that we talk about running the farm, can you tell us what a day at the farm is like? What activities are you currently doing? I know there is a lot to talk about here, but can you maybe share with our listeners what is like to be at Los Pinos?  

Sara: Yeah, ah! Every day is different. If you think there is monotony and structured days, it is not like that. Every day is something happening.  

We can’t control nature. So, what we can do is just try to maintain and work every day as we regularly do, with all our effort at the farm. 

But if you ask me, I can have a schedule—this morning I am going to be in this coffee plantation, and in the afternoon, I am going to be at another one. That is something that I understand in all these years working in coffee. My dad said something that I really appreciate, he says, “The time of the nature is not the time of the human.” And that makes sense completely to me. I am living in the city right now but even that, the farm is like 20 minutes from the city. So, we are really close to the city.  

We moved because my grandmother had a lot of health problems, so we preferred to move to the city to stay closer to the hospital, and it was a really hard decision because we have all the work that we have to do on the farm. It was a really hard decision because my grandmother lived on that farm all her life, so it was like something we needed to do.  

We wake up really early, we go to the farm, and then it depends on the kind of problem we have on the coffee plantation. For example, if it is the day we need to take the chromatography of the soil, we take the sample of the soil, and later we do all this chromatography to try to understand the soil. And later, we’ll see in the picture what the plants need, and that’s the work you need to do—trying to understand and speak with the coffee. Even if they do not have a language, they have ways to try to communicate with you. So that was like a …

Ana: No, you can continue. 

Sara: That is what we do at the farm. Later, we speak with the workers, ask how the coffee plantation is doing because we have somebody in charge of each [parcel of] land. So, it depends—like right now, we are in the harvest season. You need to wake up very early just to try to work together with the pickers, and you need to … you need to be on the farm, to just see how well everything is, trying to take the measure of the brix rate, and in that way, you can understand how is the sugar in the cherry. Right now if you ask me, it is really tough trying to explain what we do every day at the farm.

Because we have so much stuff to do at the farm. And it is not just to put something in the plantation, it is not just to put bokashi—that organic fertilizer we use—it isn't just that. It is trying to make all the systems work together. We do all the work here in the coffee plantations, and later come and take the coffee to the dry mill, and that is another job.  

If you do not stop me, I can speak about this all day.  

Ana: I think it’s great that we understand a bit more of what happens at a farm, because like you were saying, we got to get ready for the harvest. How are we going to fertilize? What is the plant telling us? We communicate with it. And like you said, there are many ways. We can look at the soil, the branches, the leaves, the cherries.  

You know, there are many factors and variables that you can consider and evaluate. And that is just before the harvest. During the harvest is the same—the flowering, the cherry development, the ripening level. And then coordinate with the pickers, the number of people you need, how can you distribute them? What works best, what lots need to be picked first, how am I going to move this coffee? 

How can I divide myself into many tasks? Or maybe lead the team, help the teamwork, because more than doing the [work]—that I understood, Sara—more than doing the work is helping the people you have with you do their best, and fulfill their tasks. And help you and your family harvest the coffee, process it, and get ready to store it, ship it, to roast it. There are many tasks, which is great! 

My next question, Sara, now that you have learned the dynamics at the farm—because you have this understanding as a coffee person, businesswoman, sales manager, and other titles and hats that you wore—has it been easy for you to translate this information to coffee consumers in Nicaragua? What has been your experience on the other side of the supply chain?  

How did you start it? What has worked? What are you doing to communicate more about the work you do at the farm with your family that in the end ends up in this amazing coffee of coffee, organic coffee? 

Sara: Yeah, right. I mean, being a producer is not easy.  

If somebody says it is, maybe this person needs to be really involved in the coffee production. Everybody tells me being a producer is not easy; that is something I understood. I saw my dad, my aunts, and my grandfather working in that, and believe me, even though I grew up in a coffee family, it was something that I saw was really, really hard, and I decided to not be a farmer at that time.  

I decided to try to finish high school and later go to university. In all that process, my dad made [a decision], something I really appreciated at that moment. We visited the dry mill, and I saw another way to work with the coffee that wasn’t in production.  

So I met this guy Julio, he was working at SOL CAFE, and I completely loved his job. He was the cupping head at the dry mill. I was really, really young—I did not really understand what is going on with coffee. I just saw this man sip and later spill the coffee, I was like, “That is gross, but looks great and cool.”

I just went directly to him and asked, “Hey can you teach me how to understand my coffee?” And he said yes, so he taught me for a couple of years. And at that moment, I understood that that was my place in coffee. Understanding my coffee, that was the first step that I appreciated in this industry. And later, at that moment I understood something too—being a producer is not easy; being a woman producer is double or triple as hard than just to be a producer.  

Ana: It is harder.  

Sara: But that does not mean that I quit. To be in that way, to be in this industry, even though I studied marketing, that does not mean that I do not understand coffee production, and that does not mean that I cannot be involved in the coffee industry. 

Sara: I feel that my generation says it is like being a producer 2.0. You are involved not just in the production. You are involved in the marketing, in the quality control, in everything. You need to be multitasking at this moment because the competition is really hard.  

So, imagine having a lot of competition, and we are not working together, even though we are a small country that produces really great coffee. We need to be the contrary to that. I understand that too.  

Now I am 28. I have more experience and I’m more mature about that. So, I understand my neighbor is not my competitor, they are my partner. So, I feel our generation is healthier about competition. And we are trying to do something that is different.

We started with cupping sessions. I understand that the way we can share information is not just to do a great job on the farm. It is to send a message of all the work we do at the farm, and trying to make spaces like this one. Or a podcast like this! Or just trying to have conversations with your neighbor.

So, we started to do cupping sessions in Managua. I just called a couple of friends and they said, “I have coffee too.” And they call me too. It’s a really great dynamic because if I call them, I know they are going to be available to do cupping sessions. If they call me, I understand that I will be available to do the cupping session. We are trying to make a community even if we don’t have all these logistics. We are not a group with a name or something like that. We are just friends that want to enjoy a really great coffee.  

That was the first step that we took. And now we are people, cupping together in the house of Claudio—if I’m not mistaken, that was the first cupping session that we did—and I understand that everybody right now, at this moment, is essential, and is part of the community that we made at that moment. And we grew up and we are more. And we have more people. And we recognize the people interested in coffee.  

At the coffee shop, we have a different type of consumer. We have the consumers that use sugar in the coffee, and this is not [me saying], “Hey! Do not drink sugar with coffee! Don’t put the sugar in there.” But it is about education, because if you know and you understand [your consumer], you are going to do that every day.  

So my job in the coffee shop is to speak directly to the barista, because they are the first person who has this face-to-face with the consumer, and if the barista understands all the work that we do on the farm, the consumers are going to understand all the work that we do at the farm.  

Of course, social media also works as a really nice tool to share all the work that we do over there. We have a voice, a presence, and we can do different stuff.  

For example, right now I know we are in COVID-19 times, but we can play with that, we are really creative. Why not do a cupping session every couple of months for example, and we can use the [COVID-19] protocol. We have the tools to make different stuff.  

I think the first is to recognize that the producer has a voice, something to share, not just about … because if you ask me about price, which is another podcast that we can do together, but it is not just about that.  

Ana: Another episode that we can do! 

Sara: Yeah sure! We should do that.  

But this is something we can speak about. If you understand all the work that the farmers do over there, you are going to appreciate what you are drinking. And you are going to recognize what you are drinking.   

So I think that is the first step: to understand. If you want to appreciate a really great coffee, why not do a cupping session? If it is your first time, it does not matter. It does not matter if you are 25 or 28 or 16 or whatever. It does not matter. Just try to taste, give that moment to yourself, and just enjoy all the effort that the farmers and the pickers and the workers did on the farm.  

I have the privilege to have this coffee shop and speak directly with the consumers. And I hope that more farmers have this opportunity, too. If you are really passionate about coffee, it is time to share it with somebody else. I think the new generation has a huge responsibility to share the message, and right now it is time.  

Ana: I completely agree with what you are saying.  

I am inspired as well. I think you are one of the many young people, and especially women, shaping our industry in Nicaragua from the production side up to the consuming side inside the country.  

That is one of our topics in a way, right? One of the things we are working on as a coffee community, because we see there is an opportunity to share, to educate people. Like you said—you started with a cupping session, but more than the cupping session, I think it is about creating safe spaces where people can just come learn, have fun, and enjoy a cup of coffee. It does not matter if you have experience or not. There is something that connects us—that is coffee.  

Let’s talk a bit more about coffee: Where did it come from, how long does it take to grow the coffee, what is the price behind the coffee, what are the conflicts or the struggles? We can talk about many things, anything! We can speak badly about the government. We can blame a lot of people. But let’s not just blame people. Let’s look at what we can do to change things, right?

And you have done it. You have done it with your friends. You are doing it! I am sure there are many more doing it as well. You start by producing great coffee, by creating a community, by seeing your neighbor as your partner and not your competitor, by creating these spaces where everyone is welcome, by not judging.  

Like you said, you have many customers. Some of them drink coffee with sugar. I think it is a mistake to judge someone who likes to drink coffee with sugar. It is more, from my perspective, it is more about, “Hey, why don’t you try without sugar? Have you done it? Can you perceive the difference?”

Just plant the seed of curiosity and open these worlds of experiences to the person that drinks the coffee. “Would you like to try it with almond milk, not just regular milk?” I do not know. Whatever. People have different experiences, different preferences. Again, safe spaces where people are welcome.  

Sara: Exactly. I am with you on that. For example, in Latin America, more in Nicaragua if you eat fried potatoes, you eat that with ketchup. If you go to another country, they eat fried potatoes with different sauces/dressings. Isn't it? 

So if you learned your whole life that you need to eat or drink something like that, you are going to do it. I am not going to judge that, but believe me, it is something to me that as a producer, to have a coffee that scores an 85 and 84, and they put sugar in it. I cried when I saw that.  

Ana: (Laughs) What are you doing? 

Sara: But even then, I am respectful. I am really respectful of that because that is the way people learned how to do it.  

For example, every coffee shop has its own menu and all that. We have a bunch of different specialty coffee shops in Nicaragua and everybody knows each other.   

Especially at La Tostadería, what we do there, for example, we do not sell Americanos, but we sell filter coffee. Why? Because we like to offer a different experience—it is something completely different than an Americano.  

Because that is my preference and that is the preference of my consumers, too. We are trying to teach them how to drink coffee. And we serve the coffee in glass, not in a cup. So that is something different and, in that way, you can appreciate more the aroma of the coffee and the flavor too.  

If you ask me, I really respect what the consumers desire, but even that, if I have the opportunity to share with them ... Because hey, they regularly ask you, I do not know why, but every time that I go over there, someone sees me and they say, “Hey so you are the owner?”And I start to speak about coffee.

They ask me, “What do you recommend?” and I am like, “That depends on you. That depends on what you like.” And they say, “No, no, no, I want your recommendation.”  

I was like, and I start to ask questions to them. “Hey, what kind of flavors do you like? Do you like more like a fruity, floral, or you like more chocolate?”

They say, “All that? All that you can feel in the coffee?” And I say, “Yeah, believe it. You can feel all that in the coffee.” 

We have different profiles. We have washed, honey, naturally processed coffees, and now we are going to have the new harvest, we are going to have an anaerobic [processed coffee] and different stuff other there. So it is pretty funny because I understand the profile of my coffee, and my baristas understand that, too.  

But I do not know. The people—they really enjoy the experience, if somebody says to them, “Hey this is the coffee that you should try,” and when they try it they say, “Hey the coffee—I do not know coffee tastes like that. This is not the flavor that I regularly drink in my cup of coffee.”  

That expression to me, you can’t imagine how many times I smiled when I saw that expression. It is so nice because I think the one time that you try specialty coffee, you never go back to drink other stuff. It is like a really fine line that you cross. And for me, it’s really hard when somebody asks me if I have decaf with almond milk. And I’m like, “NOOOO…” 

But that does not mean that I am not open to coffee like that, because I am really respectful of the process and all the ways to drink coffee.  

For me, it is like I told you, it is crazy just to drink decaf with almond milk, but one of my best friends did it like that, and she really enjoyed it. So why not? The coffee shop is for drinking, enjoying, and having this great moment. And just having this connection between the farm and all that, so it is an experience. And we are completely open to do that.  

We really appreciate that.  

Ana: It is an experience, from my understanding and what you have shared, it is a discovery as well—moving away from the general idea of dark roasted coffee, bitter, that needs to be with sugar because that is what people have been drinking without asking themselves where coffee comes from or if coffee has a different flavor.  

People do it with beer because they do know in Nicaragua which beer is lighter, which beer is stronger, right? We are not having this conversation usually with lots of people about coffee.  

Sara: (Laughs) Yeah! 

Ana: Coffee is coffee. It is the way it is served. But all the work you are doing, you are bringing in a new experience, you are opening the world to coffee to a lot of people who did not know coffee has acidity, that coffee is naturally sweet, that you can have different processes, different hours of fermentation, so it becomes an experience through education, through discovery, and through the willingness to just taste something different and value more coffee, because you moved away from a “traded good” that you need to buy and sell, buy and sell, and we don’t care who is behind that.  

With all the work you do—I do not know how to say this. There are many hats, jobs, producers that are invisible sometimes, because you only see the cup of coffee. Because that makes you happy.  

Sara: Exactly.

Ana: I was sharing once that when I see a cup of coffee, I do not think about the roasted beans, I do not think necessarily about the flavor. I think about the hands behind the coffee, the producers, the cherries, the community that is directly impacted by that farm because it is a business, not just a farm.  

So you know, that is my understanding of coffee—it is not just roasted beans. It is the beginning of it, where coffee comes from. It is great that you have that opportunity to share it, and as a producer to share it directly with the consumer.  

Now—I do not know if you have something else to add here. I have another question in mind.  

Sara: You made the question and you explained that perfectly. You do your job, you know … you do your job in this new generation. You share the message completely.

Ana: I do. I think we need to be more vocal about what the farmers are doing, to bring power to producers, to tell our own stories.  

Sometimes, like I was telling you at the beginning, language is a barrier, but there are other ways that we can tell our story, and not necessarily in English. But being part of other processes and other parts of the supply chain, like you were saying—by being a producer, being part of the quality control team, logistics at the dry mill, or running your own coffee shop.

I mean, the opportunities are endless. So, if you come from a coffee family you are not destined or obligated to become a farmer. You can be both or even more. So, you know, you come from a coffee family, and so you are a farmer, and the next one is a farmer. And it stays like that … but I don’t think it should be like that.

I think we are changing things, opening space and opportunities in the supply chain.  

So my next question is, Sara—why do you think that we need to keep on working towards motivating, introducing specialty coffee, or more about coffee, in a producing country such as Nicaragua? Why is it important? Aside from what we have talked about and shared here.  

Sara: When I say being a coffee farmer is not easy, I do not say this because I am scared. I am honest. It’s not like, “Hey, Sara said this! It is not easy. I don’t want to be a farmer.”   

The message is completely different than that. It is about trying to find your place in the coffee industry. For example, for me, I was really in love with quality control. That is home, that's my place! That doesn't mean I don’t like to be a farmer, because I like to be on the farm.

I really enjoyed it, but with all these options, I needed to move to study. I moved to the capital and all that. If we want a better education, we need to move. If somebody is listening to this, and you are from Nicaragua, they are going to understand what I am saying.  

This is something that we really think about, because in the community, we don't have education [opportunities] really close, and education is completely important. If I grew up as a farmer, the community grew up with me, too. We have a social responsibility on the farm, and we completely understand that.

My dad was working on that a couple of years ago with some buyers. So, we are thinking if the community grew up in that way, we can work with the community, too. We are working with a lot of sons and daughters of our pickers that are working on the farm but in a different way. They are not pickers. They grew up and we made a scholarship for them and they studied agronomy, business administration, and different stuff.

We are working together with them in that position. But that requires five years in the university just trying to … I don't know how to say this in English. Just trying to put more fertilizer for that student to help him or her grow up, and later go back to the community and [take their education to the community].

It is completely important to bring and make education here. Trying to get this education—not everything is cheap.  

If we think, if we want a great education, we go to see the information from the SCA. Everybody wants to have the Q Grader certification and all that, but it is expensive. Even for me it’s expensive. 

Something we should do is … every time that I have a free space to speak about coffee, I just share my knowledge and what I know. That doesn't mean that I have the only truth. That means we need to do more research, more than what I am saying. Just trying to get more involved in that. 

To get closer to the coffee industry, I think the coffee shop is a really nice place for that first contact, and what it means to work with specialty coffee. It's a really nice first step. Later than that, if you have to go to the farm, to go to the origin, you should do it.  

You should see a coffee plantation—you should. You should touch that leaf and that cherry and understand how nice and tasty the mucilage of the coffee is in your mouth. And later than that, you are going to appreciate the cup of coffee.  

Of course, there exist different places to try to learn about coffee, like coffee schools—that is a really nice place, too. You can meet with people. You can follow [people like] you, like @yellowcatuai, you can follow me, you can follow Mirtila, and different people who are in the coffee industry. We want to share information about coffee and our social network is completely about coffee. *Spoiler alert* We just speak about coffee.  

Ana: (Laughs) Yeah! 

Sara: But we have all of this, and all these different opportunities in different countries. For example, there exists this Master’s degree I am going to do in a couple of months. Information—I mean, there are different news outlets about coffee. Or you can just do it yourself. Just try to see Perfect Daily Grind in Spanish and English, and different languages, too.  

You can have different blogs about coffee. There’s the Hagamos Café in Nicaragua that is a really nice podcast about coffee. I mean, there are different ways. You can try to find information about coffee. The least you should do is put “coffee in Nicaragua” in Google. Do your own research. Put your effort in there. Put your energy in there. Because the internet is not just about memes.  

If you really want to enjoy coffee, if you really want to learn about coffee, you are going to do it. It does not matter if you are not an agronomist, it does not matter if you did not grow up in a coffee family, because it was my decision to be a producer and to be involved in coffee.  

If you ask me, even though we are a small country in Nicaragua in Central America, and started to work with specialty coffee 14 years ago, that does not mean we cannot develop this more than what we have right now. We need to work really hard right now to try to put our place on the map and say “Hey, it’s not just great coffee that we sell, it is something we can drink in our country and enjoy it and appreciate it. Because we deserve really great coffee.”

That a really hard conception. We produce really great coffee. We produce specialty coffee. And where is the specialty coffee? Why don’t people in Nicaragua drink specialty coffee? And we know that it is more expensive because we have more work to do over there. When you really appreciate and enjoy the coffee, and know the value, and all that—believe me that it deserves every Cordoba [Nicaraguan currency] that you put in that cup.  

Ana: I wanted to add, Sara, that I completely agree with you. The fact is that nowadays information is more accessible, that there are podcasts, news, and digital spaces popping up, people are sharing information that is for free.  

If you are a consumer, either in a consuming country or just in Nicaragua, and love coffee, just do your research.  

Type “coffee in Nicaragua,” like you said, in Google, and you will find a lot of resources that are free and accessible that will make you more curious and knowledgeable about coffee here and coffee in your own country.  

I think we’ve got to start there, about what we know, about what we know about our own coffee. Because sometimes we are like, “Yeah! A Nicaraguan product!” but what do we really know about these products? How many farmers do we have in the country, what are we growing, where is our coffee being exported?  

And then when we see a coffee shop, we have to recognize the value, the passion, the hard work. I can be romantic about that, but really that has a price. It a business. Again! But we got to pay for the coffee.  

If you want a great product, you have to pay for it. So, we move away from the idea that coffee should be cheap, because we see it as a product to add value to our daily routine, to our lives, to our discovery, sensory experiences, more knowledge, education. So we move away from dark-roasted coffee, and we see the farmer, we see the farmers.

We see the other side, the human side of coffee that we are sometimes missing, because we're not showing it. So, the opportunity is there, is there for us to take and to continue—like you said, growing this community that loves coffee, that shares about it, even if it is two minutes, we are ready to share about coffee. And the spaces are there. And like you said, it is our moment, because the specialty coffee industry in Nicaragua has changed a lot.  

The number of experiments, the specialization from producers—they are doing naturals, honey, washed, anaerobic, experimenting because we are at a different level. Maybe not every producer, but we can have those local innovations available in Managua, in the capital city in other coffee shops, too—for other people to enjoy.  

I am so happy that this is growing, that this is happening, and that people like you and your family are behind this great movement. So yeah!  

Sara: I just want to say thanks to all the consumers who are involved in coffee, because it means we do something well. It means that there are people interested. I know specialty coffee is not really accessible for everybody, and I hope specialty coffee will be accessible for everybody.

But it is something in the market that we need to work to, not just in Nicaragua. It is something that we need to see on a global level. For now, we are just trying to make the best that we can do over there, and I really appreciate it when somebody asks me what “specialty coffee” means, because that is how we start to talk about what is going on.

So, it is time to start talking. You know it is not just a cup, it is not just something that we press the button and it’s just like that. I really appreciate that I had this time with you because I enjoyed this moment, believe me! I enjoyed this talk. And I hope we can have more spaces like this in the future.

Ana: Thank you very much Sara for joining us, and for sharing your experience, your thoughts, your opinions, your knowledge. As you said, your career is marketing but then you have coffee education from life, and that is valuable, and that is unique—because our coffee experiences are unique. 

What we said here, how I see coffee as a cherry or the first thing that comes to my mind is a plant, that is a valid thing, and if you are listening to this and you think of coffee as a roasted bean, that is fine, because our experiences with coffee are different, and like Sara mentioned—we’ve got to be respectful about that, but also open to listening to others, to learn.  

And just to kind of explore what is happening, why I did not know this. Or, “Hey I know this; I want to share it.”

Sara: Enjoy your cup of coffee!   

Thank you for listening to this story. Internal coffee consumption in coffee-growing countries is key to making this industry more sustainable and boosting economic development at all levels. To learn more about Sara and Finca Los Pinos’ work, check out their website at lospinosfarm.com or her Instagram at @sicr92. For comments and follow-up, you can find me as @yellowcatui on Instagram.

That was Ana Sofía Narváez. While this is the formal end to the Boss Barista takeover, I’d still love to hear from you! If you have an idea for a show, if you want to be a guest host, or if you want to launch your own podcast, email me: I’m at [email protected], and I would be more than happy to help you launch your idea.

Thanks for listening to this takeover series, thank you to all the creators, thank you to Chobani for their sponsorship, and thank you to the listeners for supporting these new projects. We’ll chat next week.

Boss Barista is a weekly newsletter and podcast series about workplace equity and employee empowerment in coffee and beyond. If you’re not already subscribed, welcome! I’m glad you found your way here. Before you go, sign up, will ya? Here’s a cute little button to make it easy:

If the following piece resonates with you, consider donating to my Patreon. Pledges of any size help me produce these stories, and your support is gratefully received.

If you’ve listened to this show before, you’ll know I love interviewing partners. Business partners, romantic partners, longtime friends and colleagues. I’m interested in the ways folks who spend a lot of time together reflect on each other, on their relationship, and on how they’ve both changed and grown in parallel.

Think of it like tasting a bunch of different coffees in a row. Alone, a coffee might exhibit one set of flavors. But when you taste multiple coffees side by side, the contrasts offer greater insight into what’s in the cup.

Likewise, partnerships have the power to clarify and sharpen individual traits, skills, and ideas. That’s certainly true of Kaleena Teoh and ChiSum Ngai (who goes by Sum), who are the co-founders of Coffee Project New York. Originally started as a small shop in the East Village in 2015, Coffee Project has expanded, and now comprises a number of retail stores, a roastery, and a Specialty Coffee Association-certified training lab. Sum is a Q grader, which means she’s passed rigorous tests to evaluate and taste coffees, and both Sum and Kaleena take their role as leaders seriously.

In this episode, we learn more about how their relationship to coffee, each other, and themselves has changed over time. Both Sum and Kaleena believe in the power of education, using Coffee Project as a space to bring customers into the coffee world. They also strive to build meaningful careers for their staff, which is why they’ve grown their business. But they still know the value of leading by example, and are always looking to learn and expand their knowledge base. Here are Sum and Kaleena.

Ashley: I was hoping to start with both of you introducing yourselves.

Sum: Hi, my name is Sum and I'm the co-founder of Coffee Project New York.

Kaleena: Hi, my name's Kaleena. I'm the other co-founder of Coffee Project New York.

Ashley: I was wondering if both of you could share some of your earliest memories of coffee. Let's start with you, Sum.

Sum: OK. My earliest memory of coffee. This has to go way back to when I was in Malaysia. Coffee in Malaysia is very cultural. It's not so much about drinking the coffee itself—it's more like an experience with your parents or going to hang out with your friends.

My first cup of coffee that I was dying to drink was actually when I was five. I literally had to beg—“Hey, can I get a cup of iced coffee?” That was the earliest memory I have of coffee. And ever since then, I've been hooked.

Ashley: What about you, Kaleena?

Kaleena: Well, my great-grandmother used to, back in Malaysia too, run a small little cart that sells rice dumplings. I remember we always had the rice dumpling with a cup of instant coffee, just black with sugar in it. I remember that's just how I ate them. I guess I started about the same age, about five or six.

Ashley: I love hearing stories of people drinking coffee in childhood because it almost seems mischievous in a way, like, “Hey, I want to drink that thing that the adults are drinking.” Then it just becomes a lifelong love.

Kaleena: Absolutely.

Ashley: How did you two meet?

Sum: That was also back in Malaysia. So Kaleena and I are college mates. We both were psychology majors and we were both enrolled in a mentorship program under UNICEF that mentors teenagers at schools that are a little bit underserved. So that's how we met over there, and I did two cycles.

What about you Kaleena?

Kaleena: I think I did two as well. This was way back! (Laughs) This was what? 15, 20 years—wait, 15 years ago.

Sum: Yeah, 15 years!

Kaleena: This was about 15 years ago. So we were both volunteer mentors. We met back then, but we were more like, “hi-bye” friends.

Sum: Then we met again in New York City because I came here for work, and she graduated from school, and since then we started seeing each other and now we are very much together.

Ashley: How would you describe the other? I feel like I admit this in every interview I do, but I love partnerships. I love people who are in some sort of either creative, romantic—whatever partnership, because I think that there's so much that one person can say about the other and I'm always interested in how people describe each other. So I was wondering Kaleena, could you describe Sum?

Sum: I was so scared you were going to direct that question to me, Ashley! (Laughs)

Ashley: Oh, you're going next.

Kaleena: You’re not running away from this!

Sum: Kaleena first!

Kaleena: Alrighty. So Sum is a really kind person. She’s probably one of the kindest people I've ever met. Our personality is similar in a way that we're both quite patient, but she's able to make decisions really quickly while I will take my time. I'll research. I'll do things rather slowly. So it's a nice little balance.

Sum: Hmm.

Kaleena: What do you think, Sum?

Ashley: Sum said some of this while we were waiting for you to finish up your phone call because I alluded to asking a couple of these questions and Sum was like, “Yeah, I make decisions fast and Kaleena stops and thinks about them.”

Kaleena: Yup!

Sum: For me, if I were to describe Kaleena, I think Kaleena will probably be all the parts that I'm missing. Like I mentioned, I do things really quickly. I'm really emotional. I like to do things with my emotions, like my heart. So she is the person who is going to help me think like, “Are you sure you really want to do it? Do you know the consequences? OK, you do? All right. Go for it.”

Kaleena: Yeah. That pretty much sums it up.

Ashley: I love that. So at what point did you two decide, “Hey, we want to open a coffee shop! Let's go for it.”

Kaleena: Well, that's going to be Sum’s story.

Sum: So we started Coffee Project New York in 2015. I think the final push [to open the shop was] because I was really tired from my previous job. I wanted to do something together with Kaleena that really belongs to us.

So our initial goal was just like, “Hey, maybe we can both quit our jobs and then start this coffee shop.” We're going to work six days—we're going to be closed one day [a week] so we can still rest. And then if we have to go back to Malaysia for vacation, we'll just close the store for three months.

(Pause)

Never happened.

Ashley: (Laughs) I was about to say—did that ever happen?

Sum: Yeah. It did not happen. The six days a week didn't happen. Vacation did not happen. We ended up working 365 [days], 14- to 16-hour shifts a day. But we were happy. We were very motivated to go to work. We had a good time and—I don't know. I feel like this is when I really truly lived. What do you think, Kaleena?

Kaleena: Yeah, no, absolutely. I feel like we were doing a project that we enjoyed, that both of us really enjoyed. And we got so much, I guess, advice from people saying that, “You guys are dating, you shouldn't be working together.” We just went against all that. We did it anyway. It worked, it worked—just so you know.

Ashley: I was about to say—so you mentioned that this was an idea that Sum had, so what was it like, Sum, when you first brought this idea up to Kaleena? Like, “Hey, this is a thing I want to do. Let's both quit our jobs and go do this thing.”

Sum: I was pretty surprised. Remember when I was saying that she's more of the brain, she's sitting down and thinking about things? But it didn't take as long to say yes. She was like, “Sure let's do it.”

Maybe she was also tired of me coming back from work and complaining about my life but doing nothing about it. It was very real for about three years or so. So when I finally made the decision, it's like, “I think I want to do coffee,” she's like, maybe in her heard she was like, “Finally you said it!”

Ashley: Kaleena, what did you feel when Sum came and said, “Hey, I want to do this thing?”

Kaleena: It was definitely a little bit of that [feeling of “finally!”], I'm not gonna lie. She would come home from her previous job really discouraged and really tired and really burnt out. She wanted to do something different and I really wanted to encourage that. And it just so happened that coffee is something that we both love. When she came up with the idea of opening a coffee shop, I just thought, “Yeah, let's do it.”

As we were planning, we realized that, “Oh, well I guess if both of us were working we can save on some labor costs,” and we were both in our twenties. I guess if this is a mistake, it's fine. We'll be OK if this fails and then we have to redo something else.

Ashley: You talked a little bit about those first couple of weeks or months when you were working 16-18-hour days and having this vision of, “Oh, we'll both work and have a day off and maybe one day we'll close up for three months and go on vacation.”

But it seems like you quickly learned that there was a lot more happening, a lot more that you had to do. So I was wondering what those first couple of months were like for both of you?

Sum: Pretty stressful. I think it's because of my nature, my personality, but I'm not someone who gets angry easily or gets agitated or stressed. I get stressed, but I'm not that loud [when I get] stressed. So it helps a lot with our relationship, especially [because] we’re so tired sometimes. So we might not be able to talk to each other much.

I think during that point of time we were both very compassionate towards each other. If I know Kaleena is tired then maybe I'll take care of certain things [and get them] out of her way. Kaleena knows that taking up calls and doing certain paperwork—it's not my game. She volunteers to do it. There's a lot of compromise and there's a lot of respect between both of us. Right now, if I were to think about it—if we can go through that period of time with 14 and 16 hours of harsh work, worrying about money and things, I don't think there’s anything we can’t go through.

Kaleena: Yeah, you’re right. I remember when we first started we—of course, we could only afford a really small storefront in the East Village on a side street. And of course, without visibility for any business, it's not good, especially at the very beginning. You’re built up towards getting a constant flow of customers [and] it’s definitely way slower on the side street.

Luckily we had neighbors who were really supportive on that street. Like Sum said, we were on our feet 14, 16 hours a day. You don't see a lot of customers coming in, you know you’re depleting your cash flow, you’re stressed and you're tired, but having the support of your neighbors—we had amazing neighbors back then.

These are people who have lived in the East Village for like 30, 40 years. They would come by, they would buy a cup of coffee and they'll sit in the shop and they'll tell you, “Hey, it's going to be OK, darling. You're going to be all right. People just need to know that you're here,” and that kind of helped keep us going in the very beginning. Do you remember that?

Sum: Yeah, I do. Some of them are still here and we still keep in touch. I remember the first time we launched our loyalty card program—because everyone in the neighborhood was doing it. And I started punching, punching the stamp for the regulars to come in and literally they would give the card back to me and said, “I'm not taking this until you have made your first dollar.”

I was so touched. And I'm like, “You know what, if I ever make my first dollar, your coffee's going to be on me for a month.” But that is how we went through it the first few months.

Ashley: When did you start to see a turning point? Because you're talking about 2015 and those first couple of months and the struggle of opening a coffee shop, but we're in 2021 and you have multiple shops. You have a roastery. You have an SCA training lab. There's a lot happening at Coffee Project. So I have to imagine there was a point where the momentum started.

Sum: The turning point for the first shop happened pretty quickly, because we’ve had all these loving people who come into the shop and hang out. So people starting to notice us, like when they pass by, “Oh, it's a coffee shop,” and people started coming in.

But the real turning point for us to decide on how our expansion [would go] I think happened in 2016 when we had our first [wave of] turnovers. We had staff back then— three full-time, very good staff members, people we're still keeping in touch with right now. But at that point in time, everybody needed to do something else, like leave New York City, go get another job that pays better with growth, and go back to school.

So we realized that maybe for us both, we were content with just a shop and we're making money, but for a lot of people, they're looking to pursue more in coffee and grow.

I realized that things have to change. So I took my cue during that time because if I were to lead a group of people who really want and love coffee, then I have to lead by example. That's when I told Kaleena, “Maybe we can both start to get really serious about coffee education, brewing coffee, bringing in pour-over, and answering questions that our customers have…” I think that was a time we realized that things had to change.

Ashley: That's really interesting because I've only heard so many people cite the needs of their staff as a reason for growing and expanding. Because I imagine, you work in retail, you probably hear people talk about growth all the time, or what they need to do to turn over that next step.

But I think really responsible growth happens for a reason. You need to build better jobs for your staff or you have to address how busy your coffee shop is or something like that. I was wondering if you could talk a little more about that decision because it's not evident that that would be the thing that you have to do, right? You could have just said, “Oh, this is a coffee shop that's for us. We want to keep it small. And we're OK with people staying here as long as they need. And that's all right.”

Sum: I'm so glad you asked this question, Ashley. So I'm going to start with both of us. Honestly, if we only had one shop and we really went with that direction of having [high] turnaround of human resources and we kept training and all—it is actually less stressful and a lot easier to handle.

But we met so many wonderful people when we were opening. When we were opening Coffee Project New York, the people who would come into Coffee Project to be a barista, they were all great people who really believed in coffee being their career and were not just there to pay the bills. It changed my mind a little bit about why I wanted to do coffee.

It also changed my mind a little bit about how I can be part of the journey for them to make coffee as a career, because a lot of our baristas struggle to tell their parents or their family, “Hey, I'd like to do coffee. I think coffee is my thing,” but everyone is worried about, if you're a coffee person or you're a barista, you can't afford to pay bills or you can't afford this and that. I want to change that, Ashley.

I want them to be able to do the things they love to do, to be very proud on the competition stage, and at the same time afford a car, afford an apartment, eventually go on vacation. So this is my dream for Coffee Project. That's how I feel about it—the growth.

Ashley: I love that you also were able to talk about how that changed your mind too, because like you said, it's not evident. It's not evident, especially when you open a business for the first time and you have this vision of what it's going to be. “Hey, me and my partner are gonna open a coffee shop. That's going to be a place where we can quit our jobs and find a little bit more happiness even if we're working hard.”

And then to see things happen and be like, “Oh, I need to change my perspective. Or maybe the way that I thought about something isn't actually what I'm seeing in front of me. How do I respond to this?” And you responded really strongly—you have a training lab, you have a roastery, and I imagine that those things weren't in the plans when you first opened.

Sum: No, it was not in the plan. And one thing that I think Kaleena and I are really proud of for the team at Coffee Project is that as a company, up to now, every single [person who has a] position in the company that is not a barista, they all started as a barista at Coffee Project. So we have the tech person who was a barista—still a barista! We have our production lead, who is also a barista moving into learning how to roast from us. And then we have our operations manager, we have the store manager…everybody starts as a barista at Coffee Project and they know how to get things done and grow along with the culture, the company culture. So it's just something that Kaleena and I are proud of.

Ashley: As Coffee Project has grown, you've added more positions, you've added more branches, now you're roasting, you have an operations manager. What have you learned about yourselves as leaders? Was that a difficult transition for either of you?

Kaleena: I think, generally, not really. In the past, our previous experience, we volunteered in mentoring programs. I don't know about you, Sum, but back in school, I did a lot of activities, planning activities and stuff. I guess in my life, I've been doing things like this, but as a shop owner, that’s when it comes to the point where you realize that you have to be the leader of a company and this company no longer just comprises of you and Sum, like me and Sum.

I guess it takes me longer to let that sink in. But after I realized, “OK, now we have a team,” and now we just have to get things done. From that point onwards, it's just pretty much launched, and I don’t think it was a very difficult transition for me.

What do you think?

Sum: Sometimes I self-reflect a little bit about what is my style of leading a company. I think a lot of things have changed for me. I’ve learned how to listen a lot more compared to just leading. I’ve also learned how to follow. I think this is really important for me right now.

Back when I started Coffee Project, I had my ideals, I had my goals. I'm very persistent about certain things being done [a certain way]. But if I didn't listen to what the customer wanted, I probably would not be able to step out of whatever I’ve built earlier and I would be just so fixated on doing what I think, and visualizing what Coffee Project is—oh, it’s an espresso bar without drip coffee, it's just going to be pourovers, very strict, very pure. But I listened to what the neighborhood wanted. They wanted a shop where they can hang out and not be judged for drinking certain coffees and things like that.

As the team grew, I think for me, the listening part became even more important. Because once we had a team, Kaleena and I stepped away a little bit more from being in front of the shop. We were no longer stuck behind the bar pulling shots all day long because we had to be more of a planner. We’re not there as often anymore, but we don't, we're not there as a team anymore. So listening became even more important.

You have to listen to your team to tell you like, “Hey, this is how it should probably be,” or, “It would be helpful if we have this, dah, dah, dah…” Yeah. So for me, it just switched from being so fixated on what I want to do to just opening up and listening to what people want.

Ashley: That’s really interesting about mentorship, which I thought was a really interesting analogy to being a leader, because I don't think a lot of people would make that jump. I don't think people would say, “I've mentored people before and I've helped them be successful in their own lives or figure out a path for themselves. Therefore, I have experience in leadership.” I don't think everybody would say that leadership is in a way really like mentoring folks.

Kaleena: It is. I personally think it is because like, for example, in the company, when we are doing certain things or coming up with certain roles or having to fill certain positions, we always try to align our goal with the individual’s goal.

If you're heading in the same direction as your team members, then I feel like it's a win-win situation. They enjoy the work that they're doing and you, on the other hand, you know you're growing your company in a direction that you wanted it to grow.

We're still—I don't know if Sum mentioned to you—we're working with You Boston, which is sort of like a youth group. We're just sort of continuing that mentorship thing. We're not working as mentors, but now we're training young individuals on coffee skills to hopefully help them launch an early career or get a foot in starting in the coffee world. That’s just what we do, huh?

Ashley: Education is a big part of your business model in general—you opened that SCA training center. When I talked to Sum for the Matchbook Coffee Project podcast, we talked a lot about customers being able to enter the coffee shop and not feel like they needed all this experience in coffee or this knowledge about coffee to come order something from you folks and to learn about coffee. So has education always been part of your model?

Sum: When we started, maybe not—because ultimately, I just wanted to serve a cup of good coffee. But as we grew, I realized that education is important in a way that it provides us a platform to standardize a lot of things.

Kaleena will be able to explain a little bit more how education has helped us train our baristas for consistency. I think it's just having a ground for us to train, even if it's not the SCA standard. It gives us the protocol on what to do with our training.

Kaleena: Ashley, when you're asking about the question, what came to mind was a little different. I was thinking more on when we launched our deconstructed latte, we wanted to be able to share—I guess our love for coffee in a very friendly way.

A deconstructed latte is just like the word suggests: There is a shot of espresso, there's steamed milk, and then there's a latte at the end. We realized that a lot of people who are not in coffee are not very familiar with espresso. We had people who will drink lattes for days and never had a shot of espresso. So it's very hard for people to appreciate [that] a good shot of espresso comes from good-quality beans and good skills from the barista. I guess that was our first step in trying to not educate, but more to share knowledge, to let people know that, “Hey, if you have good-quality beans, you have good baristas, you’re going to be able to enjoy a really good cup of coffee.”

It’s not always been a bed of roses. When we started the shop, we would have people come in—or rather open the door, since it's a very small shop—they opened the door and they saw two Asian women standing behind the bar, and then they just closed the door and left, and it didn't just happen once.

At that point in time, what we felt was if we want to say something about coffee and have people, I guess, respect what we’re saying, the first thing that we can do is to educate ourselves. And like Sum said, to lead by example, which encouraged her to take the Q grading exam, and she became a Q grader. I feel like that's how we launched into education. And then we realized that people will come in, a lot of team members from different coffee backgrounds have different standards because different shops are doing things differently.

And that's absolutely OK. But what we realized was, if we can create a space that provides a certain standard—like we have an SCA lab and SCA has their standards. But that will work as a basis for [saying things like,] “Let's talk about espresso, and these are the things that you need to know because these are SCA standards, but if you want to do something else, you also have the background knowledge of explaining why you're not following the standards or why your specs are out of the standards.”

It's just creating a language where we can communicate with everyone.

Ashley: It’s almost like learning the rules so you can break them later.

Kaleena: Exactly.

Ashley: I was wondering—I'm gonna ask you a very broad question, so feel free to answer it any way that you see fit—but how do you approach coffee?

Sum: How do you approach coffee … so what do you mean by how do I approach coffee?

Ashley: In a way, because you folks do kind of everything—you roast, you source, you have retail shops, you have a wholesale program—so I imagine with such a big umbrella, you have to think about some pretty big ideas.

Sum: Oh, so I got you now. So I think I'm very flexible with what I get for coffee. When I have my hands on any coffee, I want to be as creative as possible with it, which is why with my Matchbook release, Ashley, I picked a coffee I've never had before, haven't seen before, because I felt like it will allow me to be really creative with that.

So my push for coffee is I want to usually just learn what this coffee is first, by taking whatever measurement I can, learn the terroir and the farm. After that, we will go totally crazy on it. On my last birthday, my team got me a rum barrel, a used rum barrel, because they thought that, “I think Sum will appreciate this.” So what I'm going to do is I might throw a bunch of coffees into it and I'm going to age them, and I'm going to be roasting it with the team, just for fun and to see how it tastes.

Ashley: I love that people were like, “Oh, Sum is going to like this rum barrel, this is the present that we've thought of for Sum.”

Sum: Yeah. I literally walked into the barrel and then they were like—I think they were trying to surprise me, but the barrel is so big and I saw it right away.

Ashley: How did that coffee end up tasting?

Sum: We haven't done it yet. In fact, it's still in progress because I think we have to age it for at least three weeks to see if it's going to absorb anything from the rum, if there's anything left in the rum barrel for us to take actually.

Ashley: So let's talk a little bit about the future, because I think we've set a pretty good foundation for why Coffee Project started, how Coffee Project has changed, but that there's still so much happening with you folks. So I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about what the future looks like for you?

Sum: Short-term goals, I think for me, I just hope that our wholesale program can expand, because we would really love to see more coffee shops carry us and share our story with their people. That being said, when we have more wholesale clients, I will have the ability and the purchasing power to support farms and producers that I would love to have a relationship with. So this is my short-term goal.

The long-term goal, obviously, as I mentioned earlier, I wish that everyone who is here with Coffee Project can afford a vacation, afford a car, afford an apartment, or do whatever they want to do at the same time as being in coffee. Small steps for us. Do we want more coffee shops? I think the answer will be yes, because we have a training facility. So we are hoping that we can create a training program that also does part of what Kaleena mentioned, mentorship. Like when you graduate from our program, we can send you to some of the retail stores that we have, and then you would continue to be a barista there, sharpen your skills.

And eventually, if you fall in love with handling that shop, maybe you can even be a partner or things like that. So it’s all in the plan, and I hope that it would happen.

Kaleena: I don’t know if we should mention it, but Project Noir is happening.

Sum: Right, I totally forgot about that.

So let's talk about Project Noir. So our team of baristas are really creative. They always like to do creative drinks, but we don't really have a liquor license. So they can't really play around too much with alcohol. But some of us are actually interested to compete in Coffee in Good Spirits.

So to create that stage for them, we were lucky enough to partner up with Chris Dunlop—I'm not very familiar with their previous title but he is very well-versed in bartending and has been in this industry for a very, very long time. So we partnered up and started Project Noir, and it's going to be coming hopefully in a month and then we'll have a liquor license. We'll be able to have a ground for our baristas to train for Coffee in Good Spirits, and maybe we can send some people to compete.

Ashley: So I'm going to come back to some of the things that we talked about and maybe push you a little bit further again—because I'm very, very interested in partnerships and how people change and grow and evolve as time passes.

I was wondering how your relationship with each other has changed, or maybe deepened, since being business partners. I have to imagine it's very different to go from, “We're together! We're partners in one way,” to then jump into a totally different relationship with each other. I wonder—what does that look like for either of you? I'm gonna start with Kaleena.

Kaleena: I think after we worked together, I think we trust each other a little bit more. I mean, we generally are quite trusting. I feel like working together really did build that trust a lot. I think it helped nourish that trust. We're quite mellow in personality, so we don't argue much, but we can be really honest with each other in terms of if I think something is a bad idea, I will let her know. And then, of course, we will each defend our points and then come to a conclusion. We’re able to come to a conclusion on most things.

Ashley: What about you, Sum?

Sum: (Pause) Being in the same location for work and at the same time, living together, makes me understand her personality even more. I get to gauge what are the things that she likes to do and what she is good at. There’s a lot of respect, even though we're at work or at home, being respectful has always been something that we don't take for granted, and we respect each other's time.

So I guess for me, what has changed is just me understanding Kaleena a lot more compared to when we were not working together. Yeah. And I know when she's saying “Sum, buzz off,” as well. (Laughs)

Ashley: I think something that's interesting about listening to the two of you speak to each other is how often you both check in with each other—how often you asked for the other person's opinion or, “Hey, what do you think?” Which I have to imagine is partially just due to the strength of your relationship, but probably also comes from the fact that you do own a business together and you have to check in with each other all the time.

Sum: We’re also very comfortable sometimes just making a decision on each other's behalf if it is not something that's related to a lot of money or what's for dinner. (Laughs) Because that is something that we have to discuss. I'm very comfortable with Kaleena making decisions for me, just as sometimes I would just make a certain decision for her as well. I think it's just a level of trust that we've built throughout.

Ashley: That makes sense. I think that one of the places that I worked at a long time ago, one of the things that just hampered any growth or progress was a lack of trust. So no one could make small decisions without checking in with everybody because no one trusted each other. So I like that you pointed that out too. Partially because trust is super important, but partially because there are some decisions that are really not that important. What you eat for dinner is maybe not that important. Do you know what I mean?

Do you want this cutting board or this cutting board for the pastries in your coffee shop? Maybe not that important—I don't know. Maybe that is very important. But I think that there is a power to being able to say, “I don't need to weigh in on this. That is fine.” And knowing when the other person maybe is like, “OK, I think Kaleena would be OK if I did this,” or “I think Sum would trust me to make this decision and know that I'm going to make the best decision for the business, even if maybe that's not the decision that they would make at that moment.”

Sum: Wow. I love the last part that you said. A lot of times, a lot of people will sit on trying to make a decision—they’ll hesitate. I make decisions very, very quickly because I feel like any of the decisions that you're making at that point in time, it's always going to be the best decision you've made given the circumstances at that moment—you will never try to make a decision that's going to jeopardize yourself.

I will not beat myself up if my decision is not as good, and I realize it two days later because, at that point in time, it is the best decision that I've made.

Kaleena: I think you also apply that principle, not just in business, but to our team members too, because if someone were to make a mistake, we trust that they didn't do it on purpose and that they were making the best decision they can at that point of time.

Ashley: That's incredibly important to think about when you think about having employees too, because I think it's easy for leaders to be like, “Oh, you did a thing that I would not have done and now I'm mad at you,” but instead you're like, “You made a decision that you thought was best and that's OK if it was a mistake because I know that your intention was right. So how can we talk about this so that the next time your decision is maybe different, or I can try to understand what you were thinking about, so that we can come together and make a decision together that makes more sense?”

I think that that's super powerful and that's a trait not to be ignored.

Sum: If that were to happen, we shouldn't leave them alone to take care of their circumstances. We have to go with them because essentially, they failed to do their job because you failed to guide them.

Ashley: What do you want people to know about you listening to this?

Sum: I think maybe Coffee Project New York can jump out a little bit more than just being a retail shop. I would like people to learn a little bit more about us as a roaster. We have a wholesale program, we are trying to expand our wholesale accounts and share our coffee story. What about you, Kaleena?

Kaleena: I was just going to say we're a pretty cool company.

(Pause, then laughs)

If we have any openings, and you’re looking for a job, join us! We’re very inclusive!

Sum: That’s true!

Ashley: Thank you both so much for joining me. This has been such a fun conversation and I really appreciate your time.

Sum and Kaleena: Thanks, Ashley.

This interview was lightly edited for clarity. Photo courtesy of Emilee Bryant.

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I first met Brian Gaffney while working at an unobtrusive coffee shop in Brooklyn called Daily Press. This wasn’t the kind of place you’d go out of your way to visit—it was located right on a busy street in the southeast corner of Bed-Stuy—and mostly, it attracted folks who lived locally.

Instead, the fact that it was a neighborhood spot made Daily Press what it was. Almost every customer was a regular, someone who at least one of the baristas had built a relationship with. I remember Brian distinctly—he was friendly with everyone. He worked out of the shop pretty often, and was always curious about the types of coffee we were pouring.

Although Brian doesn’t work in the coffee industry as we traditionally think of it—he even describes his relationship to the industry as being “coffee-adjacent”—he’s continued to pursue his interest, writing about coffee for publications like Standart and serving on the board of the Coffee Coalition for Racial Equity (CCRE).

In this conversation, we revisit our nine-year-long friendship and discuss how to find ways to connect with customers. I continue to come back to this phrase that I think James Hoffmann, owner of Square Mile Coffee and former podcast guest, said once—one you’ll hear in this episode—that coffee is bad at telling its own story. Brian’s background is in marketing and brand strategy, so we talk about what it means for coffee people to take ownership of their own narratives.

But we’re not just talking about coffee shop owners when we say “coffee people.” When it comes to coffee’s narratives, Black and Brown people are all too often left out of the equation, even though their labor, both historically and today, continues to be the backbone of our entire industry—and yet the stories and ways we talk about coffee center affluent, white consumers. Brian and I discuss what a coffee industry led by Black and Brown people could look like, and how centering the perspective of the laborers in coffee has the potential to completely rewrite the industry’s future—and reverse the descent into sameness we seem to be experiencing now. Here’s Brian.

Ashley: We have known each other for almost a decade, which is wild.

Brian: I know—I'm so used to seeing you hanging out on Franklin Avenue, right near Atlantic Avenue. And that was the spot where we met and where we used to hang out. So even though we're now states and time zones apart, it's great to see you.

Ashley: I know, it's so great to see you, and it's so great to see you continuing to be part of the coffee industry and to be so active.

So I want to backtrack a little bit—I'd like to start at the very beginning with folks. I was wondering if you could tell me about some of your first memories of coffee.

Brian: Absolutely. My very first memory of coffee is sitting in my paternal grandmother's kitchen—Edna Gaffney was her name—and I'm certain that it was a brand of instant coffee. I'm certain that it came with sweetened condensed milk and I'm certain that it was served in those pink melamine cups.

And I remember that it was—which I didn't realize then—it was of course more milk than it was coffee, but that's my very first experience with coffee. And the one that is greatly imprinted on me.

After that, I remember being a professional in New York after moving here from Atlanta and doing some of the Starbucks runs, as one does, in between meetings at work. But the real genesis, the beginning of my love affair with specialty coffee started in my neighborhood in Clinton Hill, in Brooklyn. There's a little French bistro place called Choice Market and the barista there was Rafael.

I would always go in and get coffee and I'd add cream and sugar before I tasted the coffee. So I'd add it and then I would taste it after I added everything in. One day, Rafael said to me, “Brian, you always come in and add milk and sugar before you taste the coffee. So do you do that with your food? Do you add salt and pepper before you taste it?”

I said, “No Rafael.”

He said, “Okay, so don't do that with the coffee, just taste it. And then if you don't like it, add the milk and sugar.” I took him up on it, and that was really the beginning of my experience in specialty.

Ashley: It's funny hearing that story condensed into one anecdote versus what I would imagine was weeks, months of coming in every day and building trust and building a relationship. I think that it could seem a little jarring to be like, “Oh, that guy called you right out.” He was like, “You don't season your food before you try it. Why would you do that with your coffee?”

But when you think about how the relationship between you and Rafael was built, it's kind of the classic story of how we build trust with customers, which is really cool. It was that moment of trust that really brought you in.

Brian: You're absolutely right. There were months of me stopping in, grabbing coffee, him sending a madeleine or madeleines home for me to bring to the kids in the evening, where we did build the trust.

We got to, “Hello, how are you?” We got past just knowing each other on a first-name basis, him knowing my beverage before he approached me with that question. And you're absolutely right. It became the relationship, and because of the trust that we built in the relationship, that's what really gave him and granted him the permission to ask that question of me and for me to hear it without taking offense.

Ashley: Do you remember that first sip of coffee without cream or sugar?

Brian: I absolutely do. I absolutely do. It was bittersweet. And as a matter of fact, not only that, but I remember they were serving Intelligentsia at the time, and it was Intelligentsia’s El Diablo dark roast, and I just sipped it.

And the first thing I remember: It was hot, and that's when he also warned me to say, “Let it cool first.” The other thing that, which makes perfect sense, he reminded me is that part of adding the milk and the sugar also cools the temperature of the coffee. When you don't add anything, you need to wait a little bit longer. I hung on for a little bit because I wanted to taste it while I was there with him. I tasted it and it was bittersweet, but it was bitter in a rich way.

I'm also a huge dark chocolate lover—70+% cacao. It smarted a little bit, it had presence and it was naturally sweet. That was, I remember the first time he asked me about that—this natural sweetness in coffee to the point now—and now we're 14, 15 years from that first experience—I do note the natural sweetness of coffee. And so if you add something to it, it's not even that it tastes bad. It just doesn't taste like the natural sweetness of coffee.

Ashley: Oh, that's so interesting. I love that observation.

How do we know each other?

Brian: We know each other from Brooklyn. You know, it's funny, my roommate from college was from Brooklyn and he referred to Brooklyn as a planet.

We met at a point in my life where I was finishing up grad school. I was studying for a graduate degree in branding from the School of Visual Arts and Daily Press was a coffee shop [that] interestingly enough, also served Intelligentsia at that time.

Even then I was looking for what roasters [a shop carried] because I was developing a relationship with the roasters, and that's what led me to Daily Press. And you were there. So I was coming in, I was writing papers for school, ultimately getting to the point of working on my thesis project, and Daily Press became my third place. Yes, I came for great coffee, but I came for great company and I came to hang out and that's where you and I got to know each other up to and including the first cupping that you held there—that was also my first cupping, and my wife's first cupping. And that was really cool.

Ashley: I totally forgot that you were at that. I totally forgot that I even had that cupping!

But I remember being so excited to host an event like that. I think maybe you and your wife are the only two customers that were there because we held it at a weird time. It was nighttime. I think it was right as the store was closing, but it was all the baristas, and I think one of my roasting friends, this guy named Todd, and then you and your wife, so it felt like such an intimate and small gathering of people. It was really lovely.

Brian: That's such a perfect word. It was lovely. It was small and it was intimate and it felt safe. So I could explore—I didn't have to be intimidated because again, you think about cupping and you think about a lot of the stated protocols, the way you're supposed to slurp, right? The kinds of observations, the kinds of nomenclature that you're supposed to use to describe tasting notes, but there wasn't any of that pretense there.

It felt like a really cool place and time to taste a bunch of different coffees and see what they were, see what you like, see what you didn't and why and talk about it. I think because of the way that you hosted that first one—again, part of building that relationship—because I think even then I'd been coming for a few months before you hosted that first one. So it felt like a good place to come and a good experience to have.

And it was! We had a ball and I've been cupping coffee pretty consistently since then.

Ashley: It's incredible to see you continuing this journey into coffee because I think very rarely we get to see the reward of building trust with customers. Part of that is because we're not great at telling coffee’s story, which is something I definitely want to talk about, especially with your experience in branding and marketing.

But I want to talk about Daily Press a little bit more because I was wondering what made that—besides maybe the relationship that you were building with customers or with baristas—what made that your place?

Brian: Yeah, it's a great question.

What made it my place is the proximity to home. I could walk to Daily Press, so it was easy to get there. It was the fact that I knew the coffee because at that point Choice Market was no longer brewing Intelligentsia—they'd moved to a different brand and you all were brewing it. So I knew the coffee, got to know the place, then I got to know the space.

I remember being there relatively recently after it opened, meeting the owners, hearing what they wanted to do with the beverages. And then I remember the chocolate chip cookies. I think these chocolate chip cookies, the dough was being flown in from Philly and they were the most amazing chocolate chip cookies. If you got them right out of the oven, they were just warm, they'd melt in your hand on your way to your mouth.

That with a really beautifully brewed cup of coffee, that was perfect. I could stay in my neighborhood, have a fantastic experience, feel safe, and it'd be really easy, comfortable, and relaxed. And then just make my way back home.

Ashley: It's funny, those cookies, as you mentioned them, I'm both delighted because they were that delicious, but also having flashbacks of having to order these massive amounts of cookies and find spaces for them to be frozen because you're right—we had to get them in from Philadelphia. Someone had to go to Philadelphia to get them and have to come back with just hundreds of frozen cookies. And eventually, we stopped the charade. We're like, “We can't do this anymore.”

Have you ever had the chocolate chip cookies at Culture Espresso?

Brian: No, no, I’m putting that on my list.

Ashley: Oh, OK. You have to go to Culture on 38th and 6th Avenue. I used to work there in 2014 and we baked cookies fresh. As we’d take them out, people would just start lining up for cookies. For a while, we were basically a cookie place that sometimes serves coffee.

Before we got on the air, you were talking about how Daily Press was your place and that you haven't really made another place since then, which I think is really interesting—how much of the things we find comfortable and the things that we build attachments to are almost just lost to time. Like it just never happens again. It [doesn’t naturally happen] to just build another home or another space.

I was wondering why that is? Why maybe you haven't found another place? Or what about other coffee shops that you've gone to that just hasn't been … like, “This isn't my place,” or, “This isn't the place that I want to sit at for hours and talk to customers and talk to baristas,” you know?

Brian: Sure. I think a couple of things happen. One of them is that I started working in the city. At that time when I was finishing grad school, I was actually working in Brooklyn.

In July of 2012, I started working in the city. Part of my entire life orientation shifted from going from Brooklyn into Manhattan as opposed to being in Brooklyn. As a result, my ability to hit the coffee shop during the week went away. But at the same time, quite frankly, and again, I think I was there for a while and then you ended up changing and going from one coast to the next and I really am a relationship-based person.

I don't necessarily have tons of relationships. I think that I do small numbers of relationships really, really well. And so it's kind of—Ashley left, life has shifted. And at that point, I was learning so much. Part of what happened is my coffee relationship ended up following my spirits relationship a little bit in that when I found something that I liked in the spirits industry, instead of necessarily going to a bar, I would just buy it and have it at home.

So that way, the economics on it are far better. And then I can also explore, so the same way I can kind of explore coffee, I can do it with spirits. Since quarantine, I've been doing that quite a bit with mescal—mescal is kind of the spirit that I've been exploring a lot.

I ended up getting kicked off of the kitchen counter at home from buying equipment. I went from my Cuisinart 12-cup coffee maker with the grinder to buying my first Capresso grinder, buying my French press, buying my Chemex, buying a pour-over set … I remember I was part of Fellow’s first Kickstarter for the Stagg kettle.

Having watched what you did, watched what Rafael did, and being able to take some of those practices and try them at home, I also learned I'm very much a drip coffee person as opposed to an espresso-based person. I'm able to try these different methods, try different coffees. And for me, the experimentation is trying different coffees from different roasters, from different varietals, from different countries of origin … to explore and play gave me the ability to do that at home, based on the knowledge I learned, and enabled me to make home the place.

My office is in Midtown Manhattan. When I'm in the city, I would go to the Blue Bottle by Bryant Park. I go by Black Fox that opened on 45th, and I would go by Taylor Street. So these became the places where I would stop by and maybe say a quick hello and have a cup of coffee, but I wouldn't sit and linger the way that I used to when I would come to Daily Press.

Ashley: I think it's pretty rare for a customer to be as engaged as you are. I was wondering what about coffee drew you in? How did you decide that this was the thing that you wanted to explore more? Because as I mentioned, it's really hard to get customers to care as much as you do. Seeing that you're still here and you're even more engaged is so rewarding and empowering. I was wondering what kept you interested?

Brian: I'll be honest, I've had the benefit of baristas who didn't make me feel like they were the smartest person in the room and that I was dumb for not knowing as much as they did. I've had the gift of, as baristas learned, there was a sharing. With you in the cupping, you were sharing what you knew, what you learned as opposed to, “Hey, this is what I know, and this is what you don't.”

When I'm greeted with excitement and enthusiasm and the opportunity to explore, that can become contagious. As you would prepare a beverage to talk about the coffee, the conversation didn't stop with you. The same thing with Rafael, it wasn't about what he necessarily did with the beverage, but he was facilitating this experience that I was having with the coffee. So it enabled me to be more curious, to learn more, to learn about the origins, where they're coming from, to learn about the different kinds of roasts that exist.

Ryan Suh from Blue Bottle at Bryant Park, sorry, not Bryant Park. This was earlier than that … at Rockefeller Center when—it would be so cool—I'd go in the mornings to grab that morning cup of coffee. Because I typically have a morning cup and an afternoon cup and Ryan would be good. He'd share with me, “Hey Brian, this is coming in, we were doing some sample roasting on this coffee. This is something I want you to check out.” So he would let me know, “This is something new and different that you might be interested in.”

[We had these interactions] because it was relationship-based, right? It's about people, it's not about the beverage or the cup. It's about curiosity and the sharing of information and learning together. For me, that just became part of the motivation, and I wanted to continue that learning and that exploration journey on my own. And now, because of the benefit of social media, et cetera, it's really easy to go down as many rabbit holes as you'd like to learn what's available from whom, and what you might like to try.

Ashley: I mean, it's not just experimentation though that you've engaged with. You've written about coffee, you're on the board for the Coffee Coalition for Racial Equity. You are perhaps even more engaged than some baristas. How did you see your role in coffee as you continue to learn and you continue to engage and you started accessing these new networks?

Brian: There's an analogy that I sometimes use where I feel like coffee producers are like artists, singers, songwriters, and baristas are like DJs, and the best DJs turn you on to people that you like. As I started exploring more and more about coffee—if you think about wine, if you think about the farm-to-table movement in food—I just didn't see enough [in coffee] about the producers themselves.

On top of that, when you start to think about the fact that in the majority of coffee-producing countries, we're talking about Black and Brown people, and they just seem to be invisible, right? When you step into the coffee shop and you don't necessarily see that, “Okay, this is coming from Latin America, it's coming from certain parts of Asia, it's coming from Africa.” You don't see that.

I really became curious then about the history of coffee, which immediately takes you into structures of colonialism, slavery, and the use of enslaved labor to produce coffee, particularly when you start talking about Brazil, et cetera … realizing that there was not simply a culinary connection, but there was a historical and a cultural connection that I could have to coffee.

I talk about—and I can't remember what year it was published—but there was the book, Stuff White People Like, and I think the number one thing in that book was that it talked about an overpriced cup of coffee. I realized, “How is it that there's this product that's gone from Ethiopia to Yemen to the rest of the world that has been produced by hands of color, and yet many people of color don't even connect or associate with it?”

That was another motivator for me to the point where now, even as much as there are certain roasters that I really do like a lot and I buy from consistently, I also look a lot at producers. I actually buy [based on] producers and producers guide me to different roasters.

That's part of the article that I wrote for Standart, which was to show that “here you have this family in Huila, Colombia producing this particular varietal.” And it's me over the course of a year, following this particular varietal to different routes to about 10, 11 different roasters around the world. Just to show that, yes, consumers and customers do care that much, right? We are interested in those stories. We do want those stories to be told, but not in an imposing, demanding way. It’s an opportunity to see [the relationship between barista and coffee] that as the DJ is spinning this record, that he or she is sharing with us. When they first discovered this artist and how it made them feel, their excitement about it, that makes you want to listen to it. That's the way that coffee has become for me.

Ashley: I find that answer to be so fascinating because I think that … coffee's so roaster-centric, right? We follow roasters—even in the beginning, you were following roasters. You were like, “I'm going to go to this place because they have Intelligentsia,” because that's how we sell coffee. We sell coffee as this branded item for roasters, but then we also pad on this layer of, “Oh, but look at the good work we do with producers, pat us on the back, we're doing a nice job.”

But then going backward on that and saying, “Wait, let me actually talk to the producers who made this coffee and see who are the people that they like to sell to. And who's actually telling their story authentically,” is so interesting. We should be better at telling that story, but the fact that you had to go do that yourself to figure out who to buy from is wild to me.

So as a person with a marketing and a brand strategy background, diagnose the coffee industry—right now, just diagnose it all!

But what are some of the things that you think we could be doing better as an industry? And I know that that's a very open-ended question, so maybe we can break that down a little bit into some parts. As you look at our industry, as we look at us as storytellers trying to bring these stories of producers to light, where are we failing?

Brian: If I can ask you to stick with a music analogy for a little bit, I think specialty in particular spends some time singing to the choir. I think the industry spends a lot of time talking to itself. I don't mean to suggest that those things aren't important, because they are—however, if the goal is to grow the consumer base and get more people interested in it, then that journey looks very different than the journey of what we think is important.

As an example, do I really care as a consumer what points a coffee scores? I understand that that's an important buying criterion, but as the person standing across the counter, unless I'm of a certain level of engagement—whether it's an 84, 85, 87, 90—I mean, it's interesting, maybe if you buy wine and you're familiar with the wine points scoring, maybe?

Again, I'll go back to the first time at the Blue Bottle in Rockefeller Center, it was the first time I ever had a Kenyan coffee and Ryan brewed it for me. And he said, before I tasted it, he said, “Brian, smell it.”

He said, “What do you smell?” And I tried to describe it. He said, “If I say tomato soup, do you get that?” And he said it, and I smelled it again, I was like, “Ryan, I never would have said that, but you're absolutely right. I can smell it.” I tasted it and it didn't carry through to the flavor, you don't taste tomato soup, but the idea that he introduced me to the coffee via this note, and it was a shared experience that he and I had, I think it's that kind of thing.

It's genuinely connecting with consumers, not trying to sell me on what you want me to know about coffee, what you think I should know about coffee, but it's inviting me into the experience so that I can just appreciate it and enjoy it, right? It's not so much that consumers need to appreciate specialty coffee, but help us to enjoy it.

Help us to start a dialogue with the coffee, and then that dialogue with the coffee is what will help to increase the dialogue that we have when we're in the cafe. So finding and inviting consumers to participate in the conversation, helping us to be more curious is I think part of what is missing.

As I think about it again, that analogy of the music industry, the way that works in my head is I almost think of the roasters as labels, right? There was a time when Atlantic had a very specific sound, Motown had a specific sound, Arista had a specific sound—but we're now at a point where labels kind of facilitate that. But even in music, just as record labels are wrestling with what they're doing, I think coffee roasters are as well.

I think some are doing it really, really well. I think one of the brands that I started buying from is George Howell—[they] put the farmer front and center where they belong, and from the packaging you get that vibe … I've been buying George Howell’s Mamuto, the Kenyan coffee that he roasts from the Mathagu family. That was really the first coffee I ever had where I cared to learn more about the story of the producer.

And then, quite frankly, George Howell introduced me to another Colombian producer—Mauricio Shattah in Tomila, and the farm, Finca La Negrita, and I started buying his coffees. It got to the point where literally, Ashley, I learned about Mauricio Shattah and wanted to find more of his coffees.

I had a chance to talk to George Howell at a coffee event in New York. He shared with me that he sourced his coffees from Caravela. And then I ended up reaching out to Alejandro Cadena, the CEO of Caravela, and now Alejandro has become a friend and mentor for me. We've developed a relationship where he's helped me to understand, he's helped to feed that curiosity. He's helped me to understand as a consumer what this process is, what it takes to get coffee from trees into our cups.

As the coffee industry does that—facilitates that relationship with the producer, be the value add, be able to be a platform for this, and not be the end-all, be-all—I think you'll generate far greater, far more loyal and curious consumers that will be far better for the business and for the industry than we are today.

Ashley: It seems like for you, it was literally just the extension of knowledge that kept building these connections, which I'm trying to imagine visually … It's almost like connecting the dots, which seems a little bit simplistic to use that analogy, but it literally is like—George gave you a nugget of knowledge and then you build that connection between the two of you, and then it keeps going and it keeps extending outward. It seems like your coffee story is really about this building of connections in a way.

Brian: It absolutely is. It’s about when you're holding that cup in your hand, and then you realize, “Okay, great, it's a cup of coffee,” but if you, just for a moment, think about it—all the hands through whom that coffee has passed through is fascinating.

Now again, at this point, the consumer who is interested in this is not necessarily going to be looking at coffee as a pure caffeine delivery vehicle, right? The idea that this is a specialty beverage, that this is something that progressed through a lot of time, a lot of space, and a lot of hands to get to you. That is the piece that's important to me.

A.J. Jacobs wrote about it in Thanks A Thousand, where he talked about trying to thank all of the people involved in his coffee. Simran Sethi talks about it in Bread, Wine, Chocolate, where she talks about coffee and there's a moment of appreciation where she says a quiet prayer of acknowledgment for all of the people who were involved in that.

So all of a sudden, as you're sitting there with a cup of coffee, if you have the opportunity to do so, in that quiet moment, and you realize the depth and the richness of that coffee is not just about the flavor, but it's about the journey that bean went to get right from the seeds of the cherry to my grinder.

Ashley: I think maybe in 2016, I watched a competitor at the United States Barista Championship talk about how many hands touched a coffee, from being picked on a farm to physically being in her hands. And she said it was over a hundred. That was the first time I had ever heard someone put a number to how many people touch hands. And she wasn't exact, she just said she thought it was about a hundred based on the very crude math that she did for the specific coffee.

I thought, “Man, we are bad at telling our own stories if this is the first time I'm hearing this.” I think something that you said earlier in an answer was that you have this book, Stuff White People Like, and they complain about overpriced coffee, and yet we're not paying producers enough for coffee. At the same time, we’re also isolating Black and Brown people who are generally the people behind coffee, but we're isolating them at the consumer level from actually enjoying that final product.

I was wondering, as someone with a background like yours in branding and market strategy, how did our story become so messed up, I guess? We live in this dichotomy of like, “We're this overpriced thing, but we're not paying farmers enough, but we're isolating certain people.” We’ve done such a disservice telling our story. I wonder for you, how do you see that unfolding?

Brian: I think Ashley, for me, part of it is informing myself to really better understand the story. And then sharing that with people with whom I share a cup of coffee, or I have the pleasure of brewing a cup of coffee for.

I think one of the challenges and the realities is that coffee's a cash crop, and because it was used by and farmed and harvested by exploited labor. We've never properly valued it. I mean, to your point, let's just say that it's half as many hands, so instead of a hundred, it's 50—coffee passes through 50 sets of hands—and we don't want to pay more than $2 or $3 for it? To me, it's only when you begin to appreciate the fact that, “Oh, wow, there is this value chain. Coffee isn't this thing that I simply buy in a metal tin off of the shelf in the supermarket, or even in a bag, right?”

If, no matter what store I'm in, if I buy it in a bag and for [some folks], it’s just, “It went from wherever. Some people put it in a bag and now it's ready for me.” And so it's difficult to value it. I had a great conversation with Jon Allen from Onyx Coffee one day. Jon's point—and I'll never forget this—other than coffee, where can you have the absolute best of anything in the world? The best coffee possible, you're still probably not going to pay more than, absolutely no more than $20 for the absolute best coffee in the world. If that's the case, right, how do we get consumers to appreciate that?

This is going to require better storytelling, and better storytelling is everything—from what is the origin story of the coffee, right? We love that. Consumers love origin stories. We love it in superheroes. We love it in our favorite characters in any episode.

But at the same time, it's also giving us the information of, “How do I properly prepare it?” It is being able to provide that information about how to properly brew it, how to properly store that coffee. How can I, as a consumer, get the most out of it? And show me how to do that, if I want to go all-in on gear and do it as manually and as artisanally as possible. But also, if I’ve just got whatever coffee maker, how do I get the best cup of coffee out of that—help me have the best experience.

I think for the industry, a lot of time and energy is spent on cafe design. So you get kind of this visual aesthetic, and I think less time is spent on experience design—everything from how do you interact to find coffees on the website, right? When you go to a website, how do I know whether I want a natural processed or a washed coffee? How do I know what anaerobic processing is versus this other thing?

The wayfinding experience from the website to the cafe to after-purchase—and I'm having a brew at home—because that's the other complexity in coffee, that when people suggest that it's like craft beer or it's like wine, but the real difference in there is that you open the beer, you open the bottle of wine, and you let it breathe. Coffee, if you take it home, you still have to brew it and get that right. Otherwise, all of the value in the setup and the buildup that came before that can be lost.

By considering that experience in the life of your consumer, so that your consumer feels like, “I feel capable of trying [this coffee] and if I mess it up, there's a place to go for help.”

In a recent webinar that the CCRE had on Afrofuturism, one of our panelists, Philip Butler, who is a theological scholar and also an Afrofuturistic thinker and tech scholar, but one of the questions that he asked towards the end is, “What if we looked at coffee as a technology?”

Now we think about Black Panther, you think about what vibranium was there, but if we start to think about coffee as a technology, instead of as a commodity, instead of necessarily trying to pay as little for it as possible, trying to have as efficient a supply chain or value chain as possible, [this would mean] that we would figure out how to make it foundational—and how do we build upon it? How do we explore it?

So looking at it as a technology completely enables us to re-envision and re-imagine how we enable and invite people to engage with coffee, than just this commodity product that can be made generic. Really rethinking coffee itself, rethinking the rituals, rethinking the spaces where we prepare it and consume it, rethinking the vessels themselves…

Now I'm a big fan of the Lino Mug from Not Neutral because of the fact that the handle and the rim of the mug are at the same level and metaphorically, that means for me, that because you use the handle to lift it, that represents the labor or, in my mind, the producing countries. The rim, the bowl, represents the consuming countries. Most times the handle sits below the rim, right? The labor is subservient to the consuming countries. That was what triggered for me that aesthetically, because they're at the same level, there's equity in that cup of coffee, in the experience of that mug, that I don't experience with other mugs.

So, quite literally, all of the coffee mugs in my house are Lino Mugs. When the CCRE created its first piece of merchandise we chose the Lino Mug for that very reason—the visualization of equity.

Ashley: I have never thought about that. That is an amazing analogy. I need to sit with that for a minute.

I also feel like you and I can have a whole conversation about the inefficiency of coffee because I could talk about that forever. This is a really interesting point that I wrote down—I wrote down all the stuff that you wrote about technology because I want to touch upon that maybe a little bit later, but I also want to talk about your work with the CCRE and specifically, as you just mentioned, the idea of Afrofuturism in the specialty coffee industry.

I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about the the webinar that you just hosted on this topic and the implications Afrofuturism could have on the future of coffee.

Brian: What helped to anchor the idea of Afrofuturism to me as a framework to help us think about the future of coffee was a quote that comes from Florence Okoye, and that it reads as such: “Afrofuturism dares to suggest that not only will Black people exist in the future, but that we will be makers and shapers of it too.”

That's important because, particularly for Black and Brown people in coffee, with the exception of being the labor, we don't see ourselves in coffee. We don't see ourselves in the physical environment of the cafe. We don't see ourselves in many other parts of the value chain, particularly once coffee lands on the consuming side. So we're a bit invisible and we get lost in it. So if we begin to think about the future of coffee, I think quite frankly, Black and Brown people have the work of understanding, “What role do we want to assume to create that visibility that historically has not been there except on one side of it?”

Back to Okoye’s point, it is this idea of being a maker and shaper of it. So one of the questions that we talked about, for example, is what would a cafe look like if it was sitting in the capital city of Wakanda, and how would that be different from a cafe if it was sitting in Williamsburg in Brooklyn? They should look different, and it's everything from the kinds of beverages served, the visual aesthetic, the function of the barista, the way the countertop exists, and what kinds of barriers would exist between the barista and the patron.

All of those things have room to be re-imagined because if we limit specialty coffee to what it is today, it stops growing, and more and more people continue to be excluded from it.

When we think about re-envisioning and re-imagining coffee, some of it's happening in the consuming countries, but there are also growing trends in the producing countries. Vera Espíndola wrote a wonderful paper that I just read about seeing increasing consumption trends in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.

We have to rethink all of these pieces. It's not simply a matter of taking specialty as it exists today and copying and pasting into other communities or other countries. It’s reimagining the space where people of color are part of the experience and that aesthetic is part of the experience. It's not simply taking what the U.S. has decided it is or what Korea has decided it is, or any other country, but it really is figuring out in what context does coffee exists for us?

How can we enjoy it? Do you bring the jebena back? So we think about the traditional vessels serving coffee in Ethiopia that we don't see in cafes—why not bring those kinds of artifacts into the experience so that you do create these cultural linkages to coffee's origin?

Afrofuturism, and this idea of re-imagining it, is the framework that enables you to do that. It's the scaffolding to say, “What were the rituals? How was it roasted? How was it prepared?”

Something as simple as, when I have coffee in the afternoon, or I have someone over, I'll serve coffee with popcorn. I serve it with popcorn because in Ethiopia that's often the way that it's presented, but I don't think I've ever been into a third-wave shop in the U.S. where I've ever received coffee and popcorn. Not saying that no one's doing it—I just haven't had that experience. But this is what enables us to recreate and rewrite the narrative that centers us in the experience. So that we're not just at the margins.

Ashley: It seems like coffee in general suffers from this descent into a monoculture where we're all doing the same things. We're all designing our cafes the same way. We are all buying the same coffees. We are all talking about anaerobic fermentation.

At the last United States Barista Competition, I believe four out of six of the top six competitors used the same coffee—and not to say that those individuals are at fault for picking those same coffees, but it spoke to the bigger cultural problem of what are we valuing? As we descend further and further into a monoculture, who are we leaving out, and are we building any tools to make the coffee industry better if we're all descending into sameness?

Brian: Here's the interesting thing for me that—and this is one of the things that coffee shares with any industry—I remember growing up, you could easily tell just by looking at a car what was a Toyota versus a Honda versus something else.

Now we're at a point you're not quite sure what cars are, even as you look at it, you go upmarket with some of the luxury brands that they've all started to look the same. This is one of the areas where I think, again, many industries suffer. It is this rush to the bottom. It is this, “Well, if I can become the thing that most people like, then I'll be okay.”

This is one of the areas where I think, and again, I think we see some roasters doing a really good job with this, but it is going to be about what is my particular point of view in coffee? What coffees am I sourcing? What relationships am I building? Who is my customer base? Because why are we assuming that the same customer in Brooklyn is going to be the same customer in Omaha who's going to be the same customer in Phoenix and then in San Francisco?

Understanding that enables people to take more calculated risks—by no means am I saying, “Well, listen, don't buy the award-winning coffees that are award-winning.” I'm saying, “But are you offering flights? Are you enabling people to be able to experience the different varietals from a particular country? What are you offering other than saying, “Hey, I've got this award-winning coffee.” [What about, for example], “This is the experience that I want to share with you,” or, “This coffee matches with this particular food.”

It's bringing out these other pieces where it lets us go back to being curious about the coffees. Let's go back to being curious about the stories of the producers and what the best of these coffees are and how we can present that.

At the same time, I recognize it's going to be disruptive to the economics, right? I recognize cafe margins are really, really slim. And there are lots of things to consider. Labor on all sides of the value chain are considerations. But I think if you just start a cafe, looking at a template of, “This is about what coffees will cost me. This is about what labor should cost me…” what you lose the ability to say is, “As a cafe, who am I?” That kind of self-reflection and using that to inform everything from your menu to who you're hiring to how you present, I think really gives us the opportunity that whatever the future of coffee will be, will become far more compelling and interesting than it is today.

Ashley: Is there anything else that you want people to know about you or your perspective on coffee?

I think that—we didn't use this word specifically—but your insights are so interesting, both because of your background in branding and marketing, but also because you're technically not in the coffee industry. You're kind of outside of it, even though you are very involved and you've written about it, but a lot of your perspective and the perspective that you've shared, you've presented as the outsider.

I wonder what can people gain from listening to more people like you and what are things that you would want people to hear widely from outsiders and from customers?

Brian: I appreciate the question, Ashley, and I think some of it is in my social media handle, which is @coffee_adjacent, because I really do consider myself someone who sits on the margin. Thankfully, because of the relationships [I have], I've been able to learn a lot, I've been able to develop access. But it is the outsider's perspective [I have].

Every business should have someone or someones on the team who can be that outsider, who can maintain a fresh perspective to see—what are we offering? What should we be offering, what shouldn't we be offering, looking at data to figure out, “Hey, what sells really well? What doesn't? What do we want to try?”

I understand that margins are slim in this type of work, but where can we afford to fail? Where can we afford some inefficiency in a responsible way, because quite frankly, some of the standardization and the collapse to monoculture is due to trying to improve efficiencies, right? Because if I know if I just buy the award-winning coffees and I know I'm going to be able to sell those … but where can inefficiencies create opportunities to explore and to try? So someone should be that outsider.

Shop owners: You've got to think about the experience that you are enabling your baristas to have with your consumers. If you really want to build loyal consumers, the way that loyalty is built in other industries, you have to allow for points of interaction. Those points of interaction are going to be virtual, and they're going to be physical, but you have to figure out how to enable that so you can maximize that relationship between these two human beings as they come together over a beverage that was produced by human hands and passed through [human hands].

So you've got to figure out as you're running the business how to maximize that, and that has to be done intentionally. You cannot leave that interaction between the barista and the customer to chance, just like you don't leave your coffee menu to chance. So be intentional about it.

Simply be curious and ask—to the coffee industry, be curious about your consumers, ask us. Everything is about telling us what you think we need to know. I know I made this point a little bit earlier, but I think it warrants emphasizing. The more you can learn about us, the more you can give. Figure out how you can be the solution to those questions or those problems that we're experiencing. You can create new solutions, you can create new products and new services.

You can find different ways to present your coffees so that the cafe becomes a physical experience. That can be that platform that can connect the producers, the importers, and the exporters. Everyone in that value chain gets connected. And there's a story that's being told. And that story feels authentic without being exploitative.

The customer can then understand that $5 cup of coffee, that $6 cup of coffee. I understand why it costs that even if I decide that I don't have it within my budget to spend $5 or $6 for that cup of coffee, but I understand why. And quite frankly, I didn't understand why even at $5 or $6, because of coffee's history, that even that is probably undervalued. I mean, if we priced coffee at the minimum wage in the U.S., a cup of coffee would probably be a true luxury for most of us, if we had to pay everybody that living wage.

So I would wrap it up by saying: be intentional about all of your experiences, from physical to virtual. Be curious with your consumers and ask them questions and give them permission to tell you what they need and then empower and enable your baristas to really be the best DJs they can, to put that playlist together, to introduce new artists to the consumers. That's going to create an enjoyable and fun experience.

We need to be serious about coffee, and it is important, but for consumers to really step up the way we need to, to support the industry, we're going to have to enjoy it. And so don't lose that. Don't lose that romance. Don't lose that intimacy that we talked about at that cupping experience initially, because that's the thing that's gonna keep us coming back. That's going to keep us doing everything from traveling to origin to writing the articles to getting involved to volunteering at the festivals.

All of the things that I have done are because I've had the benefit of great baristas who have created these relationships for me, that I've looked beyond.

Ashley: Brian, thank you so much for joining me. This has been such a fun conversation, and I'm already thinking, “What am I going to talk about with Brian next?” I have some ideas.

Brian: It's been a blast. Ashley, thank you for having me again. It's not the same as being across the counter or hanging out in the cafe with you, but I appreciate the invitation and I absolutely look forward to sharing a cup of coffee with you at some point in the not too distant future.

This interview was lightly edited for clarity. Photo courtesy of Clay Williams.

This Boss Barista episode is brought to you by Urnex.

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Welcome to the Boss Barista takeover!

A few weeks ago, I put a call out to coffee folks, fans, and drinkers across the globe to pitch ideas about the podcast they’ve been dreaming of making—and today we’re turning the mic over to the fourth in our series of guest creators. 

This episode is a little different than what you’ve heard so far. This is the second of a two-part episode, so if you haven’t listened to the first part, I encourage you to go back. We heard from Deiro García, a farmer in Colombia, and now we’re going to hear from Alejandra Hoyos, who is part of a women’s cooperative in southern Colombia. 

As Sebastián notes, Alejandra is direct and curious, and her insights are poignant. We sent her the same set of questions we sent Deiro, and her answers are eye-opening and might change your perspective on how you buy and consume coffee. Like the last episode with Deiro, you’ll hear me and Sebastián talk, then a clip from Alejandra in Spanish, and then Sebastián comes in to explain what we’ve just heard.

Anyone who buys coffee should tune in—as I record this introduction, there are demonstrations in Colombia to protest corruption and inequality, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, so I hope this encourages anyone who buys coffee from Colombia to think critically about their purchasing decisions and listen to farmers. Let’s listen to part two of this episode. 

Ashley: So I'm back with Sebastián. The last time we got together, we talked about Deiro, who is a farmer in Huila, and he shared a ton of different perspectives about coffee-growing. We talked a lot about coffee-growing management, about maximizing profits, and how the cost of a coffee maybe doesn't even matter as much if the cost of production is a number you don't know, or a number that you don't understand. 

We're gonna shift gears a little bit. So we're going to talk to a different coffee farmer. So Sebastián, I was hoping that you could tell me a little bit about who we're going to hear from next. 

Sebastián: This one is Alejandra Hoyos. She's a young coffee grower from Pitalito, Huila. I met her one year ago buying her coffees. She has this crazy energy and she's super interested in the coffee business. Why do certain coffees pay [this amount]? Or why are other coffees [bought like this]? She's super curious, so I became a friend of hers. For this, with Ashley, we asked her some questions about her insights as a young coffee grower and also as a woman in the coffee-growing business. 

Ashley: So let's hear her. We asked her the same questions that we asked Deiro, so we're going to hear some similar responses, but we're also going to hear some very different perspectives, too. So let's jump in with Alejandra.

Alejandra: Bueno, creo que sería muy importante hacer énfasis en la importancia que tiene consumir un café de calidad y sobre todo el apoyo que se está haciendo no solamente a una familia, sino a una economía completa, no? Resulta que cuando una persona consume una taza de café que es exportada eeh por Colombia, no solamente se apoya a la pequeña familia caficultora que depende del café, sino que también se apoya la economía colombiana, digamos, en este caso específico se apoyaría la economía Huilense porque es en cosechas cuando el café que la economía se mueve entonces y siento que es como hacer énfasis en la importancia que tiene la producción bueno del consumo de del café dentro de una economía nacional.

Ashley: So what did Alejandra talk about in that first part? 

Sebastián: She talks about the consumption inside the country. Alejandra works with their mom in their farm—her mom is part of an association of growers that are, I think, mostly women. So besides selling their coffee to exporters outside of Colombia, they roast coffee as an association and they sell the coffee. 

Sometimes the percentage of profit is bigger [than exporting their coffee]. But as I told you the last time, good coffee doesn't have a big consumption here in Colombia. So that's why she talks about that—that it’s really important to improve that part of coffee here in the country. 

Ashley: That's a really interesting point. I've heard other coffee farmers in different countries talk about the importance of improving in-country consumption and how by shortening the supply stream, they're able to not only keep more of the money for themselves, but also to reinvest in their own country. So all the money stays within the country. 

Sebastián: Yeah, that's true. Besides that, they also do a marmalade jam made out of a coffee skin. 

Ashley: Oh, like cascara jam? 

Sebastián: Yeah, cascara jam. I think they make a dulce de leche—maybe people understand that, I don't have the word in English—made out of cascara as well. So this association is full of women, I think. They make all these things and then they go and sell it. That's why I think the first thing that Alejandra had to say is that we have to support these kinds of projects or businesses—we can't live only by selling coffee to exporters. We have to sell our things here inside the country. 

Ashley: I imagine that is important obviously in terms of keeping money within the country, but also in terms of just relying on your own systems and your own structures, being able to say, “We support us and not being dependent on trade,” essentially. 

Sebastián: Exactly. 

Ashley: In this second part we asked Alejandra if she's had experience with roasters and buyers asking for things that aren't feasible and she says no, so you'll hear her say that, but then she'll jump into the third question where she talks a little bit about if she was ever worried about her crop or anything like that. So we're going to hear that part.

Alejandra: No, digamos que la segunda pregunta, cuántas veces los tostadores y compradores de café piden cosas que no son factibles? No, digamos que nosotros hemos tenido experiencias con compras, pero no, no, no, hasta ese punto, si? Entonces no, no podría responder esa pregunta como con exactitud.

Hmm Claro que sí. Yo siento que uno siempre se ha preocupado por la cosecha, por varios factores, empezando porque dependemos mucho del clima, no? dependemos mucho del clima, de que haga un buen verano, pero también haya un balance entre la lluvia y la época de verano, porque resulta que necesitamos el verano para que pegue la flor y bueno para que, por decirlo así, el proceso sea más, más productivo, pero también necesitamos el invierno, porque pues es el que le da la estabilidad al cultivo. Entonces esa es una problemática.

Eeeh y también es una problemática cuando nosotros invertimos dinero y usualmente los caficultores pues nos endeudamos para lograr una cosecha, pero pues resulta que nadie nos garantiza el precio del producto final, porque a pesar de que nosotros producimos un café de calidad, pues el mercado es muy competitivo, los precios son muy fluctuantes, no hay garantías que nos diga : a este precio ustedes lo van a vender, sino que simplemente es como lo que quiere el mercado y a lo que ellos nos ofrezcan, porque pues cuando llega cosecha no hay otra opción sino vender el producto al precio que estén; entonces eso es una preocupación.

Ashley: I was wondering if you can explain a little bit what Alejandra's concerns are in terms of weather and growing her crops? 

Sebastián: So for example, Deiro talked about processing and the risk of processing. Alejandra talks about the risks of coffee-growing as a whole, because growers sometimes go into debt to buy the products to make their harvest—all the chemicals, fertilizers, everything—and those prices, they're always steady. [Sometimes] they go higher, but that's really tricky because you are making an investment, but you don't know for how much you are going to sell your coffee because you have no idea the price of coffee at the time you sell it—we move with the market. 

So they are making a big investment. If, at the end, after the harvest, they go and sell and the price is not that good—that's the biggest risk because it's really difficult to find someone that can guarantee you a price. Because … that investment, they must do it—if they don't do that investment, the harvest is not going to be good. 

She talks about that there's no guarantees—when she offers something that maybe is not what the market is looking for. And sometimes there is no other option but to sell the product at whatever price. So it's a big concern for her. 

Ashley: Interesting. I didn't even consider that as a farmer, you have to be in some ways a salesperson. I mean, obviously you're selling coffee, you're selling coffee to potential buyers, but you also almost have to sell—not you, but you have to make that extra step. It's never, I don't know. I'm not confused per se, I guess I'm trying to put it into words, but it is a very interesting way to think about how we make transactions. 

So the next part we're going to hear is about coffee buyers and risks. And then she also will go into that idea of photography and the portrayal of relationships. So that's the next part we're going to hear from Alejandra.

Alejandra: No realmente los compradores de café no asumen ningún riesgo, ni ofrecen algún tipo de ayuda. Lo que sí se conoce a veces son los seguros que ofrecen las cooperativas, eh pero bueno, los seguros no, sino las ventas, por decirlo así, como los avances que uno hace, por igual el número de kilos es restringido, no? No es que uno pueda asegurar toda la cosecha.

Umm has tenido alguna vez una relación con un comprador de café que haya sido retratada de manera diferente en redes sociales de lo que realmente es? Sí. De hecho, siento que la mayoría de las relaciones que salen ha sido con con compras de café. Son relaciones muy como Jerarquizadas si? Y entonces pues uno en redes sociales como que , eh estamos trabajando de la mano del caficutlor, estamos haciendo esto por el caficultores y muestran pues muchas cosas que realmente uno va a la práctica y dice pues hay barreras muy grandes, no? Entonces resulta que es una fachada. Siento yo que para vender ese, esa idea al mercado externo, pero pues a los caficultores nunca los tratan, a veces ni siquiera con el respeto que se merecen por todo el trabajo que han hecho, sino como venga, quioero comprar eso, pero pues de ahí no me importa sus necesidades, eeh y de hecho aveces ni siquiera es el trato digno y humano que uno requiere no? Que uno espera. Porque pues, es un, es una relación en la que ambas partes ganan. Yo gano porque estoy vendiendo el café, pero usted también gana porque pues está eeeh trabajando con mi café, exporta mi café y debería hacer un trato como más, por decirlo así, parejo. Pero pues eso no se ve sino como solamente la fachada.

Ashley: So in this part, Alejandra is talking about risk a little bit, but she's also talking about the way that coffee farmers are portrayed on social media, and the way that roasters portray the relationships with farmers. And she talks a little bit about the hierarchy of it all too, which is really interesting. She talks about how power dynamics work. So I was wondering if you could explain a little bit what she's talking about in this section. 

Sebastián: Yeah. Alejandra, she's really straightforward—always. And I like that about her. She doesn't speak English, but she always speaks her mind to any roasters. So that's really nice. She says in the audio that a lot of roasters come and are like, “I’m the roaster and I came here to maybe be a savior.” 

She gets that feeling when roasters come and visit them. And she doesn't like that because it's not fair. They are producing something and [the roaster] is buying something—period, that's it. They're working hard, they're selling, and the roaster is buying, and that's the whole transaction. 

For her it’s like, it's not fair because sometimes [the roasters] show on social media something that is not true. As we talked about the last time, maybe they just came here for the picture. It’s tricky because [a grower might] want to have the picture because free PR for the grower. But also they don't like that [sometimes the roaster doesn’t] buy anything. Or if they buy and it’s not the price that they're hoping for. If a roaster comes, they hope, “Oh I’m going to sell my coffee [at a good price],” but when the roaster gives the price to the grower, they're like, “Oh, hey, it's not that good.” 

Sometimes you feel like you have to take the picture and be like, “Okay, let's take this picture and hear what this roaster has to say or offer” this year. She feels like roasters don’t care. And one time, she told me it feels silly to do all these huge parades when someone comes and everything—here’s your lunch, come here and everything, and at the end, it’s like, “Oh, it's for nothing—this is a not-so-good price,” so all of this for nothing. 

Ashley: I think that's a good point. You mentioned that it's almost like a show. It's like, “Here's the farm. And we're going to have lunch for you. And you get to take these photos,” and you almost feel obligated to do it because you don't really have another option because maybe they will buy the coffee. Maybe they won't buy the coffee. And there's this expectation that this is how this goes. But it seems like what Alejandra is saying is that, “No, this is fake. This is a business transaction.” Either you're buying this coffee or you're not buying this coffee. Either way, I don't care, but let's not pretend that this is something different. 

Sebastián: Exactly. I'm going to say exactly what she said. “I win because I'm selling you the coffee, but you are also winning because you are working with my coffee, exporting my coffee. And you should treat me like an equal.” And that’s true. We should be like that. That’s basic human decency. 

Ashley: It seems like we sometimes treat these relationships between coffee farmers and roasters as something else. I think you even said so yourself—it's just like a very white saviorism mentality. 

Sebastián: Yeah. She feels like that. I understand her point, but as I told you, and as I told Alejandra once, “Look, a lot of people come here and I know how you feel, but trust me that a lot of roasters, a lot of customers, they have their heart in the right place. But sometimes they don't know how to share it.”

Someone hasn’t shared with them how it should be—how these kinds of things should be. Sometimes I'm there for that reason, me, Sebastián, I'm there for that. When I bought the coffee from Alejandra I told her that. “I know how you feel, and I understand your point, but there are people who want to do really good work with you.”  

That's why, sometimes, the middleman is needed—so these transactions can be just a business transaction, nothing else. What Alejandra says is true, and that's why it's really important for a coffee buyer, as I told you the first time, to sit and listen, because this is a real concern from a real grower and it is valid. A coffee buyer shouldn’t say, “Oh, she’s a kid, she doesn’t know.” No—she knows. We should listen to her. Or we should sit with her and explain my point of view as well and to try to get to a part where we will agree. 

I'm not going to tell her, “Hey, just go with it.” No, of course not, because it’s her farm, it’s her life, and she's right. I really like what she said. She should be treated like an equal—period. If you are a buyer, if you're a roaster that’s listening to this, just listen to people. Listen not just to be nice, listen to really listen, because a lot of people have concerns. If you want to have a really good and healthy relationship with that grower, you should take into mind everything that they say. 

Ashley: So in the next part, we're going to talk about price again, and what I like about Alejandra's responses is that she gets really specific with numbers. So we're going to hear her talk about that.

Alejandra: Gran parte del café se comercializa hablando de relaciones,que los compradores construyen con los caficultores y producen

Cuál es un buen precio para el café? No tiene porque ser una cifra exacta, pero cuando habla con un comprador de café, qué le parece justo y que busca? Bueno. Cuáles son? Un buen precio para el café.

Pero cuando hablo con un comprador de café, qué le parece justo y que busca? Bueno, yo siento que hablándolo en términos, en términos económicos y es sobre y para sobrevivir, el precio por millón 300 es bien, si? Digamos, es un precio estable, que es una ganancia y puede ser sostenible.

Pero cuando habla con un comprador de café, qué le parece justo y qué busca? Bueno, yo siento que cuando hablamos con un comprador de café, o cuando ofrecemos nuestro producto más allá de la misma comprar del mismo, lo que queremos primero es que nos explique cómo está funcionando el mercado y que nos digan qué podría ser más viable y cómo a qué apuntarle, no? Porque como todo el mercado cambia entonces yo siento que el hecho de que uno compra el café nos ayude a mejorar procesos, nos diga como mejorar el, a veces dentro del mismo manejo de una finca pues es de gran ayuda e impacto. Y siento que lo que más buscamos los caficultores es acompañamiento, no? Dentro de todo el proceso. Porque pues nosotros producimos y metemos como toda la ficha durante el año, pero pues a fin de cuentas nadie nos garantiza nada.

Ashley: So in this section, Alejandra talks about pricing and money really specifically. I was hoping that you could break down a little bit some of the numbers that she's using, and what exactly a carga is.

Sebastián: Okay. Alejandra talks about cargas. So one carga is 125 kilos of parchment coffee. Parchment coffee is coffee that is directly from the farm. A carga is roughly 90 kilos of green coffee, ready to be exported. So 1.3 million pesos is roughly $358 [U.S. dollars] that she's getting per carga. That's her numbers. And that's what she thinks will be a fair price for her coffee to be sustainable. 

But she also says that what she thinks is good. But also she says it's really good to speak with the buyer to see what is fair to the buyer or what he or she is looking for. She wants mostly explanations on why the coffee buyer pays this or that. So I think it's really varied because she knows how much is a fair price at the beginning, but maybe the buyer can pay a higher price, but she wants to understand where this price comes from.

Ashley: That's an interesting point because I think what often happens in coffee when we have something like the C-market, or something like the New York Stock Exchange dictating price, there's this idea that there's an inherent value to coffee. But I think what Alejandra is saying is that the price of coffee comes from this negotiation—from this talking with the coffee buyer, seeing what they need, talking to the growers, seeing what their cost of production is, which is going to be very different. 

So she sets her price at 1.3 million Colombian pesos as something that's sustainable, but that doesn't necessarily translate to everybody. And I have to imagine that's not the price that everybody's getting, right?

Sebastian: Yeah. It's tricky, because every buyer has a different price and it depends on what they are looking for. So what Alejandra said is that she wants to understand that. “Okay, you have given me this price, but where does that price come from? Why are you giving me this price? She's really curious, and when we, as a company bought her coffee, she was like, “Okay, the price is good, but now I want to cup with you because I want to know what you are looking for. If I cup, and this is what you’re looking for, I'm going to try to replicate the same. So you keep buying from me.”

Ashley: I was just saying that's super helpful, because like we were saying, that there is no finite thing that makes a price a price. It's understanding between the two actors what is needed, which is really interesting that she picked that up—she's immediately on that, like, “Oh, you're paying me this much for this. I'm going to go cup with you and see what you’re looking for.” 

Sebastián: Exactly. That’s super good because when you are dealing with a grower like that, you know that they will keep delivering. She knows about what I'm looking for. For example, one day I might say, “Alejandra, I’m looking for another thing.” And she will understand. Maybe she will say, “Okay, so I'm going to talk to this other buyer [then].”  

And I think that's what I'm saying about healthy relationships. You can be honest in both good and bad. “I can't buy this coffee right now for this and this.” And she understands that. I think that this is one of the best relationships we have here in Colombia, because it's really mature and we can be honest with each other. And there is no tricky business or something like that. 

I cup with her, and she asks me, “Why did you give him that score?” Or, “Why didn't you like that note?” And it's my job to explain to her, “Look, maybe this note of, I don't know, sugarcane, right now from this customer is not super relevant.” And she will understand, and it's really good for her because I'm one of the buyers. And with other buyers, she will already know if the buyer, if it's not a good one and if they’re lying to her, she will know, and now she can make a decision and say, “I'm not going to sell to you.” That's really good.

Ashley: Yeah. That sounds incredible. And it seems like Deiro kind of talks a little bit about that in terms of farm management and just understanding how complex the entire system is. 

So let's talk a little bit about what a bad price is. Because we also asked Alejandra about that, which is what we're going to hear next. 

Alejandra: Cuando alguien plantea un mal precio, cómo responde usted? El tema del manejo de las fincas dentro de la organización que tienen los caficultores, pero resulta que hace un tiempo hablamos de unos tres años atrás, eh la carga de café estaba más o menos de 750 mil pesos y resulta que hablo por la experiencia de nosotros, eh hubo que vender a ese precio. No hubo opción. O sea, teníamos ese precio. Teníamos deudas encima, eh? No había mejor precio. Y era eso o que las deudas se incrementaran y quedar como sin aprovechar, lo que se produjo, o sea, lo que se sacó en cosecha. Pero igual yo siento que pues que eso es muy complejo, no?

Que el tema del precio está, no está regulado, porque a pesar de que hay momentos en que el precio es estable y puede considerarse sostenible, hay momentos en que el precio cae y nadie le ofrece las garantías al caficultor para que siga produciendo buen café, sino que simplemente el mercado cambia. Es muy versátil y todo está como a lo que quiere el mercado. No hay nada fijo dentro de la producción del café.

Así que yo diría que cuando hay un mal precio, el caficultor en general, lo vende. O sea como que toca hacerlo, porque no hay más opción.

Ashley: So in this part, Alejandra is talking about what a bad price could look like. But I think what she does is kind of says that, “Yes, we might get a bad price for a coffee, but there are no other options if that's the only offer you have on the table.” 

Sebastián: Yeah. Sadly, I think that's what happened five years ago. The New York Stock Exchange price [for coffee] was really, really bad. And in Colombia, the price was really low everywhere for standard coffee. And sometimes for example, if you are a grower that usually sells to the local market and there is this price, sometimes you don't have another option, so you have to sell.

And that's what happened to them, sadly, five years ago, she told me, and it was less than the cost of production. And they made an investment, as I told you, at the beginning of harvest, they made an investment. They didn't know how much the price [of coffee] was going to be. So they lost money. If they knew about the price that it's going to be, they probably wouldn’t have made that investment or they would have made a lower one. 

So that's the most difficult part of being a coffee grower—that sometimes you don’t know. For example, when the growers sell specialty coffee, maybe you will get a better price, but not all the coffee that comes from the farm is specialty. Never, never—like maybe half of your production, you're going to sell it as a specialty. The other part is local markets. 

So for example, right now the prices are good. But when it comes at really low prices, that's when the problem comes. So it's not only paying for the good coffees, like everyone can pay and it's really easy to sell for the grower. The tricky part is like, “Who is going to buy my regular coffee?” 

Ashley: That's a really good point. I think that people often forget that when you look at a farm, no matter how big or how small—maybe very small farms are excluded from this—but when you look at a farm, only a certain percentage of that coffee is going to be the 87, 88, 89 [coffees] that are going to pay a premium. And then you have the rest of this coffee. And you're like, “What do I do with this?”

Sebastian: Exactly. That's tricky. It's really, really tricky, and sometimes maybe the roaster wants to, but maybe the coffee is going to be really hard to sell for the roaster? So there are other factors in there that right now I can’t tell you, “Okay. I think this is how we can solve it.” But I think as an industry, as a whole, we have to figure it out. 

Ashley: We have to make that investment, or at least take on some of that risk, because I think what you said was interesting that maybe the roaster can't sell that coffee. I kind of want to call b******t on that because I think most roasters can sell those coffees. 

I think most roasters would be hard-pressed to say, “My consumers can tell the difference between 84 and 86.” So I think that argument that a roaster is like, “Oh, maybe I can't sell this coffee.” I'm like—I don't know that I believe a roaster who makes that argument, but that's me being pessimistic.

Sebastián: I don't know. I don't know either—maybe they can do a blend?

Ashley: Right. There's a place for that coffee to go. 

Sebastián: Yeah. I think the risk … but I can’t just tell someone how to run their business. I don't know their profits or their margins or—I have no idea, the job. My job should be, “Hey, you buy the good coffee. That's nice, but there's this good coffee [here] as well. Maybe you have a price and maybe we can work on a price. Of course it's a bit lower [for coffees that don’t score as high], but it can work for you and for the grower as well.” It’s also our job to maybe push those coffees also to say, “Hey, don't buy only the good ones. You can buy this standard coffee.” 

Ashley: I guess this is a hard question to answer because every situation is different, but when you're talking to potential buyers and let's say they want to buy, I don't know, 20% of a farmer's coffee, but [the farmer] has this other 80% that's still great, but is maybe not the same quality as the other 20%. How do you try to have those conversations with a potential buyer? Do you try to talk about investment? Do you try to talk about risk? 

I wonder what that conversation even looks like for you, because I imagine that part of your job is having that kind of conversation with buyers to say you're making an investment. The future of coffee depends on all of us taking on some of these risks. 

Sebastián: Yeah. I always have to be honest with the grower and the buyer. I won’t tell the buyer or the roaster to buy something that is not really good, that isn’t of quality. When I see that this coffee that this grower or this association has that maybe is left that is good, my job is to tell the roaster or roasters, “Hey, this coffee is good, let’s work on a price,” or, “It’s good so you can make a blend,” or, “It’s good, you can sell it as a regional [offering],” or, “It’s good, maybe you can put it in espresso and the price won’t be super high.”   

And if the roasters or the roaster agree, I have to go to the growers or the association and work with them to make a price. It has to be, of course, higher than the local market. 

I always try to sell all the coffee I can from a grower, because it’s going to be good for everyone because the [grower] is going to have a better relationship with me, the roaster, maybe they didn’t know that coffee was available, and everyone is happy. 

Ashley: So the last part we're going to hear is Alejandra responding to the question, “What do you want people to know about growing coffee in Colombia?”

Alejandra: Hay algo específico del cultivo y la venta de café en Colombia que quieras destacar?

Si yo siento que pues podrá sonar como muy idealista, no sé. Pues no sé cómo suene, pero yo siento que es importante destacar todo el proceso que hay detrás de la producción de de una taza de café y sobre sobre todo cómo enfocarse en las personas que lo producen, no? En las familias que lo producen, en la importancia que tiene este cultivo para las generaciones. El amor que sienten los caficultores por su café, por el proceso que hacen, en lo que las expectativas de vida, que un cultivo de café puede brindar, brindarle a una familia y cómo, a pesar de lo difícil que es cultivar café y sostenerse, ese cultivo ha ayudado a que muchas familias pues en Colombia salgan adelante, le brinden educación a sus hijos e tengan mejor calidad de vida. Entonces yo siento que sería ideal que detrás de una taza de café haya una historia, una historia que contar, una historia que nos motive a seguir apoyando ese tipo de mercado. Y sobre todo siento que la historia que los caficultores crean más en lo que hacen y no sientan que solamente con ir y dejar el café en la compra, el proceso que hay, o sea como que finaliza, sino que realmente de allá hacia allá hay un mundo extenso, al que ellos también pueden acceder y un mundo lleno de oportunidades para sus hijos también, no?

Porque resulta que hay muchos caficultores que creen que voy entrego el café y ahí se acaba todo, no conocen como la escala. Entonces yo creo que resaltar la labor del caficultor y enseñarle al caficultor a la vez bueno, trabajar de la mano con el caficultor y decirle como "vea lo que hace su cultivo o vea lo que hace su calidad de producción en el exterior" es también importante para que ellos se apropien y pues cojan amor a lo que hacen. Porque pues, si produce un buen café en las condiciones en las que actualmente están, pues no me quiero imaginar, quiero imaginar lo que puede llegar a producir si pueden conocer el proceso que sigue su producto.

Ashley: What do you want to highlight in this part? What do you think is important of what Alejandra said that you want to highlight right now? 

Sebastián: Alejandra, she’s a really down-to-earth woman, and she's really [family-oriented]. She really cares about her family. She really wants to highlight that all the coffee that is sold should have the name on it. Like this coffee [should have] at least the name from this association in Huila. And this association is made up of women. And the names of these women are this, this, this, this … because coffee growers are really passionate and they get really excited when they see their name on a bag, because it’s the reward of their hard work.

I love when we can give them that—to give them that gift of a bag with their name and their association. That’s the part that makes people really happy. Besides that, it’s always a fair price or a fair profit so they can live. 

People forget that this is a business. This is not a hobby. This is not something that people just do on the weekends. No, this is a business. People that grow coffee have families, they have to sustain themselves. They want to send their children to school, to university like you, they want to go on vacation like you, they want to go out on a weekend and eat someplace fancy, like you, they want the best for their family. 

We should, as an industry, pay attention to that. That it’s a business. If you are asking for something that is not profitable for the grower, don’t ask for it. Or if you don't think that you are doing your best so the growers make a profit and they can live a good life with their family, well, try harder. 

At the end, I think Alejandra says that—think about the families, think about that they are people too. Let’s say you’re a roaster living in San Francisco, and you go out with your friends and family on the weekend—growers want to do the same, period, that's it. Try to be more involved in that. Try to ask more questions. Try to investigate more. 

I don't think anyone will get mad if you ask more. If you happen to buy from us, for example, ask me, I will be more than happy to answer. We're more than happy to share everything, like I'm doing here with you, because I'm lucky enough to work for an international company, but also to be in the region and also to be with the growers and also to know their staff and their concerns. I can show it to the world. 

That's the message that Alejandra wants to tell to the world, and Deiro as well, just be good, be nice. Let's all make a business out of this. 

Ashley: Sebastián, thank you so much for highlighting these stories and asking these farmers to share their experiences and giving us a lens into some of the real struggles that are happening with coffee farmers in Colombia. I really appreciate your time. 

That was my conversation with Sebastián Diacono, breaking down insights from Alejanda Hoyos.

Thanks again to Chobani for making this episode possible, and if you want to learn more, give Sebastián a follow on Twitter (@sebdiacono) —he’s more than happy to hear your responses and answer questions.

The Boss Barista takeover is brought to you by Chobani. Chobani’s mission is making better food for more people, and they’ve brought that mission to non-dairy by crafting the ultimate oat milk for food service—Chobani Oat Barista Edition.

It’s plant-based, gluten-free, non-GMO, and vegan-friendly. Their formula was crafted for superior performance and versatility. Whether adding to black coffee or creating the perfect micro-foam, Chobani Oat Barista Edition will satisfy your café needs and delight your customers.

Welcome to the Boss Barista takeover!

A few weeks ago, I put a call out to coffee folks, fans, and drinkers across the globe to pitch ideas about the podcast they’ve been dreaming of making—and today we’re turning the mic over to the fourth in our series of guest creators. 

This episode is a little different than what you’ve heard so far. Sebastián Diácono is a country manager for Latorre & Dutch, an international coffee-trading and -exporting company. He’s based in Colombia, and his job is to act as a liaison between people who want to buy coffee and people who grow it, understanding and synthesizing the needs of both in the process. When I first mentioned this project on Twitter, he messaged me almost immediately, saying he’d like to help me tell stories of coffee producers in Colombia. 

What we decided to do was interview two coffee producers and ask them questions about the side of coffee-growing that’s not often talked about—the struggle of selling coffee, the power dynamics between buyers and sellers, and the volatility of the coffee market. The farmers, named Deiro García and Alejandra Hoyos, were given a set of questions and then recorded their responses as voice memos—their responses are in Spanish. Sebastián and I then listened to the audio and he broke down their answers. 

Sebastián and I talked for almost two hours, so we broke this up into two episodes. In the first episode, we talk to Deiro, who owns a farm in Colombia. Sebastián and I begin by setting up the premise of the episode, and then you’ll hear responses from Deiro, which Sebastián translates and gives further insights on.

Episode two—which is out right now—does the same but with Alejandra, a producer who is part of a women’s cooperative in southern Colombia. I can’t stress how much I learned in these two episodes. Anyone who buys coffee should tune in—as I record this introduction, there are demonstrations in Colombia to protest corruption and inequality, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, so I hope this encourages anyone who buys coffee from Colombia to think critically about their purchasing decisions and listen to farmers. Here’s part one with Sebastián and Deiro. 

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

Sebastián: Hi, Ashley. My name is Sebastián. I am from Colombia. I'm from a region of Huila, which is pretty famous for coffee-growing right now. I am the country manager for Latorre & Dutch Coffee Traders, an Australian company that trades coffee from a lot of regions in the world. 

I am here right now. I'm in Colombia. I am at the farm of Latorre & Dutch called La Maria. I am here to give an overview on how coffee grows inside in this industry and the insights that the farmers here think about the specialty coffee. And also, as a buyer, I search the region, I get coffees—and yeah, I think that's the idea of me being here and I'm really excited to be part of it. 

Ashley: I'm excited for you to be part of this too. I think having a little bit of background about how we got connected would be helpful. 

A couple of weeks ago, I asked people to make different pitches or share different ideas about podcast episodes that they would want to see. And you, as far as you can do on Twitter, raised your hand and were like, “I can help you tell stories from Colombia. Let's do that.” 

And you did—you totally delivered. We've been talking for a couple of weeks back and forth, and I was wondering what drove you to want to reach out or want to share stories about farmers in Colombia? What were you not seeing that you were like, “This story needs to be told?” 

Sebastián: Well, I am pretty active on Twitter, mostly reading, not tweeting. I have been working in coffee for four years. I have been working with more than 200 growers, mostly in Huila. I have seen and learned a lot of things with them. Also, I have been in the other part of the chain—that is to sell the coffee to roasters. So I am lucky to be in these two parts. 

So when you wrote that on Twitter, I said, “Hey, I can give you maybe what the farmers think.” I was a farmer too. My family is a farmer too, a coffee grower too. So I know a little bit of what is not being told in the industry, the insight of this small grower. Because everything is pretty on social media, but I think I can give a better insight on things done here in this region, right now, from Colombia. 

Ashley: I think one of the things that we talked about the first time we spoke was the discrepancy between what people see when they see a coffee farm—the pictures, or the stories that roasters tell—versus what actually happens to you. The emails you get, the requests you get, the things that people say to you about how little they want to pay. 

The first time we spoke, it was actually pretty, it was a pretty eye—not eye-opening, because I think that a lot of people probably have some context that what we see isn't always what we get—but you were pretty straightforward about all of the questions that you get that are pretty disrespectful in a way. 

Sebastián: Yeah. I think in every industry you have good customers and notable customers. For example, right now at Latorre & Dutch, we have a lot of customers, roasters around the world, and we are lucky enough that they share our same goal—that is, to pay farmers a fair price. 

Me being here in the region is to listen to the farmers and say, “Hey, [it’s not only about] the price, a fair price, but what are your other concerns?” It's not only price, it’s, “Can [a buyer] buy all my coffee? Not only the super crazy ones, or the 90+.” So a lot of roasters shared [that philosophy] with us as a company. 

But of course I think—if any coffee buyers are listening to this, they can relate—a lot of people, I don’t know, maybe they’re new roasters or something, they’re just like, “Hey, can you give me a cheap coffee or not? That's too expensive.” And I don't think they do that because they’re bad. Maybe they do that because they don't realize how incredibly hard it is to grow coffee. And I think our job as coffee buyers—in my part or people that are in the inner region—is to share with them why that coffee is this expensive. 

Ashley: The things that you talked about are things that are going to come up in this episode. So I asked you a couple of questions. Some of the questions are straight-forward, like, “What do you want coffee consumers to know about growing coffee in Colombia?” 

Some of them are a little bit tougher, like “Can you talk about times where you're worried about a crop,” or, “Have you ever been photographed by a roaster who maybe claimed that you two have a relationship when you don't?” 

Then you reached out to two of the farmers that you know and they answered those questions by sending voice memos to you. So we're going to hear those voice memos from both of the farmers. So I was wondering if you could set up the first person that we're going to hear from. 

Sebastián: Perfect. The first guy is Deiro García, he's a super friend of mine. He's a super grower. He's one of the most knowledgeable growers in Colombia. I [picked] him because he sells coffee, really good coffee at really good prices, but also he sells a standard or normal coffee, normally standard prices. So I think he's the person that can give us a good insight on how’s everything—the pretty and not so pretty—about growing coffee in Colombia. 

Ashley: Alright, let’s hear from Deiro. 

Deiro García: Hola buen día, mi nombre es Deiro García, soy un caficultor de Pitalito Huila, Colombia. ¿Qué quisiera que los consumidores supieran sobre el cultivo del café y que se habla poco?

Lo primero sería el relevo generacional, no? Los hijos de caficultores ya se están ocupando en otros asuntos que no son sobre el café. Es decir, una vez inician una una educación formal y sus aspiraciones no giran en torno al café, al menos que sea referente al campo como la agronomía. Sí, eso sería lo primero. Lo segundo es que cada vez es más difícil encontrar mano de obra calificada. Ya se está dificultando conseguir personal para cultivar. Y sobre todo en Colombia, que el café se da en laderas, no? en montañas y es muy difícil mecanizar. Y tercero, es que a pesar de que somos un país productor, realmente nosotros como colombianos consumimos muy poco café de calidad. Es decir, el café bueno se exporta y pues como se llama popularmente en Colombia, pasillas, se consumen, si? Entonces no hay una motivación, algo que anime a las personas a consumir el producto nacional y así ayude con los costos del caficultores en su producción.

Ashley: Can you tell us a little bit about what Deiro said in that first part? 

Sebastián: Deiro talked mostly about what he wants the roaster or the importer to know. I think everyone knows that coffee-growing is super hard. Sometimes it's not really rewarding. So he talks about that and how he thinks we can face that challenge nowadays. 

So one of the problems is that young people don't want to grow coffee. Why? Because it's hard and sometimes it doesn't pay. And also, for example—I can talk about Colombia, I don't know other origins—but agriculture is an economic sector that is not really interesting for young people because people in Latin America think that agriculture [is a sector that] only poor people work. That's a misconception that people have here. 

There's also the social context of the country that sometimes it's true—agriculture doesn't reward a lot so sadly, we won’t have coffee growers in 50 years because people don’t want to grow coffee. For example, the average age of a coffee farmer is 55 years old in Colombia. So in 20, 30 years there won't be coffee growers. So that's really, really hard. 

That's what Deiro talks about. Also, to find workers, knowing [that in] Colombia, most of the coffee grows on slopes—which is different from Brazil, for example, they have plains and put in machines to harvest coffee—but in Colombia it is really hard. So to find workers that are going to pick coffee on these slopes is really tricky. And sometimes if the growers don't make much money, you can imagine how much money the pickers get. So it's even harder. So people, they don't want to do coffee because it's sometimes dangerous and it’s not well-paid. 

Ashley: Really quickly about the idea of slopes. It's easy to imagine a hill or something. That's maybe a little—no, you're talking about mountains. You're talking about 45-degree angles. 

Sebastián: Yeah. It's really like that. So it's really dangerous sometimes. It's super hard because you have to pick cherries and you also have to be aware and that you are not going to fall, or if you don't fall, the coffee falls and you waste a whole day of work. So it's really, really difficult. 

And the other thing is—and it's really interesting—in producing countries there could be a good market for specialty coffee, and growers can sell their coffee inside Colombia, for example, and they can earn a lot of money for that. But in producing countries, there is not a lot of awareness on how coffee should taste or what is a specialty coffee or varieties like, “Oh, this is a Pink Bourbon, this is a Gesha.” There’s none of that. 

Mostly what people consume here is defective beans, they are not exported. So they are sold to local roasters, but huge roasters. They roast them super bold and they sell that and people put a lot of sugar in that and that's coffee. 

Ashley: Thinking about Colombia specifically, and how you can increase consumption within the country—not that I know the answer to this by any means—but Colombia has a rich history of advertising. You have, oh, what's his name? 

Sebastián: Juan Valdez. 

Ashley: Yeah, Juan Valdez comes from Colombia! You have the FNC, which is the government organizing body that's very influential, very powerful. So there are mechanisms that could increase consumption in the country. But that's just not the case. 

Do you think that because farmers don't often consume the high-end, specialty coffee that they make, because most often they're drinking sort of the defective beans—because that's what staying inside Colombia—that there's kind of a disconnect in values? How do you think that that contributes to how people feel about what they're doing? 

Sebastian: In Colombia, coffee-growing is something that is cultural. A lot of growers grow coffee because of their father or their grandfather, the grand-grandfather used to grow coffee and they're really proud of it. And in Colombia there’s this phenomenon that a lot of people are super proud of Colombian coffee. 

If you find a Colombian in, I don’t know, Russia, they will tell you, “Colombian coffee is the best coffee in the world—period.” And maybe he or she or they haven't even tried a specialty coffee in their life, but it's really cultural that I think we are born and they just put the chip in us. Like you have to like Colombian coffee and you have to be an ambassador of Colombian coffee in every part of the world—even if you don’t like coffee. 

Regarding the consuming part, I think it is mostly education. For example, my grandfather was a grower and I remember that he used to pick coffee with a ladder because the trees are so tall. These trees were full of Bourbon, Typica—they were really old, and as you can imagine the coffee from the varieties are super amazing, but he used to drink defective beans. 

The good ones—they would sell them. But it's not like they said, “Oh, I'm going to drink the bad beans.” They didn't think like that. They thought, “I have to sell the best ones so I can sustain my family. And the defective beans are something that we are used to. We don’t know anything else. So it's fine. It's no problem.” 

It's more cultural than someone saying, “Oh, I deserve the defective beans.” I don't think it's like that. I think that's going to change when there’s more information for the growers. People don't realize that growers don’t always use Facebook, don’t use Instagram. So they have no idea about the new variety, the new coffee roasters or blah, blah, blah...

So I think, in a region, this is for local cafes to do that job. Like, “Hey, here is a Pink Bourbon—try it. Oh, that's good.” So it's more of an educational thing I will say. 

It’s happening right now—but super slowly. But I have seen a lot of cafes with specialty coffee. For example, I [used to] bring my mom or my aunt and they have no idea and they say, “Oh, I used to drink Nescafé or instant coffee.” And now they're really hooked on specialty. 

I remember when I was a kid, I used to make instant coffee for my mom. And now when I go home, I always bring coffee from a farm [that produces] Pink Bourbon—it’s really good. She starts to ask me questions about the processing. “Is it a natural? Is it washed?” She's already hooked, she used to drink instant coffee, but now she asked me about variety—is it a Gesha, it is a Pink Bourbon? So I think slowly, it’s going to happen.  

Ashley: It seems like continuing to talk about it is the way to go. 

Sebastián: Exactly. 

Ashley: The next part we're going to hear—so he asked Deiro how often do roasters and coffee buyers ask him for things that aren't feasible, like only buying a small portion of his farm or asking for an experimental process that might cost a lot of money. And then we asked him how he responds to requests like that. That's what we're going to hear next. 

Deiro: Muchas veces los tostadores y los compradores piden café de muy buena calidad, sin tener en cuenta que hay cafés que son buenos, pero pues no de acuerdo a sus expectativas no? Que buscan un café con una buena taza y un buen factor de rendimiento. Entonces, cuando le hacen a uno el requerimiento de un café y de procesarlo, no comparten con uno el costo que con lleva sacar un café de calidad. El riesgo, porque así como uno se esmera por sacar un buen café de recolectarlo bien, abonarlo bien, procesarlo bien, corre el riesgo que el café se fermente demás, corre el riesgo que el café tenga un daño físico como embrión muerto. Entonces son cosas que a la ligera se piden, pero al final no son factibles, sobretodo cuando el comprador pues no le interesa, sino la calidad de otra, de que hay tostadores y compradores de café, que si corren el riesgo con uno y se procesa un café de tal manera y compartimos el riesgo y te compro el café salga como esté. Entonces no aplica para todos, pero en su gran mayoría el el tostador y el comprador de café no están asumiendo y no saben que eso nos cuesta a nosotros como caficultores inventar o tratar de sacar un café que ellos quieran. 

Ashley: Can you tell us what Deiro just explained in this part? 

Sebastián: Yeah. Deiro, he's a well-known grower. So for example, on Instagram, some roasters approached him like, “Hey, I really like these,” maybe they’ll try his coffees, mostly in Europe. “I want to have your coffee,” and I used to help Deiro with that too, to talk with the roasters one year ago. 

And I told him, “Say yes, but tell them if you want, for example, a batch or a lot, you need to share the risk with me.” A lot of people [are asking for that, because there] now are in trend, [about] fermentations, like, “Hey, I have this idea. You should put your coffee in, I don’t know, tanks for one month and let’s see what happens.” And Deiro says, “Okay, I'm going to do it, but I need you to sign something with my importer or exporter to make a promise that no matter the outcome, you have to buy the coffee.” Because if the coffee is amazing, if it's a 90, of course [the roaster] is going to buy it, but if it’s not, Deiro has to sell it in the local market and then he's going to lose money. 

So I think a thing to do is to share everything, share the risks. For example, when the roasters tell me, “I need something from Colombia, blah, blah, blah…” If it’s something really specific, I tell them, “Hey, look, we’re going to do it like this. I’m a friend of the grower, we can do it, but you have to share risk.” 

We, as a company that buys coffee and sells coffee, we think about our customers—roasters. We have good customer service. We tell them, “Hey, we can do this, do this and these things,” but also we have to have the same good customer service for the farmers, not only with the roasters. 

And that's my work here in Colombia for Latorre & Dutch. I have experience with the growers. When [roasters] ask for coffee, I go to the growers and I sit with them and I tell them, “Hey guys, we're going to do this and this—tell me what price you’re looking for. This is the quality we’re looking for, blah blah blah…”  

And that's how it works. That's how it works as a trader—[you have] to make sure all the [members of the] chain are winning. And I have learned that at Latorre & Dutch here in Colombia, because we are dealing with bigger volumes, it’s good to sit with them. And maybe there’s a coffee buyer listening to this—it’s super rewarding just to sit and listen. What do the farmers want, need, or expect from this negotiation? 

Ashley: That was a really good summary of everything that's happening. 

Sebastián: I would say for me, it's easier of course, because I'm from Colombia and it's easier for me to communicate here. But maybe, if you are not from Colombia or you’re from another country that’s a consuming country, and you buy coffee and you go to a region, just sit with [the farmer]. It's really rewarding. And I think it will be a better negotiation with the farmers and your customer also will be happier. 

Ashley: I think one thing that you mentioned that should be highlighted a little more is the idea of risk. As you were telling that story, you were saying that Deiro is good at asserting what he needs—saying, “Okay, you want me to do this experimental process? You need to sign a paper that says you're going to buy this coffee regardless of what happens to it.” 

Then you said that a number of roasters did respond to that request, except maybe a handful. It seems like we understand that experimental processes can be valuable, but we don't know how to distribute the risks across the supply stream, which is exactly what you detailed. 

Let's move to that third part with Deiro because he then talks about times where he was maybe worried about his crop, or how to communicate that with a potential buyer. So that's what we're going to hear next.

Deiro: En la caficultura hay momentos donde uno se preocupa mucho por la cosecha, sobretodo con las plagas, no? Las plagas, el manejo. es algo que en Colombia no se habla mucho, es como un plan de de de trabajo donde se indique cuántos son los tiempos de abonada, que se planifique todo, no? Creo que en torno al café es el 90 por ciento de los caficultores están desinformados sobre ese manejo. Entonces, al estar desinformados, no sabe manejar su cultivo como tal. Se compromete la cosecha si se pone en riesgo la cosecha. Si no llevas café o si no llevo café, pues no, no me va a pagar nada. Si? Y no hay un como un una entidad que soporte una pérdida. Es decir, un año no coseché y me va a suministrar una cantidad de dinero que necesito para solventarme es año, para el siguiente año. En este caso no se ve, no se ha visto eso. No sé si algunos colegas caficultores lo hayan sabido manejar, pero cada uno debe preocuparse por su cosecha y el comprador no le interesa o hace caso omiso.

Ashley: Can you talk about what Deiro is explaining in this part? 

Sebastián: Here, Deiro is talking about farm management. Sadly in Colombia, a huge number of growers don't have the skill of management because at the end, coffee-growing is a business. And as a business, the coffee growers should have a profit to live for him, her, and the family. 

Due to the social context of Colombia, a lot of coffee growers—they didn't go to school, go to university, some of them don't know how to read or write. So at the end, if you are producing any product, you should know what are the costs of the product, and then you're going to sell it. And then you will know how much is profit, but a lot of people can't do that. And they don't do that. It's not because they don't want to, it's because they don't know. 

And I think that's super, super important. And that's something that people don't talk about—people talk about price, price, price … But if you pay a super high price, but the management is so poor at the farm, that the cost of production is super high as well? It doesn't matter if you pay a really high price. 

I think this is super important that Deiro says, because he's a really good manager of his farm and sometimes he says, “I need to sell my coffee at this price so I can have a 10% profit.” He's the only one that I have heard talk like that in coffee-growing—a lot of people, they don't know, they are really happy. “Oh, my coffees are an 87 and are super expensive.” Yeah. But to do this coffee, these growers had to buy a lot of plants, he got a lot of costs and he or she did not really put that in the formula. 

Ashley: I think that when I think about the conversations that I've had with roasters about coffee prices, it is a very solution-oriented conversation that focuses on roasters. But what you're saying is that we need to—it's like price doesn't even matter if you're paying $6 per pound for coffee, but the cost of production is $6.50 because the management of your farm isn't set up appropriately. 

The solutions don't matter at all. And they also very much focus on the roasters and the people on one end of the supply stream versus focusing on the farmers and what they can do to maximize their profits, which is really interesting. 

Sebastián: Exactly. I think I haven't heard anyone talking about it because sometimes it's really personal to talk about money. But we should! Maybe the buyer should ask that, with respect of course, what are the costs of production? For example, $6 per point is a super [good] price. But if you're not making money with that price, there’s probably a problem at the farm. 

Ashley: So the next question we asked changes the topic a little bit—but we talked about photography and the way that roasters portray the relationships to farmers. Deiro is going to talk a little bit about that, which you'll hear right now. 

Deiro: Como caficultor colombiano si hay mucho que hay compradores de café que le toman fotos a uno en la finca y dicen que tiene una relación con uno, pero realmente es falsa. No? solamente es como para hacer publicidad, pero no realmente no contribuye en nada al al crecimiento del caficultores a menos que le compren el café a muy buen precio, que en otras palabras es lo que busca uno. Un precio, un precio bueno, como se dice popularmente, para cubrir costos y que quede algo para pues asimismo ir invirtiendo en la misma finca. Entonces hay gran desconfianza en el gremio cafetero por esos, pues esos tostadores o esos compradores de café que llegan a la finca, se toman la foto con el caficultor y consiguen el café por otra parte y lo venden diciendo que de determinado agricultor. Entonces esas relaciones estrechas creo que que se ven muy poco.

Ashley: Photography is a big deal, especially the way that roasters portray their relationships to farmers. If you go into—I don't want to call out any coffee shops specifically—but if you go to a number of coffee shops, you'll see pictures of white people and farmers, and [the roasters] saying, “Look at this relationship we have.” 

Deiro pretty much says a lot of these could be false. Maybe I don't have a relationship with these folks. So I was wondering if you'd talk a little bit about what Deiro was talking about in this clip. 

Sebastián: Yeah, for sure. It happened to me as well, and I think it’s happened to a lot of growers. As you say, not to point fingers at businesses or something like that, because I think everyone knows when they are doing something good or bad, but social media has created a false world that everything's pretty and perfect and everyone is happy and sometimes—mostly roasters or people in the business—go and take the photo of the picture and it's not true. I think that's not the real issue because they can do it—it's a free world. 

As a consumer, or maybe you're a roaster and you want to know more about, for example, an import company, you should know there is a huge database called The Internet that you can look for things and investigate for yourself. 

So this guy has this picture of Deiro and Deiro’s on Instagram. Why not ask Deiro, “Hey, look, this guy bought for you, yes or no? Yes? Okay, good. No? Maybe that's not a good business to buy from.” So it's mostly that. I don't think Deiro or any grower is going to fight with a roaster like, “Hey, take down the picture.” Nah, that’s too much work. Sometimes it's free PR for Deiro. But that says a lot about that business. And so I think it's mostly on the consumers’ part to make decisions based on information or facts. 

Ashley: So the next question we ask—which is pretty much an impossible question to answer—is what is a good price for coffee? And we talked about how a lot of that depends on farm management and the way that you break down expenses on your own farm. Deiro goes a little bit into that, but as we mentioned, there's really no one answer. 

Deiro: Con respecto a cuál es un buen precio para el café? Creería que si tengo un cliente, un tostador o un comprador de café, sería interesante fijar un precio independientemente la calidad que entregue, no? como caficultores cumpliría con el aspecto físico un café de calidad. Pero de taza ya debería haber un precio base no? Que cubra mis costos. Si la taza es alta, si la calidad es alta, entonces que haya una bonificación. Pero más que todo sería una base. Una base que fuera, o sea, por encima de mis costos. Como caficultor debo tener mis costos claros. Cuánto me cuesta producir una carga y que sobre esos costos haya una ganancia. creo que sería una buena base para definir un precio, tanto por la calidad, digamos, de un café taza limpia como por una taza 85 86, que sería especiales. Cuando alguien me plantea un mal precio no, realmente no, no es tanto de que haya mal precio porque pues uno busca, busca opciones de siempre vender a mejor precio su café. 

Entonces no, no es algo que se tome de mala manera, solo que no, no se podría vender. En este caso, a ese precio que que se llamaría malo porque no sería conveniente.

Ashley: Something that Deiro mentions too is that there's this idea of what quality is. So he mentions this range, the 84-85 score range, which is technically still specialty. Technically—not technically, is specialty, is delicious—but that a lot of price comes from those scoring numbers, like what does this coffee score? 

I would imagine that for a lot of coffee roasters, that coffee still has a ton of value when you sell it to consumers, but then you're negotiating these prices based on that cup score at the farm, which is really interesting—it's a weird breakdown because we would never sell coffee to consumers based on, “Oh, this coffee is an 85, this is an 84,” but we do negotiate price with farmers based on those numbers.

Sebastián: Yeah. It's tricky. Super, super tricky. Because that’s the rule in Colombia, that’s the rule when growers go to sell their coffee. And that’s why I’m telling you about how or why coffee growers should do research. 

For example, say there is a coffee that is super fruity and I go to Exporter A. Exporter A really liked [the fruity coffees] and they give it an 87. But then I go to Exporter B and they don't like the fruity [coffees]. They like, I don’t know, citric ones? And they give it an 84. So I always tell that to growers—look for the exporter or the market that suits your coffee and that's their work. They have to do that, that’s their job. So just go and sell it to Exporter A, and that's it. If I am selling to, I don't know, China, they will have a different preference than Europe.

There’s this guy called Reinel from Huila—a super, super nice guy. And he always tells me, “Sebastián, I don’t know why my coffee’s always an 84 at the other export company. Always, always, always.” 

So I said, “Hey, come and cup with me. And maybe I can tell you why.” We cupped and his coffee was the typical Huila profile—sugar cane, super sweet, good coffee. But usually that's an 84 at the export company that he used to sell to. I told him that, “Look, it's not because they’re bad or because they are lying to you—it’s because of this.” So now he understands, and now he can look for another buyer. When you're honest with people and explain everything to them, they can make better decisions for their business.

Ashley: I think that's a really good point. I think we tend to look at numbers like an 84, 85—as very fixed. “Oh, this coffee is an 84, therefore it’s an 84—there's no question about it.” But the example that you gave is saying that these numbers are based on preferences. There are certain markets that have certain … maybe a roaster is looking for a specific coffee, or maybe this importer works with a market that's looking for these profiles. 

So it's not so much about the quality being a fixed number, but rather as an exporter, as somebody selling coffee to roasters, it's your job to almost find farmers who are growing coffees that match the needs of a specific road.

Sebastián: Exactly. That's it. 

Look, that happened to me once—I got a Pink Bourbon that was super fermented. I didn't like it, but there was someone from Asia, I think Malaysia, and they gave it a 90 and I was like, “Wow, okay!” So I sold it to them as a 90-point [coffee], and I wasn't even giving it 82 points, but it's my preference, you know? 

And that can't, shouldn't—how you say that—make you lose the goal of why you’re there. You’re trying to sell the coffee to the best customer possible. And that one was the best. The grower was really happy, but I told the grower, “Look, I think this will be like, a once-in-a-year [sale]. So don't do that [too] often because most buyers don't like that note.” Now, you sell it really good, but I don’t know about the future, so maybe you could change the processing or something like that. 

Ashley: So the last thing we—Deiro, what does he want people to know about growing coffee in Colombia specifically? So that's what we're going to hear next.

Deiro: Algo específico del cultivo de café, la venta de café en Colombia, que quiero destacar es que el caficultor y todo el gremio que que trabaja con café, sean recolectores, dueños de fincas, eeh sean catadores, tostadores, todo el gremio. Creo que se trabaja por pasión, si? Se debe tener en cuenta que se debe producir, pero los que trabajan café son personas apasionadas, que que en el medio del café se construye grandes amistades y es algo positivo que el café trae una región o una zona y sobre todo a Colombia por ser conocida por por un café de calidad. Creo que eso es importante, que cuando uno comparte un café, una de las personas que están en torno a él.

Ashley: So what did Deiro say in this part? 

Sebastián: I think Deiro said that growing coffee in Colombia is very, as I told you, cultural. Most of the people are really passionate about growing coffee and they're really proud of it. When you ask them “Where are you a coffee grower?” and they say, “Yeah, I’m a Colombian coffee grower, Colombian coffee is the best in the world.” They're really proud of it. 

And I think that helps to maintain the coffee-growing areas that are really big in Colombia. I think it will be better if it were a more profitable business. So he says, “Hey, besides the profit, it should be a good business.” [He also says] that people here in Colombia should drink good coffee, because that really gives you a boost of confidence in your work—when the grower grows and processes really good coffee, and you drink it and tell them, “Hey, this is a really good coffee.” They’ll be proud of it and they’ll keep going. 

But as I told you, it would be the best if it were more profitable, and I think, yeah, that’s what Deiro told us in this last [piece of] audio. 

Ashley: Do you agree with him? 

Sebastián: To be honest ... I was a farmer. I used to grow with my cousin Pink Bourbon and a lot of weird varieties, but I started working within coffee trading and it was super hard, super, super hard. 

I thought, “Well, I'm not that passionate about growing coffee.” I really like processing, cupping, and everything, but growing coffee for me was really hard. And that's why I have this huge admiration for growers. And that's why I do what I do. When I do it, I always sit with them because I know how hard it is. 

I want to get the best for them when I buy coffee from them. But I think we need more improvement, as I told you, in management and more education on how or why a coffee is good so the growers can make better decisions when it comes to selling their coffee. I think we have a long way to go to educate more about that. But when we achieve that, I think coffee-growing could be one of the best businesses around. 

That was my conversation with Sebastián Diacono, breaking down insights from Deiro García. I know in the intro I mentioned that we talked to two farmers—you can hear that conversation right now in part two of this episode. 

Thanks again to Chobani for making this episode possible, and if you want to learn more, give Sebastián a follow on Twitter (@sebdiacono)—he’s more than happy to hear your responses and answer questions.

The Boss Barista takeover is brought to you by Chobani. Chobani’s mission is making better food for more people, and they’ve brought that mission to non-dairy by crafting the ultimate oat milk for food service—Chobani Oat Barista Edition.

It’s plant-based, gluten-free, non-GMO, and vegan-friendly. Their formula was crafted for superior performance and versatility. Whether adding to black coffee or creating the perfect micro-foam, Chobani Oat Barista Edition will satisfy your café needs and delight your customers.

Welcome to the Boss Barista takeover!

A few weeks ago, I put a call out to coffee folks, fans, and drinkers across the globe to pitch ideas about the podcast they’ve been dreaming of making—and today we’re turning the mic over to the third in our series of guest creators.

Today’s episode comes from Linn Tsang, who is kicking off her podcast called Pressure Profiles. Pressure Profiles is a Berlin-based interview-style show where Linn chats with baristas and other hospitality professionals about representation and community.

I had prior connections to the first two sets of creators in the Boss Barista Takeover—I knew some of the team behind Cafetera Intelectual, and Amanda Whitt from the Updose Podcast is a colleague from my time in New York—but Linn is a new friend, made through this podcasting project. Her perspective is urgent and insightful, and I can’t wait to hear more from the folks she interviews, and learn how the hospitality scene in Berlin is being shaped and molded by changemakers like her.

Next, you’ll hear Linn introducing the series and her guest. As always, you can find a full transcript of this episode at bossbarista.substack.com. Be sure to listen until the end to hear more about this takeover project, and to learn how you can get involved!

Welcome to Pressure Profiles, a show born out of the need for representation and community in the hospitality industry. A new conversation, linked to hospitality in one way or another, will be released on a monthly basis. I want to provide a diverse and open-minded platform that can inspire people in the industry. My name is Linn Tsang, and I’ve been living and working as a barista in Berlin for three years, but my relationship with hospitality is lifelong.

In our first episode, I talk to Amber, a close friend of mine who’s also living in Berlin. We connect about her journey in the coffee industry, and discuss subjects like exploitation, unionizing, power structures, and sustainability. And COVID-19. Thank you for listening, and a big welcome to today’s guest, Amber Ehler!

Linn: Welcome!

Amber: Thank you!

Linn: How are you feeling?

Amber: I’m good. I mean I’ve been better, the weather is not great but, yeah I’m good. How are you?

Linn: A little bit stressed I think. All cards on the table, we had 50 minutes of technical issues. I’m recording from my bedroom so I’ve put up a mattress on one end and closed all the doors and just made myself a cozy little space here.

Amber: Yeah, it sounds cushy.

Linn: It’s cushy. We haven’t actually introduced you, Amber. Properly.

Amber: I’m just your friend. 

Linn: You’re my friend, but also, if it wasn’t me introducing you—because I would introduce you as my friend who I met through my partner, working in coffee.

Amber: Mhm.

Linn: How would you like to introduce yourself?

Amber: I would introduce myself as... So, my name is Amber. I’m Eurasian, my mother is Malaysian, my father is German, but I identify as Eurasian because I was raised in a couple of different countries but in neither of their home countries. I currently work part-time in hospitality, more so in specialty coffee, and I have been for the past three years, which is the amount of time I’ve been living in Berlin. And I am also a tattooer, which is something I would like to do full-time in the very near future. Yeah, I guess that’s how I’d like to introduce myself, pal.

Linn: Yeah. And you’re also allowed to start tattooing again right?

Amber: Mhm, very exciting news. So I think from the beginning of this week, actually, so everyone that I know has slowly but surely been taking appointments and rescheduling their previous bookings. Yeah.

Linn: Amazing. You started your hospitality journey in London, right?

Amber: Yeah so, I think it was 2015. Just for context, I moved to London when I was 18 to go to university, and I went to study illustration—and I had a really great time the first year, and a really bad time the second year. And for, like, six months, I didn’t really draw, and I was obsessed—not obsessed, but I think when you are growing up, most people get taught by their parents or parental figures that, the thing that you have to do after you finish school, is to find a job. And there are specific types of jobs that are acceptable and seen as mature and adult jobs.

So, for a couple of years, I was trying to fit myself into that mold. I did a couple of marketing internships and I was extremely unhappy, and I got offered this account manager position at this jewelry company and then weeks before I was supposed to take the role, I said, “No, I can’t.” I just started looking for café jobs around my area where I was living in London.

I found this establishment called St David’s, and it was like a brunch—they labeled themselves as a brunch specialty coffee place. I met the woman who used to own it. She’s no longer the owner of the business, but her name’s Sian. And she gave me the job, and I was there on and off for two years. That’s where I learned about specialty coffee. They, at the time, used Square Mile, and I got to go to Square Mile and they trained us.

Linn: Oh really? I didn't know that. 

Amber: Yeah. That was when I came into contact with specialty coffee. I mean, I wouldn't say the training was intense. It was the light, introductory kind of stuff, like steaming milk and filter and espresso, and the idea of single origins and blends, that kind of stuff. 

Linn: Mhm.

Amber: When I moved to Berlin, that's when I guess I started taking coffee more seriously. Because I would say that—or maybe it was me just not knowing of that community in London—but I perceived when I moved to Berlin the coffee scene was more serious in Berlin. 

Linn: In what way?

Amber: I guess I never really knew anybody in coffee in other places in London. Maybe it is actually just me networking, but in Berlin, when I started working in specialty coffee, I met so many people who weren't working in the same company as me who really loved coffee. It was a thing that you talked about, and something that you discussed, and yeah, it was more integrated in people's lives. Like it was definitely more of a passion, but yeah. That's, I mean, in hindsight that probably isn't the case with London. Like obviously there are people living in London who take coffee very seriously and it is a passion. 

Linn: Maybe we can feel that way because I think the Berlin coffee scene is quite small. 

Amber: Yeah. Yeah. That's true. 

Linn: There’s like a very, I don't want to say clique, but there is that small scene within specialty coffee, with people who are very, very passionate about it. 

Amber: Yes. I would say core figures of the community. Like there's obviously a very close, tight-knit community, but there are definitely core individuals who I guess would always see or recognize, or who always have something to say—which is not necessarily a bad thing, but are always very active in the conversation of coffee here. 

Linn: Yeah. Did you feel like you got into that scene or that subculture? 

Amber: Sadly, it’s, I don't know. I feel like my journey with specialty coffee is very unfortunate. Like I wouldn't say that I've completely closed my mind to it, but basically, when I moved here, I started working for a company that, I guess from an outside perspective, seemed like the place you wanted to work. It was the establishment to go to if you were really serious about learning and working with it.

I would say the first six months there, they were a dream, because I was being trained heavily and it was stressful, but it was a really—it was a really steep learning curve, going from somebody who air-quotes “made” specialty coffee than actually was really f*****g knowing what I was doing, and the product that I was working with. I think, when you're in coffee, one of the biggest things about it is that you quickly develop a strong bond with the people that you work with. I really enjoyed that, and it really made me feel like I was part of something.

That was great, to have a shared interest with these people who took it really seriously. And, you know, that was wonderful. But I think as that job progressed, I became really unhappy, because this facade that this establishment and this company had upheld of itself was essentially false. As time went on, you learn the malpractices—the malpractice that I've found within that company was not exclusive to that company.

It's in most establishments, especially coffee establishments in Berlin, unfortunately, have some sort of malpractice. It really goes against this idea, this concept that they're selling to people, their customers, or prospective customers—then it's all about the ethics and being fair and making sure that everything in the chain is taken care of. There's full transparency and it's not, it's just marketing. Well, from my experience, it was just a marketing tool.

After I left that company. I worked for another place that used the term “specialty coffee.” I mean, it wasn't a specialty coffee establishment, but that was part of what they were selling. And, they too, didn't take it seriously. It came down to essentially one person who had a very big ego, who was kind of misogynistic and basically undermined the value of specialty coffee and what it actually meant for people coming there who drank it.

And then I worked for another establishment, and it was kind of great, but then corona happened, and then I lost that job. It's like, specialty coffee in the end didn't really do much for me. Like it didn't really—I felt like I got hurt or burned by it more than I actually learned and grew with it, which was unfortunate, because obviously you and I know a lot of people who still work in it, and it's not that they're not experiencing this type of malpractice or dissatisfaction—but they still love it. I kind of do want to still love it, but I feel like sometimes I just need a bit of a break to not think, or have to be around it, that I can reset and just find that interest that I had at the beginning. 

Linn: Yeah. 

Amber: Did that answer your question? I'm so sorry. 

Linn: It does answer my question; I have a lot of stuff. I took a lot of things that you were saying I wanted to ask about. Do you feel like coffee was a passion that you wanted to pursue, but it just—the industry didn't allow for it, basically? 

Amber: I mean, yes and no. Yeah, like I said, in the beginning, I'm a tattooer and I always... Tattooing is always something that I wanted to do more of. But the interest that I have for coffee at the beginning and yeah, initially I would have stuck with that job, stuck with working with it, forever, potentially, part-time. I really didn't enjoy it. 

I really enjoyed working with the product. From an outside perspective, making coffee all day seems very monotonous, but it isn't—that's the thing about specialty coffee, it's so different, and it's so different every time you get a new coffee, and learning about what people are doing with it and the way that people can experiment with it. Yeah, I could have, I really could have done it forever.

I know that yeah, the experience really left a bad taste in my mouth for it, but it's also—I think it’s the industry, but also a little bit of me, too. I could just keep going until I find a place where I feel like I'm finally in an environment that's safe and nurturing and educational, but I'm choosing right now not to do it. It's a bit of both the industry and me.

Linn: Yeah, I've definitely been in your shoes, not necessarily with coffee, but probably also with coffee at one point. I was working in hospitality since... Like, I grew up in a Chinese restaurant. Like the family business was just there from the get-go. As soon as you could start working on the side, that's pretty much where all of my family went and started working as a bartender or as a waitress or in the kitchen, pretty much where you fit. I was doing waitressing and bar jobs for so many years until I really felt like I had enough of it.

I felt like I can't do this job anymore, because it feels so undervalued. I left that industry and I was, I got my degree in social work and I thought that was going to be the next step for me, to just stay in social work. And then I, out of a whim, basically decided to take a year in Australia. Of course, then I fell right back into hospitality, because it's an easy way to get a job in a new country when you know the skill. But then I fell in love with coffee and I fell in love with specialty coffee. So I was definitely at that point where I felt like I needed to leave the industry, I needed to, for my own well-being. I found a new part within it that drew me back in. 

Amber: That's beautiful. 

Linn: But I also think it's so different from—depending on, of course, the place of work—but also the cultures within different countries are so different. 

Amber: Yeah. 100%. I mean, I haven't worked in Australia, but I, from what I've gathered from you and Utty and Narumi, it's legitimately a career there—like you and people really value coffee and hospitality, because it's a genuine exchange between customer and non-customer, employee. 

Linn: Yeah. It's also, I guess, the third-wave coffee scene has been there for a long time. And it's very ingrained in everyday culture. Whereas I think in Germany, in many parts of Europe, it's more like a subculture, or like a subdivision within hospitality: “Specialty coffee, what is that? And why is it different from just a regular coffee?” 

Amber: It definitely is a subculture here. You're right. There's still so many people I feel who are questioning, like really the customers who come in and judge before actually really hearing what you have to say about what you're actually representing. Cause customers almost always think they're right. You know, that's obviously not the case. 

Linn: Yeah. What you touched upon before, as well, within this specialty coffee scene, there's a lot of, there is a lot of highlighting, like good quality, right? So you learn a lot about good-quality product, and how come it's good quality, and what makes it good quality. We pay good money for it, to support the farmers and all of these things. But there's definitely a lag here. There's a problem with sustainability within the companies, because that's where it ends. Sustainability within the companies is a high turnover, low pay. And it's—that's not sustainable, right?

Amber: No, it's not sustainable. I mean, it's just, that's exploitation—just in a different part of the chain. 

Linn: Yeah. There was actually… Have you heard about High Density? 

Amber: No. Pray tell, what is this?

Linn: Monday or Tuesday, The Barista League put on the first event of High Density, basically talking about different subjects within specialty coffee. High Density, it was short but dense. They had a lot of really good speakers. All of these are watchable on YouTube. 

Amber: Okay. Sweet. 

Linn: You can basically go to YouTube, search for High Density or Barista League. You’ll have all of these events. Most of them are between 10 and 20 minutes. There was also a really interesting one, a woman named Vava—I cannot pronounce that—Angwenyi. And she was doing a talk on learning the colonial producer narrative, and she also has a book called CoffeeMilkBlood which I really want to read. Yeah. 

Amber: Yeah. I mean, that sounds super relevant. Cause I mean, it's also a whole other can of worms. There is a whole white-man's-savior-type approach to the way that establishments like to market their coffee—like selection process, like those horrible Insta Stories where it's like, you're helping this family and this family buy food or create their own business. It's like, people caught off-guard working, sharing their day—and it's just like, oh yeah. I mean the sensitivity and the perspective has not been thought of at all, but also, thank you for exposing yourself and the way that you really see what you're doing. Yeah.

Linn: Yeah. I think it was Vava or Ever Meister who was talking about white savior-ism. There's a lot of good stuff on there. 

Amber: It's really inspiring, I guess.

Linn: Yeah. I was telling myself that I need to go back and rewatch these every now and then, just to remind myself that there are really inspiring things happening within the industry. 

Amber: Mm. I feel like you're obviously, definitely more into, I would say—it's a really big passion of yours. Like you work in it right now. You were very active in what's happening in the coffee world. Like, are you more positive? Do you feel positive about the industry that you work in, or is it 50/50—or how do you feel about the state of coffee? 

Linn: That's a huge question. I can try to, obviously I, it's two-fold, I am positive in some ways and I'm very negative, or I feel very negative about some parts of it. Also, I think I have a passion that is constantly being fed by having a partner working in the industry, because his passion has always been driving my passion. 

Amber: That's wonderful. 

Linn: Yeah. It's hard sometimes to get away from that when it's like, “Hey, what are you tasting in this coffee?” I'm just having a coffee, leave me alone. “But what do you taste?” It’s just a coffee. I’m not at work. Just have a break okay? But it's really inspiring at times. Yeah. What was the question? Do I feel positive?

Amber: Do you find that you feel like you're positive most of the time? Or is it something that you have to practice—do you have to switch off from some of the news sometimes? Or what you see from companies, or what you hear from your friends when they aren't happy—or is it generally easier to be like, “Oh no, I love this. Like, this is great.”?

Linn: Yeah. I think that I see a little bit of positive steps in the—because I can only talk about the Berlin industry right now. There are some positive steps being taken, but overall it's a conversation that is heavily focused on how exploitative the industry is. That makes it hard to keep thinking positively, especially when you know how much your friends are being exploited, or underpaid or undervalued. You face so much microaggression and hostility. I mean, you have a really interesting story. And not to put you on the spot, but you have a very interesting story about how a former employee of yours tried to exploit you more because they thought you needed a visa, right? 

Amber: Yeah. I mean, it's horrible, obviously—but nowhere near as bad as somebody who actually was really trapped by having to perform, because they were having their visa hung over their heads. I think, yeah, it was a very eye-opening exchange. Essentially what happened was I had picked up some managerial responsibilities, just to cover for some shifts from my manager at the time.

That happened for a month and a new store was opening, and they asked me if I wanted to become a manager. And I said yes. I asked to be kept as part-time, or part-time hours, around 30 hours a week. We had a few emails back and forth about what the pay would be, and I'd ask for a certain amount of pay. One day the, I don't want to say big boss, but one of the owners came in to speak to me and the one that I was emailing, and we had a conversation about what the job would entail, hour-wise and pay-wise.

Basically, we got into it because he was not willing to pay me what I had asked, which I did not think was especially outrageous or extortionate. I don't think I was being, I don't think I was taking advantage at all. I think that was really some wage that I thought that someone who's in a managerial position for a really well-known establishment should get paid, especially if the norm is that most people work a serious amount of over hours. So, I mean, if you're going to put me on a salary, then you might as well make sure that the salary reflects what the work you're actually going to make me do, and what is expected of me.

I guess we went back and forth about it because I was basically telling him why I should receive this amount of pay. He was very, I guess he was getting quite flustered. Towards the end of the conversation-slash-semi-argument, he just said, “Well, why should I pay you more when you come here for a work visa and then just leave after a year?”

Also to put it into context, I have a German passport, a European passport. At that time I had been working at the company for a whole year. So, I mean, just as a boss for a company that wasn't really that big at the time, you should know I'm not on a visa—also the audacity for you to say that you don't want to pay people what they're worth, and what the work is worth, just because they have a visa, is nonsensical.

It's xenophobic. And it's really exploitative. The fact that another person can say that out loud to somebody in an argument about their worth is ridiculous because—any human who holds some drop of self-awareness should know that's not an okay thing to say, especially in f*****g 2019, when this happened. And yeah, that's what he said.

I think I was really taken aback, but also not surprised, which is very sad, but it’s—I took that comment really as a confirmation that this establishment was really rotten, and it made me feel, yeah, it made me feel really sad, because there were so many people in this company that were on visas and that company really makes them feel like they were really doing them a favor by giving them this visa, and then really taking advantage of them, people working like, a crazy amount of days in a row, and being told that's what they needed to do. That's what was expected that they should be doing.

That's what everyone did in that company, that it was okay. And a lot of these practices are illegal, but they get away with it because people who are on visas or who are new to the country don't really have access to information about the law and what their rights are as workers. That was my experience with somebody who is clearly not interested in caring or knowing about the workers that they employed. 

Linn: They didn't even have the audacity to check in on, “Who am I talking to? And what is their role in this company?”

Amber: 100%. 100%. Yeah. We were all just numbers, really? Just bodies. 

Linn: Yeah. I think regarding wages, I have heard a lot of people talk about how they're not allowed to talk about their wages. 

Amber: Yeah. It's funny. I feel like that's also a really funny thing, because—not funny, but it's which company has employees that actually don't talk to each other. I don't actually understand this reasoning behind, “Oh, you shouldn't talk to your other colleagues about what you get paid.” I mean, for an industry that prides itself on transparency, if you're—if you're really feeling okay with the way that you pay people, the conversations between them should be fine. And also they're going to happen regardless you know? 

Linn: Yeah. 

Amber: That's just how it is. People want to know, people should be checking in with their colleagues just to make sure that they're also getting a fair deal out of their working relationships. 

Linn: Yeah. I was looking into this because I also worked at a place where we were told that we weren't allowed to talk about wages between ourselves, but I looked at my contract and it didn't actually say, and it's probably because it's not his right to ask for that. Or it's not an employer’s right to ask for that. If you're not, I think there are some exceptions for really high CEOs in companies. We were told we weren't allowed to talk about it, but of course we did. But I also think there is a German culture where it’s like, you don't really talk about money in that way. I think it's more prevalent here, but in the same time you have the law that, it prohibits you to pay people unfairly. 

Amber: Yeah. Which is the stinker of it all, isn't it? Because people act, there are employers who still don't pay their workers legally, where it's like the minimum wage. 

Linn: In the end, we actually ended up talking about our pay at my former job of mine. We ended up realizing that we were all being paid unfairly, the person with the least amount of experience and the youngest was being paid the most, more than the head barista. 

Amber: Oh, that's so stinky. What?

Linn: Yeah. Yeah. I was told that my pay was the only pay that I was going to be offered and it was a good pay, take it or leave it. Then I find out that this less experienced person is earning way more than me for, I don't know what reason, maybe their skin color, I don't know. 

Amber: That’s so rotten. 

Linn: Yeah, I do. I do read a lot of Boss Barista. She writes a lot about subjects like these. Google Boss Barista, and there's a special one that is a really good thing that she wrote, it’s called, “Don't Trust Your Boss.” There's been a lot of, especially during corona, I think there were a lot of walkouts and things happening in the States where people were demanding what they should have a right to.

There were a lot of people that just ended up losing their jobs, and the gist of it is Boss Barista, Ashley Rodriguez, she's saying at the end of the day, you can't ghost your boss, but your boss can ghost you. Like there's a power structure there, where an employer can do so much that will ruin your life and your financial situation. You can't do the same in return. 

Amber: No, which I know. I think the power that—the thing that's great about Germany, once you do know the rules of workers' rights and unions, you can really use that to your advantage to protect yourself. I guess you have to get through those obstacles, like actually understanding and unionizing. I think you need something over 50% of the workforce having to actually sign up to actually have a union, but yeah, you're right.

But then also, we can't really reciprocate this, like that type of damage to our bosses, but I think that's where the power of word-of-mouth comes into play. We all know the reputation of people in this industry because we talk to each other, and the way that we support each other is by not supporting these people. Because obviously it's very dangerous for someone to come straight out and be like, “This person or this industry, this company, does things this way and it's really bad. I can show you how they've done it.” Then it's dangerous for you, because then I'd know, you can't really get employed in the future or it goes south and people don't believe you. 

Linn: Marked as a troublemaker. 

Amber: Yeah. Like blackballed a bit—but community, you just start having these really open, honest conversations within your community. It rightfully spreads, this information that should be known, so that people can understand where they should be supporting and where they should not be. 

Linn: Have you been a part of a union? 

Amber: Sadly? No. So, I mean, I didn't really know anything about unions in my first place of work here. And then I got let go. At my second establishment, they've just had a union, which is wonderful to hear. I'm really happy for the people that I still know in that company because I think it's been a long time coming. I think that having a union is really the best way to protect yourself as a worker. 

Linn: Did they just create a union within the company? 

Amber: I guess it's been in talks for a while. They were talking about having a union, maybe shortly after I was let go, which is a year now, a year and three months. And, they've been doing, I think in the past, a lot of the people who wanted to start the union were doing a lot of conversing with their colleagues. But I, again unfortunately—this company has a very big issue with their working hierarchy.

There's definitely a gap between the people in upper management and the people who actually work in the shops. That relationship is extremely hostile and not very safe. So I think there was a lot of conversation happening—but not stealthy conversation—but conversation that would let people know that there was a union and that they should join. That it was something that was in their best interest, but not speaking too loudly about it to be targeted by upper management, which is also horrible. I think they unionized last month, or they made it official, and they have their first meeting, which is awesome. 

Linn: It's interesting because I didn't really hear about unions here as well, but from my background in Sweden, it's very… It's always recommended to be in a union. Regardless of what sector you're working in and regardless of how much money you earn, people will ask you, even your employers will tell you, that you should join a union. 

Amber: That's really cool. 

Linn: It's just part of the culture, really. Here, I didn't even know that there were unions for people working in hospitality for a long time, but there are unions that you can join regardless of where you're working in hospitality, and they will help you if there are any issues. If you need to press charges, for example, they will help you. 

Amber: In a utopia, like in a utopic world, what would happen would be—especially if you're not German—you come to Germany, you're a very willing, likable, optimistic, prospective employee. Companies who want to offer you the contracts should be like, “Oh, by the way, here’s a leaflet about a union. It would be great if you joined.” But no.

Linn: Yeah, that would be a really nice thing.

Amber: Right? 

Linn: Yeah. I do, I feel like a hypocrite, because I keep talking to people about, “You should join the union,” but I haven't actually done it myself. I guess it is also always an issue of you being paid very little and then you have to pay a little bit of that for a union monthly, you know? I am still thinking, and I still should join a union or get another type of—you can get legal insurance as well.

I think that would also help you in that case. And, that would help you in other parts of your life as well. If you have any issues with your housing, I think you could, instead of paying for different types of protection, you can pay for legal insurance, if I have learned this correctly—but definitely I need to figure out what I want to do. I want to get some sort of protection. The problem is that I don't feel enough like I'm being exploited. Like, I don't feel like I'm in a bad situation. That's why I don't feel like I need some protection or support, but that can always change, right?

Amber: Yeah, it's true. It can always change. I guess every time we have talks about a job, you’ve always spoken very positively and warmly about your working relationships, and the place that you work at, and just how much do you enjoy them.

Linn: Yeah. Can't wait to go back to work. Yeah. I haven't been at work since... We were open one day in December. 

Amber: Oh. So you're still fully closed?

Linn: Ah yeah, still fully closed, but we're meeting tomorrow to see, and potentially ordering some coffee. 

Amber: Nice. Will it be in full swing? Is it all seven days, or will it just be a certain amount, like a limited amount of days, like limited opening hours? 

Linn: Yeah. I doubt that we would be able to be open seven days, because our area is very dead right now. It's, there's so many offices in that area, and they're now all working from home. 

Amber: Yeah. Yeah. True. True, true. 

Linn: So it's not like when I walk around certain areas in Neukölln, it's really busy still. When I go past my work, there's no one there. Yeah. Hopefully, that changes now that things are opening up again. 

Amber: How do you feel about the future? Like with the pandemic and the summer coming and working. Do you think that it'll be different for you? Do you think it'll be the same? Do you think it’ll be better than what you remembered or what you had experienced before? 

Linn: I think this year changed everything. I think it's just changed the way that we value things. 

Amber: Of course. 

Linn: I don't know if that's going to lead to something good or something bad, but I definitely really miss having that purpose of going to work and doing something that I really enjoy. At the same time, I filled my time with other things, right. 

Amber: Yeah. You have a lot of beautiful new hobbies. 

Linn: Yeah. I have all of these hobbies that are taking up a lot of time.

Amber: Scoby mama. 

Linn: Scoby mama, plant mama. What about you? What do you feel? 

Amber: So I went to work for a day, which is obviously not very much. Yeah. I mean I haven't been working since the 31st of October. So I went into work actually to make coffee on Sunday. It was a very humble amount of time. It was like six hours. And I found it extremely difficult. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to front. I was in limbo. I was like, “Oh my God.” And I think that's, I can't do this. What have I done? Why am I here? Real existential moment.

I think that's really very much to do with my personal journey, because I feel like in the months where I wasn't working, I was really trying to understand what I wanted to do—and obviously, that's tattooing, and why I hadn't been able to do it before, which had a lot to do with me being my worst, my most intense critic, and putting up all these obstacles. Because in the end, I felt that I wasn't worth it, and I didn't have any talent, which was horrible—but also really good to go through, because I was like, no, you are worth something, your work is worth something. This is what you love to do. You should do it.

Why not go for the thing that you love? What do you have to lose? And I think, in that process, I slowly closed this chapter of working in a place where I'm at, because if I'm being completely honest, it doesn't bring me any joy besides the fact that I can keep a roof over my head and buy groceries and pay my bills—which is, you know, a great thing.

Linn: Yeah. So it's, something that helps you, being able to do the things that you do want to do?

Amber: Mmm. What it is, is that pyramid, the hierarchy of needs—it takes care of my most basic needs, which is basically making sure I can sleep, eat, and be inside, you know? 

Linn: Yeah. 

Amber: Yeah. I mean, also my workplace is slowly changing gears into what they want to represent and offer the community, and it's less to do with coffee now. It's more food-based, and I 100% support that. I think that's a really great idea. The type of food the place that I'm working at is making, and the concept that they have, is really wonderful. I also would prefer not to work in a restaurant, because that's not where my passion lies. I love to eat food. 

Linn: Yeah. 

Amber: I like to make food for my friends that I—I'm obviously not going to be making food there. If it's not about the coffee then, I'm not really that essential there. I kind of also don't find a massive amount of fulfillment being a server. I guess I'm just not really social in that way or that's not really my calling. So yeah. I feel like that chapter is slowly closing on itself, because I'm realizing that I can do what I want to do, which is great. 

Linn: Yeah. That's great. Hopefully, it will stay open now for tattooing and all of that.

Amber: Fingers crossed. 

Linn: Yeah. Fingers crossed. If people wanna find your tattooing and your prints, where can they find you? 

Amber: They can find me on Instagram. My handle is @tendre.tatoueuse. It's T E N D R E full-stop T A T O U E U S E. 

Linn: We'll also link it on Instagram, I think. 

Amber: Sweet.

Linn: We'll make sure, because I was also interrupting you while laughing, but definitely make sure that you're findable. Is there anything that, any place that you recommend, any cafe or restaurant or someone in the industry?

Amber: I definitely would recommend Nano. I really liked the vibe there. I think the coffee's great. We use Nano for our batch crew, and it's really beautiful. Really clean, very juicy, very sweet. Also I mean, their baked goods selection isn't popping off, but this is like a sick granola bar, though, that’s vegan. All the vegans out there, and you should go get a filter and this granola bar—it'll do you wonders.

Linn: Yeah. Is it gluten-free, you think? 

Amber: F*ck. I, I wouldn't be surprised if it was gluten-free, because I feel like I saw a lot of like acronyms, and I was like, “Whoa, this really is baked Mecca over here.”

I guess another recommendation would be to check out Soydivision, who are an artsy collective. They're a community of Indonesians who live here in Berlin. And apart from making really great art and events, they make some sick food, and they have beautiful pop-ups, it's really reasonably priced and the portions are humongous. And Ariel, who's the guy who basically runs that, is a really amazing human being. 

Linn: That's awesome. Yeah. I'll just stand behind those recommendations. I haven't been at Nano too much or know too much about them to be able to say much, but I've usually had good coffee there. They're all nice. They seem to be wanting to make sure that they are treating their staff fairly. 

Amber: Yeah. 

Linn: So, Nano Café close to Kotti, Kottbusser Tor. And Soydivision, that sort of jumps around. 

Amber: Yeah, they used to be by [inaudible] kiez, but they're actually in Wedding now. They needed a permanent place, but yeah, they're in Wedding somewhere.

Linn: Cool. Thank you so much, Amber.

Amber: No worries.

Linn: Really nice talking to you. 

Amber: And you.

Linn: Awesome.

Thank you for listening to the very first episode of Pressure Profiles. I want to remind you that these are conversations between people with emotions, frustrations, and personal experiences. That said, I welcome all criticism, but please make it somewhat constructive.

Pressure Profiles is a project of passion, and you are invited to be a part of it. If you want to have a conversation with me or someone else about the hospitality industry, don’t hesitate to reach out to me on Pressure Profiles on Instagram. Thank you.

That was Pressure Profiles!

Over the next few weeks, you’ll hear more stories from guest creators—some will be launching their own podcasts, and some are doing one-off audio projects. Thanks to Chobani, all creators will be paid for their time.

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Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.