0:22

Hello friends, and welcome to episode 54.

0:26

It's been a while since I sat down to record,

0:28

and those of you who received the newsletter, or

0:30

check Instagram, will know it's because Nick and

0:32

I did a fermentation training camp in Indonesia

0:35

in June, and then we spent a few more

0:37

weeks visiting Vietnam and Japan after

0:39

the camp. And From

0:41

that trip, from that time, there's a lot

0:44

of conversations and a lot of,

0:46

episodes coming from the

0:48

people that I was able to meet and record

0:50

with, so I'm really excited about the,

0:52

that coming up pretty soon, but today's

0:55

conversation with Tom from Sweet

0:57

Maria's. This was recorded actually before

0:59

we left for the trip, but we didn't get

1:01

around to editing it until this week.

1:04

So, Tom and I have never met, but he

1:06

is a patron of the podcast and he reached

1:08

out a while ago wanting to record an episode

1:10

together. And I was really excited

1:12

to receive his message because I listen to his

1:14

podcast and I enjoy his thoughtful

1:16

reflections. In

1:19

this conversation, we talk about coffee, tourism,

1:21

and travel. These are topics that

1:23

are a spin off of his podcast episodes

1:26

38 and 39. You

1:28

don't have to listen to those episodes to enjoy

1:30

this conversation, but I think they're very

1:32

good episodes, and I will link them in the show notes so

1:34

you can check them out later. Since

1:37

its beginning, Sweet Maria's has been an incredible

1:39

resource for curious coffee nerds who wanted

1:41

to learn about home roasting basics, green

1:44

coffee quality, roast profiles,

1:46

and cupping. The Sweet Maria's

1:48

website has an extensive coffee library

1:51

and resource page, so I highly recommend

1:53

you check it out if these topics interest you.

1:56

You know, it's interesting because if you wanted to buy green

1:58

coffee as a roaster, usually the smallest

2:00

size you can buy is like, you know, one

2:02

bag, about 150 pounds of green

2:05

coffee. And even when you have,

2:07

like, micro lots, they can be as big as 5

2:10

to 10 bags. So, roughly 750

2:12

pounds to 1, 500 pounds of

2:14

coffee. For a roaster,

2:16

this is a small batch. But for a home

2:18

roaster, this is an unreasonable amount

2:20

of coffee. Sweet Maria's

2:23

sells as little as a single pound of

2:25

carefully sourced and selected coffee. I

2:27

think it's a great service because it's made specialty

2:29

coffee more accessible to coffee lovers.

2:32

Sweet Maria's began in 1997,

2:34

so there are few people in the coffee industry

2:36

who don't know about this home roasting

2:38

gem, or who don't know who

2:40

Tom is. However, if

2:42

this is your first time hearing about Tom, you're

2:45

in for a treat, because you're about to hear from someone

2:47

who spends a lot of time thinking about his role

2:49

and impact in the coffee space. Tom

2:52

and I talked for a long time, so I don't want to

2:54

make this intro too long, but I do

2:56

want to remind you guys that I'm still planning fermentation

2:59

training camps in Guatemala. Our

3:01

next camp this December in Antigua is

3:03

sold out, but if you email info.

3:06

luchacoffee at gmail. com,

3:08

you can be put on the waiting list and be the first to

3:10

know when I open spots for the next one,

3:12

which is potentially happening at the end of February

3:17

2024. You can also find more details on the fermentation

3:20

camps on my website at luchacoffee.

3:23

Lastly, I want to remind you guys that we

3:25

are regularly getting together for office

3:27

hours on Discord. We have also

3:29

started a Spanish office hours to be

3:32

inclusive of Spanish speaking audience. I

3:34

often hear from listeners of the podcast who have

3:36

strong English skills but feel more limited

3:39

in their speaking ability, so

3:41

we created a Spanish channel and a

3:43

Spanish office hours so we can all communicate

3:46

more freely. Okay. End of

3:48

housekeeping. Let's get started with Tom.

3:50

Okay.

3:50

I guess something I didn't realize is that your wife

3:52

and your, is your partner as well, so you're both working

3:55

in the business.

3:56

Well, she's actually not. So

4:00

Maria, Maria was she retired basically?

4:03

Yeah. So she's, she's not really involved.

4:05

She was more in the kind

4:07

of the business part, and

4:10

it's mainly me and Dan that do

4:12

the green coffee part. And

4:15

then, you know, it's about 22, 25

4:17

employees at the warehouse. So it's

4:20

kind of medium sized, but

4:22

you know, it's sort of still family,

4:24

no, that's awesome. I was seeing, so my

4:26

husband, Nick does work with me and

4:28

so we, he doesn't usually travel

4:30

with me, but this was, he's like, I'm not gonna miss this.

4:33

So he decided, he

4:35

wanted to like, okay, how

4:37

do we make it work? And if you're coming, let's just, like, so I

4:39

turned into this whole thing, so that's

4:41

exciting. And then again, very present

4:43

on our minds thinking about travel. And

4:46

just like I, you and I have been having

4:48

this travel conversation, like in asynchronous

4:51

time over like months of.

4:54

Yeah. Yeah. Well you

4:56

started me thinking, I, I

4:58

think I've, I just keep doing things about

5:01

travel and, and kind of photography too,

5:03

cuz that's actually

5:05

what I did my masters in, even though I didn't even

5:07

use a camera when I did that. But,

5:10

but I, I'm really familiar with all these

5:12

ideas of representation that

5:14

I brought over into coffee

5:18

and, you know, I think we

5:20

had some back and forth and it,

5:22

it, that spurred me to

5:24

do that two-part tourism podcast,

5:27

which I know that just came outta nowhere, the

5:30

whole tourism thing. You

5:32

know, it seems really unnatural, but I

5:34

was looking for something that, you

5:36

know, explains and provides a framework

5:39

for cultural connection

5:42

because, sometimes I think coffee travel

5:44

literally is, is like

5:46

a tourist expedition or, you

5:48

know, trek and there's like group

5:51

trips where you get in a van and

5:53

it really feels like that's what it is and that's

5:56

why I travel alone. But

5:58

you know, of course a lot of times it's not. But I

6:00

still think it's like a valuable framework

6:02

for thinking about it.

6:04

Have you heard any feedback about those episodes?

6:07

yeah, I mean, I got some thumbs

6:10

up. I don't, I don't feel like I get much

6:12

sometimes, but a few things are coming in and I

6:14

was really interested, this, this friend on WhatsApp

6:17

that he's he's in Kansas City,

6:20

and he he sent me a thing saying he

6:22

was, he was fixing a motorcycle tire

6:24

listening to it and he just like couldn't

6:26

understand what it was about. Like he couldn't

6:29

relate to it. And I really like

6:31

this comment because he's very, he

6:33

just does what he does in coffee. You probably

6:36

don't hear a lot about his company

6:38

because he's just like doing his thing.

6:41

And I really appreciated like, okay.

6:43

I was like, you know, that's so great this,

6:45

you don't relate to this because it's not

6:47

the things that are, are

6:49

something you, you know, you think about when you travel

6:52

and that's great. So,

6:54

you know, cuz I'm kind of forcing the, this,

6:56

this tourism critique

6:58

onto the coffee thing. it doesn't

7:01

fit, easily and naturally.

7:03

I'm kind of making it fit so that I

7:05

can understand like, How,

7:08

you know, what kind of criticism? There's

7:10

a whole there's departments

7:12

of tourism studies and there's people who have focused

7:15

on it. It's kind of been a wormhole for me and now

7:17

I'm reading like two other books on

7:19

the topic of, of tourism studies and

7:23

I still find it interesting. So,

7:25

Well, I'm curious why you think it's, it's forced

7:27

and not a good fit for me. It, it just, it

7:29

lays so naturally on top of and

7:31

provides a really good structure and a

7:34

lot of evidence for what I've seen.

7:36

So I think maybe it has to do with

7:38

living in producing countries the way that

7:40

I do versus somebody living in the United States and

7:43

saying, okay, well this isn't really relevant or you feel

7:45

like you're forcing it, but for me, who lives in these countries,

7:48

I'm like, this, it just felt like such a breath of

7:50

fresh air. I'm like, this is it. This

7:52

is something that I see all of the time.

7:54

And so I think maybe that's one of the privileges

7:57

is that when you travel, you only see

7:59

it in these glimpses and maybe you take a two week

8:01

vacation per year or you go and

8:03

so you're like, well, it's only two weeks out of my whole year,

8:05

but for us who live in these countries, I'm like, this is all

8:08

of my weeks. This is, this is every single

8:10

week of my year. And so it feels more relevant.

8:12

So I think your comment about forcing

8:14

it is really interesting to me, and

8:16

I'm just like, wow. It doesn't feel forced at all.

8:18

That's really interesting that you found it,

8:20

are you saying that the

8:23

dialogue around like tourism, coffee,

8:26

felt like something you observed

8:28

from your position living in origin,

8:31

origin

8:32

yeah. In producing countries. Not necessarily

8:35

something I observed, but don't observe enough of

8:37

as having this conversation. So for, for you to

8:39

be exploring these themes and to be

8:41

exploring what it is to be, you know, an

8:43

outsider coming into a new culture and what

8:46

are our responsibilities? How much safety

8:48

and comfort do we want? How much adventure do

8:50

we want? Like, all of these questions I

8:52

feel are incredibly relevant because I

8:55

think one of the things that I really reacted

8:58

to in those episodes that I really

9:00

enjoyed, I'm so glad you made them. And I hope whoever

9:02

listens to this has already listened to those, or goes

9:04

in, immediately listens to those episodes. Cause we're gonna

9:07

reference them a lot, I hope. But

9:09

something that I really was

9:11

reacting to kind of in that sense, where you,

9:14

you had this idea of like, I don't wanna be

9:16

the travel police. I don't wanna tell people

9:18

what to do. It feels really uncomfortable

9:20

to like, have guidelines. Like you don't,

9:23

you don't want that to be your role. And I hate being

9:25

the police of anything as well. But

9:27

what I noticed in, in

9:30

that dialogue is like, These

9:32

things are not equal, like you're saying. I don't wanna

9:34

be the travel police cuz I don't

9:36

want anybody to feel bad about what makes them happy.

9:39

And then I'm on the other side saying,

9:41

yes, but the trade off is fe making someone

9:44

feel bad, like hurting somebody's

9:46

feelings maybe about what they like versus

9:49

another person's actual economic livelihood. And

9:51

another person's like life,

9:53

like these two things are not equal. I'm like, I'm sorry I

9:55

hurt your feelings, but this person lost

9:58

three days of work. Or, you know, something like that. Like it's,

10:00

they're not equal topics.

10:02

And so I think it's okay

10:05

to like hurt somebody's feelings if the backside

10:07

or the upside of that is that they don't make, you

10:10

know, some very poor

10:12

choices that actually affect people

10:14

on a much larger scale.

10:17

So what are those, what, what are those

10:19

poor choices that you see? Like what have

10:21

you seen that you feel is kind

10:23

of egregious in terms of things

10:25

people might do unconsciously, but

10:28

they, I sort of visit a coffee

10:30

producer and then take all their time

10:32

and take them away from their work.

10:35

yeah, I, I think, I think that part

10:37

feels like it deserves a lot

10:40

more examination. I mean, you mentioned it,

10:42

I think, I dunno if it was in the podcast or at least in a,

10:44

a private message to me about, If

10:47

the reverse was true. So if we're gonna go, if

10:49

I'm a coffee buyer and I'm buying a handful

10:52

of bags, five, 10, and I'm coming to

10:54

visit a producer, but I'm staying for

10:56

three or four days and I'm staying in their house

10:59

and they're feeding me three meals a day, maybe I

11:01

come with a friend, maybe there's two of us, and

11:03

now you're feeding us and, and

11:06

we're here and maybe we've bought coffee

11:08

before, maybe we haven't even made the purchase. They're just interested.

11:10

They're like, I just wanna get to know you. That

11:13

is very, very common. I see that a lot.

11:15

And a lot of producers are very happy to

11:17

share their, their business.

11:19

Like they don't usually have a lot of these opportunities

11:22

to access new markets, so

11:24

they can be really excited about it. But if

11:26

we do the, the reverse and we say, okay,

11:29

Tom, someone's gonna come visit you and they're gonna

11:31

stay in your house and you have to feed them and you have to drop

11:33

everything that you're doing for three days, can your business

11:35

afford that? And, and

11:37

the other way, it's like, that's a very unrealistic

11:40

request for your

11:42

time and taking you away from other

11:44

things. But when we apply it

11:46

to coffee, we're like, no, we are, we feel

11:48

a little bit of entitlement of like, well, I'm coming

11:50

all this way and they're going to host me. And

11:53

I don't know that we spend enough time

11:55

asking or like really thinking about what are we

11:57

asking of people? What are we asking of

11:59

our hosts to do? We're asking them

12:02

to not do anything else. We're asking them to not tend

12:04

to other things we're asking them to drive

12:07

us at,

12:08

Yeah, I mean, you brought this up in,

12:10

in one of your podcasts and

12:13

it made me think because it, it

12:15

just was about the impact on somebody

12:17

else's life.

12:19

And would I be able to host someone

12:22

in that same way? So

12:25

if somebody came to visit me in Oakland

12:27

and, and stayed at

12:29

my house, which the dogs would not like,

12:31

and and then, you know, came to work and I couldn't

12:34

do what I normally could do, yeah. I, I could

12:36

not offer in

12:38

a reciprocal way what I was asking

12:40

of them when I came there to

12:43

visit them in a producing country.

12:45

So, yeah, it seems really

12:47

unfair and really unequal. And I

12:50

think, you know, a lot of where I

12:52

would like to get to is

12:55

a way that neither party patronizes

12:57

each other. That we, you know, you really

13:00

feel like you as a coffee buyer

13:02

have this specific role and

13:05

they produce the product that you buy. And

13:07

it's very simple. It's not, there

13:10

isn't it's, if we could take

13:12

maybe even some of the emotion out of it and also

13:14

just some of this kind of whole coffee

13:16

family thing and those,

13:19

those things that kind of soft focus what

13:22

the economic basis is for what we do.

13:25

I visit you to confirm

13:27

quality and to learn.

13:30

You know, and at the same time you have a business

13:32

that you need to focus on

13:34

and your part, you know, somebody who produces

13:36

coffee, they have their role and

13:39

you sort of meet equally

13:41

like, I'm not helping you because I buy your

13:43

product. There, there are

13:46

other buyers and if your product is good,

13:48

you will have other buyers. So it's

13:50

not really, I mean I like that it's

13:52

personal, but it's not in a way too

13:55

I think if people produce quality

13:57

coffee then they don't need me,

14:00

solely me and they don't rely on me

14:02

and I, you know, vice versa.

14:05

And I think that gives both parties a more

14:07

honest basis for relating

14:09

to each other on a more stable basis. And

14:11

it's really not patronizing cuz

14:14

that's what I find in a lot of the dialogue

14:16

of marketing, coffee and selling coffee.

14:18

It over represents and

14:20

distorts the relationship. And

14:23

I thought of a new one today, in fact, cuz I was

14:25

here and I thought about coffee sourcing.

14:28

I was thinking about all the work that I

14:30

don't do to get my coffee.

14:33

What I really do is I select,

14:36

I select the coffees that are offered to

14:38

me, but someone has, El else has

14:40

done the work to put together

14:42

all those selections and put them in

14:44

front of me. Fetishize the whole world

14:47

coffee buyer to this point where it just sounds

14:49

like you're just, you know, this amazing

14:51

wizard going out, conjuring

14:53

up these things and, and, you know, it's,

14:56

it's just fake. Like we, we

14:58

say, I work with this producer, you didn't work

15:00

with them. Cuz like I I've said,

15:02

you don't work with the person you buy tomatoes

15:05

from at the Berkeley, organic market.

15:08

You just went and bought their tomatoes. That's not

15:10

working with them. And I think

15:12

a, a lot of the things

15:14

I was talking about in that podcast is how,

15:16

you know, a group of coffee buyers will

15:18

show up and then magically all I'm

15:20

being snarky here, by the way, all their

15:23

all their Instagrams show. So as

15:25

if they were there alone, it's like, you

15:27

know, there's one group photo, but everyone

15:29

goes off into the bushes and records

15:32

their, their video. I'm

15:35

here at this place and you know, you

15:37

think they walk, they walked there or something

15:39

I also thought about how, how

15:42

momentary my visits to coffee

15:44

locations are. Like the washing stations

15:47

I go, I went to, in the last couple of

15:49

days, I'm there for 30 minutes, five

15:52

minutes. And I do try

15:54

to get a lot out of that. I try to gain,

15:57

gather a lot of information. I take a lot

15:59

of photos. I ask questions, I make notes

16:02

I fill in any details

16:04

I might have missed from previous trips, but

16:07

it's 30 and 45 minutes and

16:09

it gets represented like I'm, you

16:12

know, there for these submersive,

16:15

encounters with that. So

16:18

I feel like a lot of the language and stuff,

16:20

the way people represent coffee travel

16:22

is, is really fake, basically.

16:25

Well, and I think this is another opportunity to

16:27

talk about that, like, like

16:30

time, how time distorts

16:32

our perception of what's important. And so

16:35

yes, if you're visiting for 30, 40 minutes,

16:37

And you're also having these discrete

16:40

times, and then I could see how another buyer is

16:42

like, well, is this really an issue? Like, I,

16:44

I can't relate to this. You know, kind of having that,

16:46

that barrier. Whereas I've

16:48

only been to Kigali once and I was there for

16:51

18 days working with a producer. So

16:53

I was there for the 18 days watching

16:56

all of these tour buses of the people that were coming

16:58

for 30 minutes and 45 minutes and over

17:00

18 days, like I could see

17:03

the growing pile of

17:05

these, interactions and experiences. And so,

17:07

you know, we're, we're the colors

17:10

very much kind of my snarkiness and my

17:13

frustration with the system. Just

17:15

seeing how those

17:17

trips developed. Like you said,

17:19

the representation of them and then

17:21

seeing all of the

17:23

things being there for all of the things that the

17:25

visitors don't get to see or, you know, being there for

17:28

the show and then okay, the show's over,

17:30

everybody goes home and like we're still there working until

17:32

whatever time or all

17:34

of those other kind of components. So

17:37

I, that's why I think this is a really

17:39

important topic to talk about and to bring up.

17:42

And I'm okay having.

17:45

A little like, I wanna

17:47

figure out how to say this. Like, I don't want to

17:49

shame people either, but I'm okay if that's

17:51

kind of an effect of what these conversations do.

17:54

I'm okay if somebody listens to this

17:56

and is maybe a little bit ashamed about

17:58

like, wow, I've done that and I never thought

18:00

about the other side. Or I'm about to do

18:02

that. How do I not, how do I make sure my

18:05

trip doesn't turn into one of these things? Cuz

18:07

I think awareness is really

18:10

important, but it's not enough. It's

18:12

just kind of having that, that sort of secondary

18:14

action. So I really, I

18:16

also wanted to say that I really appreciate what you

18:19

mentioned about depersonalizing

18:21

coffee and I, I feel

18:23

like we have this false sense in specialty

18:26

coffee that the way to make it specialty

18:28

is more personal, more stories,

18:30

more emotion, more connection. But

18:32

I completely agree with you that that can translate

18:34

so often into this patronizing form

18:37

and it's like, it's, it's perfectly dignified

18:39

to say, I like this thing and

18:41

I paid for it and now it's over here. Like,

18:44

that's not less than

18:46

like, that's a perfectly valid economic

18:49

exchange of like an

18:51

event. So all that to say, that's why

18:53

I really wanted to have this conversation with you cuz

18:55

I think we have similar perspectives,

18:57

but we're coming from really different like

18:59

sides of the supply chain, really different

19:01

sides of the industry. We have, you know, different

19:03

kinds of experience, but I feel like.

19:07

With enough time. I think most people,

19:09

most reasonable people with enough time in this

19:11

industry will converge to this

19:14

type of perspective. But I don't

19:16

know that we have that much time and if we

19:18

can accelerate some of these conversations,

19:20

I think that's what I really wanna accomplish. Like

19:22

in general. So I dunno

19:24

if there's anything you wanna add or react to there.

19:27

Well, I, you know, I really

19:29

want to hear more about what you have to

19:31

say because you are involved.

19:34

You, you know, you consult in production

19:37

and I visit people

19:39

who are doing work in coffee for

19:41

long periods of time before I come and

19:44

are ready to present that coffee to me.

19:47

But it's, you know, out of politeness,

19:49

it's, and perhaps,

19:51

you know, they, they all, I don't know, they're, maybe

19:53

they also believe some of this too,

19:56

that a green buyer's really special, but they treat

19:58

us very nicely and they don't want to be rude. And

20:01

I think you mentioned just politeness,

20:04

but you can't, it's very hard to get people to

20:06

be critical you know,

20:08

for this politeness factor, which I totally respect.

20:10

But I want, I want somebody to tell

20:12

me, you know, honestly,

20:15

how does this work? Like, how, what is

20:17

your view? How is it when you

20:19

keep seeing this stream of buyers come through?

20:21

It's something I really don't get to see. But

20:23

what I have experienced on the tour buses

20:26

and when I sit still and see

20:28

streams of buyers come through is it's not

20:30

very flattering. Sometimes it's. So

20:32

I want to, I wanna hear more about what you

20:34

see because you're willing to talk

20:37

about it. And, you know, generally in

20:39

coffee, I just find people aren't critical enough

20:41

because A, they think critical is, is

20:44

bad, and b, it's like this, this is just

20:46

like a business. So if

20:48

you have a business and you criticize another business,

20:51

you're just, it's taken that you're just trying

20:53

to elevate yourself over other people.

20:55

But it leads to this real silence in coffee

20:58

about you know, if people have products

21:00

to sell and they have reputations, they don't want 'em

21:02

damaged, they don't wanna speak too much

21:05

critically about how people are

21:07

behaving. so I totally

21:09

agree, and I think it comes down to me

21:11

to like harm, like

21:13

what harm comes

21:15

to a coffee buyer who's hurt because

21:18

their ego isn't stroked, their ego isn't fl

21:20

combed. You know, versus

21:24

somebody, yeah, they, they've lost several days

21:26

of work and then find out that

21:28

this person really isn't a serious buyer

21:30

and they're not really committed to.

21:33

Long term, you know buying

21:36

relationship or something, you

21:38

know, what kind of har you know, so it's, I

21:40

think of that too. Yeah. So

21:42

I don't, the more you say about

21:44

what you have observed, I think the

21:47

richer it is because you've seen,

21:49

you've been in production situations, you've

21:51

seen people pass through and

21:53

you've noticed things, and

21:56

what are those things?

21:58

well I also have this

22:00

I think we share this, this like super

22:02

critical voice that that is like censoring

22:05

our, our comments frequently.

22:07

And I have a hard time

22:10

with that, with that voice because

22:12

I, I do get to see

22:14

those things. So I can

22:16

speak on behalf of producers, but I don't think that's helping

22:19

either. Like, I, I don't wanna speak for

22:21

them because then I'm just part of the problem. So

22:24

kind of with that in mind, you know, I'm not,

22:26

I guess that's another thing too is that I would say most

22:29

producers wouldn't be this

22:32

critical. Most producers wouldn't

22:35

get as upset as I get in these

22:37

situations cuz I think they're much more culturally

22:40

used to it or, you know, they don't

22:42

have, don't have that lens of like,

22:44

you know, what someone just did to them was rude. So it just kind

22:46

of like, you know, slides off their back and I'm there

22:48

observing it. I'm like, that was incredibly rude. So like, I'm

22:50

more upset than the producer. So I don't wanna say

22:52

that like they're some, you know, they're there fuming

22:55

and they're just like not able to say anything.

22:57

And I'm kind of observing this. I think most

22:59

of the time they're just not really incorporating,

23:02

cuz cultures are different. So they may not have

23:04

perceived the slight that I perceive kind of being

23:06

one foot in both worlds. But what

23:08

I, what I will say is that I

23:11

think that one of the things that

23:13

most I think conscientious buyers,

23:15

like you would say, you know, if, if a producer said,

23:18

you know, this is not a great time for me. Can we do

23:20

it next month? Or you know, please

23:22

come visit me, but I, you know, I can't have you stay in my house.

23:24

Can we find some other accommodation for you? Or,

23:26

yes, you can visit me, but would you be willing

23:28

to cover your own meals for this time?

23:31

Like, I'm sure every reasonable green

23:33

buyer would be like, of course, of course I would do that.

23:35

Like, so it's perfectly reasonable request.

23:37

But culturally, living in Latin cultures,

23:40

that is not something that

23:42

we would request of visitors.

23:44

Like we have a very special place for

23:46

visitors and they are very special entities

23:48

that come visit. So that,

23:51

I dunno, I guess it's sort of like you're saying,

23:54

With green buyers. If someone asks us these

23:56

things, of course we would do them. And I'm like, I just don't see

23:58

a world where producers would actually set limits

24:00

and put, you know, regulations. So I think it's

24:02

a much more on the part of

24:05

the, the green buyer to ask

24:08

those questions for themselves and kind of censor themselves

24:10

and say, is what I'm asking pretty reasonable? Could

24:12

we flip this in another way? And then instead

24:15

of waiting to be asked, offering

24:17

saying, can I cover my meals? Would

24:19

it be okay for me to stay with you? Or,

24:21

I'm perfectly happy finding accommodations

24:23

nearby, or, you know, offering these things

24:26

that may, producers are definitely not gonna be the first

24:28

ones to suggest that, but

24:30

maybe once it's presented to them, or maybe not

24:32

even saying like, you know, maybe they'll still say yes

24:34

and like, be really gracious, but

24:37

maybe it makes more sense for me as a visitor

24:39

to like stay in my own place and not invade their home

24:41

and something like that. Like I think

24:43

the effort needs to be disproportionately on

24:45

the visitor to try

24:47

to be a good visitor instead of disproportionately

24:50

on the host to be a good host. That makes

24:52

sense.

24:52

I've been trying for like 26 years

24:54

to figure this out, so, and

24:57

I don't, you know, I know I've done every bad

24:59

thing because, you know, my head

25:01

gets filled up with ideas about,

25:04

you know, a lot of times I think like, you know, especially

25:06

in the period about 10 years ago and stuff, when

25:08

like. Green buying competition

25:11

was just kind of ridiculous.

25:13

It was like this, especially, I

25:16

hate to say it was like a man thing,

25:19

it was like a competition

25:21

and it really felt weird. And I know

25:24

even at the time I really had trouble with

25:26

it, but I also just couldn't like, it.

25:28

It was, there was a culture around it that was

25:30

really gross to me. And

25:32

I reflect back on that. And some

25:35

trips I'd take where, where I, you

25:37

know, I know I was just trying to not be bored

25:39

and have fun, but I, I get really silly

25:42

and I think I was really rude sometimes, you know?

25:45

And and I feel like I've, I've,

25:47

you know, probably done every bad

25:49

thing that, that

25:51

there is to do in, in it and

25:53

not be out of intention, but

25:56

usually just out of ignorance and not

25:58

being aware of what people

26:00

are doing for me. But the

26:02

thing I thought of, which when you're talking is, is

26:04

a guy, there's a guy that loaned us a truck

26:06

in Ethiopia like a couple months

26:08

ago for a whole week. And I didn't thank

26:10

him. So that's what

26:12

I thought of. I need to, I need

26:14

to go back. I need to remember to thank

26:16

him. Maybe I did, but I didn't

26:19

like formally thank him. So,

26:21

Yeah. And I think that's what a lot of people don't realize

26:23

that I'm able to perceive is how

26:25

much producers give. Like it's not just their time

26:28

where they're not working or doing anything else where they're attending

26:30

to the guests, and then it can be okay,

26:33

they're home. So maybe you know, the

26:35

kids have to the, the three kids are sleeping in one

26:37

room so that the guests can have one of the kids'

26:39

rooms, something like that. And then of course the

26:41

food. So the time of the women to cook all of

26:44

the food and then to clean all your dishes. And

26:46

then I've seen so many people get their laundry done,

26:48

so now they're washing your clothes and they're cooking your food

26:50

and you're taking their room in their house

26:52

and they picked you up from the airport and they lend you

26:54

a car and they fill the gas with that car so

26:57

you're not paying them back for the gas of the car or

27:00

any other, like, things like breakdowns

27:02

or things like that. So I think when

27:05

you start adding up all of these little things

27:07

and you're like, well, I just visited them for three days or four

27:09

days, and then you think, okay, but 10 other people came

27:11

to visit them or like, all of these

27:14

things are, are quite a burden. It's not just your

27:16

footprint, but like the footprint of everybody

27:19

in that space who can take

27:21

advantage in this way.

27:23

Yeah. I think, you know, leading with, you know,

27:25

with a clear idea, giving someone a clear idea

27:28

of this is what I'm doing, this is how much coffee

27:30

I'm looking for, you know,

27:32

that you have an organized way

27:35

that you present them with what your need

27:37

is. And so at least that part

27:39

is clear. So, you know,

27:42

I, I mean, I do think the producers

27:44

will make their own choices to some degree.

27:46

And, and, but I have seen

27:49

times where I just can't believe the resources

27:51

that somebody buying 10 bags

27:53

is, is getting And,

27:55

you know, I mean, a lot of times they're,

27:57

they're real you know, sort of well-traveled

28:01

exporters and, and people who

28:04

are, are showing off coffee to people, they're,

28:06

they've gotten real, they've gotten

28:08

a lot better at being set up for this because

28:11

they've been through it so much that they are basically

28:14

gonna stage that circus, you

28:16

know, five days of a week. Like, like

28:19

in Antigua, there's exporters that

28:21

have like cupping rooms with divi

28:23

dividing things between them so they can

28:25

just stack up the visitors and, you

28:28

know they can all get their work done.

28:30

But it's really important to know what is that

28:33

work, what are they being asked for?

28:35

And to have a clear, to

28:37

present them with a clear idea of how

28:39

much you buy, what you are looking for

28:42

what, you know, maybe even pricing, this

28:44

is what I've been paying et cetera.

28:46

And I, I think, you know, one of the conversations

28:49

that we've had, you know, in the background is

28:51

having some kind of. Of

28:53

guideline, which is, I think too strong

28:55

of a word, but just questions that one

28:58

can ask oneself before embark on

29:00

a trip. And I think one

29:02

of those could be, what you're saying

29:04

is really important is how much coffee am I buying?

29:07

So maybe it's 10 bags and then say, okay,

29:09

what is this trip gonna cost? Just me. So saying

29:11

like, maybe there's two of us and it's gonna be two

29:13

or three grand on tickets. And then

29:15

there's still like the Uber's kind of going back and forth

29:18

or whatever these like other

29:21

expenses could be. And then

29:23

say, okay, what's better? And again,

29:25

I'm always very biased for the producer

29:27

to say, what if we took those $3,000, like

29:29

didn't do a trip and then paid them

29:32

50 cents more per pound on the coffee?

29:34

Like what would make a bigger difference? And,

29:36

and then you can still go on the trip, but just

29:38

be really honest and say, no, I'm going on the trip

29:40

so I can get that picture of me. And I can say,

29:42

I've been there to say that

29:44

we like work with the producers versus like taking

29:46

that money and just paying them a little bit more when you have

29:49

10 bags. I think that when

29:51

you are buying containers, when you're

29:53

buying 250 bags, when you're buying multiple

29:55

containers, understanding the logistics

29:57

of the country, like that could be, it could be really beneficial

30:00

and really important that you go and you meet with people

30:02

and that you're cupping through. You

30:05

know, 75 lots that are gonna be

30:07

filling this container. Like there's always, I

30:09

guess what I wanna say is I don't think that travel is

30:11

never necessary. I don't there, I know that

30:13

there are things that cannot be accomplished in a Zoom

30:15

call, but a lot of things can.

30:18

And so if you're selling this story of,

30:20

you know, we're working with these partners and we're valuing

30:22

the producer, but you're spending thousands

30:24

of dollars to visit them instead of paying more

30:26

for coffee, okay, that's not really

30:28

that helpful to them.

30:30

Yeah. I mean, I, I have never used,

30:32

you know, WhatsApp and Zoom and,

30:34

and et cetera as well as I could have.

30:36

I mean, there's so much communication that

30:39

could happen and you can ask people for

30:42

photos that you would like for marketing

30:45

even, or, Hey, can you show me

30:47

your new new Pulper?

30:49

You don't have to fly to go see it. So

30:52

I don't think, I, I think there's

30:54

such an amazing resource and everybody,

30:57

most people can connect that way,

31:00

and I think would be happy

31:02

with your questions and, and

31:04

to give you information and material.

31:07

And I, I've never really been that good

31:09

at that. I I also kind

31:11

of conversely I hope we're not

31:14

getting you this thing where you're like, you're like

31:16

the representative for producers, and I'm

31:18

representative for consumers, but I

31:20

think about the cost

31:23

to like my customers because

31:25

my view of myself, which, like,

31:28

I try to just think of myself as a personal

31:30

shopper. Like I'm going out to

31:33

find really good coffee. I

31:35

do want, I don't want to

31:38

pay ridiculous prices. I do negotiate

31:41

on prices. I'm not, And I

31:43

think people are somehow embarrassed to that, but I do,

31:46

because, you know and we find

31:48

a fair thing that's a, a part

31:50

of respecting somebody else's business

31:53

and they have mine, and then we find a place that works

31:55

and, and we buy coffee. But

31:58

you know, when I'm doing that, I'm having

32:00

to tag on the price of every

32:02

trip to our expenses

32:05

and that increases

32:07

our cost to our customers. So,

32:11

you know, I do, I I do feel a responsibility

32:13

to them as well. And I think of

32:16

that when it gets just really

32:18

crazy and coffee, like at sca, I

32:20

just cannot believe these

32:23

booze and these parties and these

32:25

like things people do. And it's like the roasters

32:28

all go and they party and stuff, and it's just like,

32:30

dude, you're all paying for that. Dad's like, you

32:33

know, in fact what really sucks is the people

32:35

who don't go and they don't even go to

32:37

the party and get the free beer and

32:39

they're paying for it. Like, who,

32:42

where does all that money come from? It comes from

32:44

you on the cost of your coffee. And

32:46

so then I think, well, where do you want that to

32:49

go? Would you rather see

32:51

have a really efficient business

32:53

where you go, you know they don't have an

32:55

extravagant booth and a huge party at sca,

32:58

but they're really conscious of. What

33:00

they're paying and transparent about what

33:02

they're paying producers. And then

33:04

that's, you know, something really good you

33:06

can take to your consumers, you

33:08

know, your clients. So where do you want the money to

33:10

go? It's something I think

33:13

about along those lines.

33:14

No, and that's funny too because I think it's

33:16

another like example of converging

33:19

on kind of the same point from different sides

33:21

where it's like that, that money trip could

33:23

either be used to pay better prices for the coffee, or

33:26

it could be used to, you know, pass

33:28

on those savings or, or not necessarily pass them on,

33:30

but not add them to your customers.

33:33

You know, that cup of coffee doesn't have to be that price

33:35

because it doesn't have to cover all of your,

33:38

all of your travel.

33:39

I wanted to mention too, I, I think back

33:42

to all these kind of growth trips I took

33:44

or things that, you know, I feel

33:46

like, what kind of tourists have

33:48

I been in? How have I been a tourist? And then how

33:51

do you experience yesterday? Cause I'm in Rwanda

33:53

and I went out for a day

33:56

and it was kind of cool because

33:59

it, I realized that a lot of what I end

34:01

up doing is, is really working

34:04

with the person who's driving me around

34:06

in the agronomist that's with me and

34:09

kind of learning from them. And also

34:11

like we went to Like, our whole day was

34:13

kind of actually fairly blown after we went

34:15

to this really remote station we'd been buying

34:17

from for a lot of years. And and

34:20

then had to meet these local officials

34:23

and I didn't, wasn't quite clear on what was going

34:25

on because I don't speak Kenya or Rwanda, and

34:28

we ended up having to have a dinner and it

34:30

wasn't, you know, stay and be

34:32

polite and I just, you know, did my

34:34

job of just being there.

34:37

And when we got back

34:39

in the car and, and drove and we got super

34:41

late to the hotel, so

34:43

I, yeah, I was a little like, well, what was that all about?

34:46

And he was like, you know, this was really important. We needed to

34:48

talk to this sector official

34:51

because we're really trying to get them to support

34:53

the stations in the area

34:56

and make sure that their policies

34:58

for the farmers are, gonna

35:00

lead to some parody in terms of the other sectors.

35:03

And he kept, he said a couple times about how,

35:05

what an important meeting that was for him.

35:08

And I thought about this way that in

35:10

a way, you know, I, this is, you

35:12

know, this person is my agent here.

35:15

He does, they do work that benefits me

35:17

and it benefits them and their company

35:20

and it benefits hopefully the coffee sector

35:22

and the farmers and the station

35:25

co-ops or the owners. But

35:27

it was really, I was

35:30

sort of backseat on this whole thing,

35:32

but it was really interesting and I was on somebody

35:34

else's trip with somebody else's agenda.

35:37

And that's, that's an experience in my coffee travel

35:40

a lot too. And it's quite different from

35:42

me being sort of, you know,

35:44

the center and things being

35:46

there to service me and my interests and

35:48

what I'm trying to do. So there's

35:50

a cooperation that happens when you especially

35:53

start to acknowledge the role.

35:56

Like, I don't source coffee, I just select

35:58

it. They do, they

36:00

actually source coffee, you know, and,

36:04

and and realizing that you have an important

36:06

part as a buyer, but it's just a part,

36:09

it's a small part. And the

36:12

more you sort of see the picture of how

36:14

things work and acknowledge your small

36:16

part in it, I think, you know,

36:18

it changes. It's, things shift a little. So

36:21

that was something.

36:23

I really liked your analogy of a, a personal

36:25

shopper, cuz that's how I like to feel.

36:28

That's how I kind of treat my coffee buying

36:31

experience. So like, I know, or I've

36:33

learned, you know, I've tried a lot of different roasters. I really

36:35

like Sweet Bloom in Colorado,

36:37

so I don't have to spend what I, what

36:39

I know is like, okay that's my personal

36:41

shopper. So I know that coffees that they have

36:44

and the roast level that they have, like, I'm probably gonna like

36:47

nine outta 10 coffees. So it's really

36:49

easy for me to just like, find something

36:51

and, and get it. It's a little bit more I

36:54

dunno, like I don't wanna think so much about everything

36:56

all of the time. Like I'd like some things to be easy.

36:59

So if I can find some

37:01

things like that, like I know I'm gonna get

37:03

good quality from here cuz I have this experience

37:05

and then that's, that's

37:07

a value add for me. And so I

37:09

think that for roasters to think of themselves

37:11

in that way is, is really

37:13

wonderful and is really helpful. And

37:15

I think that, I don't know, I feel like we can also

37:18

extend this into, I

37:20

want to extend this into producers, but I feel

37:23

like they don't get that opportunity because

37:26

I had this question asked of me recently about

37:28

a winemaker and how winemakers are

37:30

able to have like their style, like

37:32

their imprint on the wine and how

37:35

coffee producers, we really

37:37

tend to talk more about the variety or

37:40

the process. And,

37:42

or, you know, farming practices. And we

37:44

don't really let them have a chance to have

37:46

like their style or their imprint on a particular

37:50

coffee. So they're not really

37:52

allowed to participate in that way of this.

37:54

Like, this is just a style that I like and

37:56

that people would come to this coffee producer

37:59

for this style we're really most like, oh,

38:01

do you have this s Alpha 28?

38:03

Or do you have this gay show? Are you, you know,

38:05

whatever are you doing carbonic, maceration?

38:08

So I don't know. I just, I, I feel like we

38:11

know that this is a valuable role and

38:14

I'm just very aware that

38:16

we don't extend that option to a lot of producers.

38:19

What do you think about that?

38:21

I mean, well, yes, that's, now I,

38:23

I do think about that. I think that,

38:26

you know, when the story about coffee

38:28

used to be like, oh, terroir

38:30

and oh variety, that

38:33

it, it removed human labor, it

38:36

removed labor. And the, the many

38:38

decisions that producers

38:40

make, you know, they may not go

38:42

pick the coffee themselves, or many times

38:45

they do, or it's a family member

38:47

or a neighbor they hire, you know,

38:49

in Colombia, for example here

38:51

in Rwanda or Burundi, it's, they have

38:53

400 trees. They just do it all themselves.

38:57

And and other places there maybe directing,

38:59

you know, their, their crew

39:01

like in a big farm in Antigua.

39:04

But, you know, the, the selection

39:07

of coffee cherry in the

39:09

quality control with coffee cherry, to me,

39:12

really does amount to, to something

39:14

that becomes, you know, it's such,

39:17

it's so critical and it's something you can never

39:19

fix later. I mean, working backwards

39:21

from the roaster, like roasters

39:24

and baristas and everything, I've always been amazed how you

39:26

take this agricultural product. And

39:28

it goes through this whole system of homogenization

39:31

in order to reach a quality level where we put

39:33

it into these machines, roasting machines

39:36

and brewing machines, and we produce

39:38

something predictable. And

39:40

the electrification like instrumentation

39:43

with all of that is, is where

39:45

a lot of the focus is right now. You know, that

39:47

we, I, I was trying to say in

39:49

that podcast how it's shifted, I think recently

39:52

into these sort of technical aspects and

39:54

people are like mentioning this

39:56

coffee is from this farm, but they're not talking

39:58

anymore about it. They're kind of like saying, and this

40:00

is my method and this is what I'm doing. This is my

40:02

roast curve, and this is the little

40:04

flick at the end, and this is how I'm controlling

40:06

it. So, but it's

40:09

really the homogenization that starts

40:11

from that thing that comes off the tree through

40:13

the, through the mill and the processing and the dry

40:15

mill that makes all that possible.

40:18

And I feel like that's the basis

40:20

that we work off of and

40:23

we treat it in a way that's

40:25

so mechanistic that it, it takes

40:28

out so much

40:30

of the, you know, hand

40:32

to eye work of people

40:34

choosing that coffee and then going out

40:36

and laying it out and picking it out and

40:39

you know, and even, even like subtle

40:41

things here, I don't know what you call them in Guatemala,

40:44

Pinton, or No,

40:46

they call 'em The half red,

40:48

half green. And some of them are totally ripe,

40:50

you know, and you feel them, and you

40:53

can tell the difference between the

40:56

pinton or the half green, half red. That's

40:58

actually like a really good coffee cherry

41:00

and should get, should go into the process.

41:03

And ones that are not, and those are,

41:06

you know, there's a feel for it. I think that's

41:08

maybe not fully understood

41:11

or, or respected

41:12

I've seen that also in drying. I've

41:14

seen guys that work on patios

41:17

and just, they put the seeds in their teeth

41:19

to tell you how the moisture content

41:22

and they're just, you know, putting it in their teeth, in their

41:24

mouth. And then they, they're like, oh, it's like at 13%.

41:26

And then I've seen them be so accurate.

41:28

It's been really incredible. Like they just

41:31

had that experience and that feel that

41:33

that, that hands-on ness is,

41:36

I think something that we undervalue.

41:38

We think it's very I don't know,

41:40

like we, we like our tools, we like our toys,

41:43

but I think one of the kind of hypocrisies

41:45

in the coffee industry is that you mentioned,

41:48

you know, I, I've seen this too, that it's

41:50

very much about the tools and the toys, and

41:52

we get very excited about that on the consuming

41:54

end, but, On the producing

41:57

end, not only are we not necessarily

41:59

aware of like how much labor it is,

42:01

like we're kind of turning it into this other thing. But if

42:03

we are, there seems to be a very negative

42:05

reaction to producers getting better machines

42:08

to machine drying to like

42:10

kind of upgrading equipment. Like it's like, okay, you

42:12

can have the fanciest roaster, but you want them

42:14

still to pick by hand and you want

42:16

them to like dry in the sun and you don't want them to have

42:19

you know, a mechanical dryer. And so

42:21

I think there's like that hypocrisy of like, we can

42:23

have all the toys, but we don't want producers to have the

42:25

toys because then the product doesn't seem authentic

42:27

and then it doesn't seem artisanal and then it doesn't

42:29

seem as handmade. And so there's very

42:31

much this resistance when the

42:33

reality is that labor not

42:36

in Africa but at least in Central America, it's

42:38

incredibly scarce. There's a a lot fewer

42:40

coffee pickers and that's a huge problem. And we're

42:42

gonna have to mechanize in some

42:44

way, whether it's drones, whether

42:46

it's mechanical harvesting, like we're gonna have to

42:48

do something because the people aren't there

42:51

and I don't think that they're gonna come back.

42:53

So I don't know, just, I just see like,

42:56

again, these double standards

42:58

a lot on tools and toys.

43:01

Yeah, I think that one's complicated for

43:03

me because. you know, on one hand

43:05

I do like the way coffee is produced

43:08

traditionally, and I like where

43:10

it comes from and, you know, there's an image,

43:13

there's the image of that and the reality

43:15

of that. And it's, it's coming into

43:17

a clash in a lot of places in the world.

43:20

I wanna go back to that where it's like, yes,

43:23

we like the idea of handmade.

43:25

Like that's nice. It makes us feel good.

43:27

But the, the other side

43:30

of making us feel good means that

43:32

you are limiting those opportunities

43:34

for other people, or they, they are not.

43:37

Cause you're like, well, I'm not gonna buy from people that are

43:40

super mechanized, that are machine harvesting and machine

43:42

drying and, you know, I want this sort of element

43:44

to it. And I think about that where

43:46

it's like, I mean, everyone's entitled

43:49

to their opinion and to their feelings, but

43:51

just realizing that like your feelings

43:53

are limiting

43:55

options for other people. Like they're not just your feelings.

43:58

Does that make sense?

43:59

yeah. It does for sure. And

44:02

on that point, you know, I actually remember

44:05

I didn't listen to it, but you did the episode

44:07

on. Comier and

44:09

about how you got this good coffee, but you

44:11

just didn't like, I,

44:14

I, I think, cuz I heard you mention something

44:16

later, like, you just didn't like the process

44:18

of making a coffee this way. It's

44:20

just not attractive. And there's, that's,

44:23

I guess part of what I'm thinking is that there's

44:25

something kind of attractive to your

44:27

mind about coffee. You

44:29

know, I think the word sappi kind

44:31

of is a word that invokes

44:34

both taste and pleasing

44:36

to the mind and to the senses.

44:39

And, you know, I've thought about that before because,

44:41

you know, we represent Coffee is, is

44:44

a place where people want to know the origin

44:47

because it is pleasing.

44:50

It is a beautiful place, you know, it does, you

44:52

do get good pictures there. So it's not the place

44:54

where we get our toaster oven from that we don't really

44:56

wanna know anything about that

44:58

would, that would disrupt

45:01

our image of, of

45:04

where this comes from and disrupt our enjoyment

45:06

of it. So I, I just

45:08

wanted to note, I mean, that comes

45:10

up for me in it because both

45:13

critically and also I'm kind of like, I feel

45:15

it too. Like I, I listened

45:17

to a presentation by

45:19

a really magnified

45:22

food engineer, like a serious food

45:24

engineer about coffee. I

45:26

don't know if a I can't remember her name

45:28

though. She's from Brazil and.

45:31

It was the, just the most unappealing thing.

45:33

And yet I knew like, these, this is what

45:35

coffee's been missing, is the approach

45:38

of a food engineer to look at inefficiencies

45:40

in the system and to,

45:43

to re-engineer the whole thing. And,

45:46

you know, I just feel this like resistance

45:49

to that. But but

45:51

I totally, I think this is a, I

45:53

mean, I think you're focused on

45:55

a really interesting point here between

45:58

the representation of coffee and

46:00

why it's pleasing. And then, but

46:03

this production system doesn't

46:06

totally work in a lot of places.

46:08

It's sort of crumbling and falling apart

46:10

more in some places than others. And

46:13

labor is the biggest issue, I

46:15

think in this. So,

46:18

and there really isn't a way for, if we don't get

46:20

that good material, there's no way to fix

46:22

it later. With all our fantastic techniques

46:25

and inventions. We have to have a pretty

46:27

good material going in. And,

46:29

you know, mechanical drying

46:32

and more automation and stuff could

46:35

give us at least a good baseline, you

46:37

know 85 point,

46:39

84 point coffee that

46:42

could be scaled up and produced,

46:45

you know much more efficiently. But it's

46:47

not very pleasing to see that

46:49

done like in Brazil

46:51

Well, I love that you brought up my

46:54

own commenter example because I think you're right.

46:56

That's exactly how. I

46:58

was framing that product where

47:00

it was a technically perfect,

47:03

a technically beautiful cup of coffee. Like

47:05

I would have this coffee in front

47:07

of me and I'm like, wow, this is objectively

47:10

a very sweet, balanced complex,

47:13

very well crafted beverage

47:16

in front of me. But because all I did

47:18

was like open up a thing and

47:20

pour it in, I'm like, I'm not enjoying

47:22

this experience. So yes, there was, there was something

47:25

missing that is not just the,

47:28

the outcome, but some of that journey

47:31

has to be part of it to really enjoy kind of

47:33

the whole experience. So like for me, making my pour over is

47:35

part of it. I'd rather have a less technically perfect

47:37

cup that I made myself than

47:40

someone just like, you know, puts a pill in front

47:42

of me and they're like, here you go. And yeah,

47:44

so I completely understand that, that that

47:47

handmade crafting is an important

47:49

element. However, with the commenter

47:52

example, this is a business that,

47:54

you know, it has millions

47:56

of investment money. Like, I don't know

47:59

what kind of, you know, like for me,

48:01

they're not hurting. Like this is just a

48:03

creative business. That was interesting.

48:05

Like they decided to make something. Versus

48:07

talking about producers who own land,

48:10

who like have much fewer options.

48:12

And so in that sense, like I'm,

48:14

I'm admitting that I feel this

48:16

way, but I would also be willing to put

48:18

that aside and say if this is what it takes to

48:20

keep coffee going. Because

48:23

I think that's the thing. It's like, I think a lot

48:25

of people think that, you know, mechanical harvesting

48:27

is like a preference. It's like, well, I'd rather

48:30

have somebody handpick my coffee than

48:32

machine harvest it. But if the option

48:34

is machine harvested or no

48:36

coffee farms are completely abandoned, like no

48:38

one's around. Like that's what we're talking

48:40

about. We're not talking about this like, oh,

48:43

I, I, this would be nice to have. I'm like,

48:45

the people are leaving, the people are,

48:47

especially in Guatemala and Honduras, they're, they're

48:49

going to the United States. You know, like there

48:51

are entire towns where there's just only women

48:53

cuz all of the men left and there

48:56

is, there is not this labor. And

48:58

so I just think it's, it's kind of a disconnect

49:01

that we're sitting here thinking, oh, I don't like

49:03

machine harvested coffee. And I'm like,

49:05

I, that, that's not, that's

49:08

like so far from what I'm talking about. I don't care

49:10

if you like it. That's just what we're facing

49:12

in a lot of places because of kind of

49:15

the other, economic and political landscape.

49:18

Yeah, I mean, I do think in,, in each producing

49:21

country, you know, it's, it's

49:23

really heterogeneous in terms of what they're

49:25

actually facing and, you

49:27

know, land pressure urbanization,

49:31

migration You

49:33

know, all the, all of these things are, are,

49:36

are different in each place. So,

49:39

you know, yes, in, in

49:41

Ethiopia you may have

49:43

plenty of labor for a while and

49:45

there may be a really different set of, of

49:48

issues facing coffee, but they're there

49:50

nonetheless in some form or other, you

49:53

know, I mean, I'm just saying I guess technology doesn't

49:56

sort of, isn't applied equally

49:58

everywhere all the time. And then the

50:00

issues that people face are kind of

50:03

different everywhere. And I

50:05

wanted to say that because I think that when we

50:07

think of what is done on

50:09

the consuming side like Comier,

50:12

I mean that kind of an effort,

50:14

if that failed tomorrow, people

50:16

would just write off their investment money and,

50:19

and go on, you know, it's no big deal. And

50:21

I think that's part because it's capital fluidity.

50:24

If you have a farm and you got that farm

50:26

from your family or you, you

50:28

bought it, but it's your land, you can't pick

50:30

it up and move it. You can't switch over

50:32

into another crop immediately. You

50:34

don't have fluidity in

50:37

terms of capital. You know, maybe you can loan

50:39

money against it, but in a lot of places you can't.

50:41

And a lot of times the loans you get

50:44

are, are really huge pressure on coffee

50:46

producers, you know, especially if they're buying

50:48

any coffee from their neighbors or, or

50:50

need to finance anything or any improvement.

50:53

That's, that's another thing. But, but on

50:55

the consuming side, we can just sort of

50:57

like change our minds tomorrow about

50:59

anything, you know, and it

51:01

doesn't really matter that much. So

51:04

I, I see that as, it's

51:06

something I think about in terms of how,

51:10

what may be familiar to us. There's this

51:12

just not this parody between consuming

51:14

and producing in this way.

51:16

Definitely. But I do appreciate you bringing up that

51:19

example cuz we also had another situation

51:21

cuz you and I have been going back and forth on

51:23

tourism and kind of the pros and

51:26

cons and I don't wanna come out as

51:28

like anti-cop travel.

51:30

I just am pro thoughtful

51:32

coffee travel. And like I said,

51:35

I still think that there are times when it is

51:37

a great value add for both parties

51:39

to have coffee travel, but I think that

51:42

that's the exception, not

51:44

the rule. I think, like I said, a lot of. Trips

51:47

could be shortened, avoided, or kind

51:49

of changed in different ways. But then

51:51

you also mentioned, well, I'm hosting

51:53

fermentation camps now, and you said that seems

51:55

like advanced travel, and I loved

51:58

this comment so much. It's so good.

52:00

It's so good because,

52:03

Why?

52:03

because it's true because in,

52:05

in many ways, I felt

52:07

really seen. I just, I felt like you

52:10

are paying attention. And so when

52:12

you have, you know, some, some feedback

52:14

like that, I'm like, okay, somebody's paying attention.

52:16

Like, I don't get to get away with anything. And

52:19

I think that what I wanna say about

52:21

the Fermentation Camp as

52:23

advanced tourism is it's,

52:26

it can be many things at once. It is

52:28

advanced tourism, and I also

52:30

see it as like a professional

52:32

opportunity because I am trying

52:35

to focus on coffee producers.

52:37

So our quota has been, we're

52:40

at like 53% coffee producer

52:42

attendance. So we're more than half

52:44

coffee producer attendance, and most of those are female

52:47

coffee producers. I'm very selective

52:49

about who gets accepted. We don't, you

52:51

don't just buy a ticket and you automatically

52:54

get a spot. I have also, also

52:57

because of our sleeping arrangements, so I have a quota

52:59

of how many female to male participants and

53:01

how many, you know, producers I want so

53:03

there's like things that I'm trying to do to mitigate,

53:06

but at the end of the day, you're right. You know, the people that

53:08

aren't. Coffee producers that aren't

53:10

coming for professional development to learn these skills.

53:13

We do have like 2%

53:16

that have been, I call them normies coffee.

53:19

People that just like love coffee

53:22

because everybody that comes is usually a producer,

53:25

a roaster, exporter, importer. But

53:27

we've had, you know, like a couple of people

53:30

who are just like, I'm a teacher

53:32

and I love coffee. And they come and

53:34

they spend the week with us and

53:37

they get to do coffee processing and, and meet

53:39

all of these people. But for me that was

53:41

such a huge value add for

53:43

the coffee producers to meet with

53:45

a final consumer, to like get to meet

53:47

somebody who loves coffee so much that they can

53:50

take a week off work or their lives and

53:52

come and like sit next to them and learn

53:54

and talk and do all of these things. So

53:56

for me there's still a lot of value in including

53:58

those like non-professional, non-coffee professionals,

54:01

but still like coffee enthusiasts in into the

54:03

mix. So I

54:06

dunno if that sounds a little defensive

54:09

on my part for the camps, but you

54:11

know, it's like trying

54:13

to, trying to do something. And I think the

54:15

other thing is that there is really

54:17

a gap for a producer focused

54:19

event. I have a lot

54:21

of interest in this because most of

54:24

the kind of events like this are

54:26

more consumer or booster focused

54:29

and there's not as many options for producers.

54:31

They don't have as many means to go. Traveling

54:33

all over, but still just something that's

54:35

very focused on production.

54:39

Yeah, I mean that's funny I think

54:41

there is really interesting

54:43

forms of tourism that

54:45

are really in depth, really

54:48

educational and, and perhaps

54:50

challenging. And you

54:52

know, some of the way people encounter

54:54

each other across this huge divide in a

54:57

lot of things from producing production to

54:59

consumption. And I think people

55:01

become genuinely very curious about what,

55:03

what the other side looks like. And

55:05

I remember a really terrible thing I did

55:09

for outing ourselves, which is,

55:11

I I remember this, this coffee producer.

55:13

I mean, I don't feel that bad cuz he's, he's kind of

55:15

a snarky guy, but he, I was looking

55:18

at his Instagram over his shoulder when I

55:20

was visiting him in Burundi and he,

55:22

it's like all latte art

55:24

and cafes and people doing chore and I

55:26

just can't stand this stuff, honestly. Like,

55:28

I just, I don't need to see

55:30

how you do this thing for the umpteenth

55:33

time. You know, it just is like, I

55:35

mean, it's just not for me.

55:37

It's, it's like I have to filter it out cause it's, it's

55:39

just kind of boring and I've seen it and

55:42

he was like, yeah, but you know, I

55:44

don't get to see this. This is exactly what

55:46

I'm, there's like so curious about

55:49

what people are doing with coffee because

55:51

it's something he doesn't get to see. I

55:54

mean, he had a cafe and stuff, so he's not like,

55:57

you know, a producer that just grows coffee.

56:00

But but I realize people just do

56:02

become very curious and I always. People

56:05

ask me a lot of really interesting questions

56:07

when I travel about what they

56:09

wanna know, what we're doing, how things are going,

56:12

how we show the coffee. Like, and

56:14

I try to just do a good job explaining

56:16

that to them. I used to print

56:18

out the pages of our website that show

56:20

how we're talking about their coffee so they could

56:22

keep that and have a copy

56:25

of it and kind of try to fill

56:27

in whatever gap I can for people.

56:30

But I also just wanna mention, I just started a

56:32

book, but I had to leave it at home cause it's too thick.

56:34

And it's a cultural anthropologist

56:36

who's, who really took on tourism

56:39

as a, as something to study.

56:41

And when you think about the

56:44

history of anthropology anthropologists

56:46

in a sense in the 1920s were

56:49

like tourists in the two

56:51

thousands. You know, they're, they

56:53

studied people in a particular way

56:55

that was kind of just straightforward and very naive.

56:58

He found himself starting to watch how

57:00

people watch how tourists watched.

57:03

The people that were the toured people. You

57:06

know, and that's, I mean, that's why where, you know,

57:08

the producer as the toured and the,

57:10

the the coffee buyer as the tourist,

57:14

you know, that sort of divide. The

57:17

interesting thing is he actually was solicited,

57:19

he wrote all these critical books and, and

57:22

had developed a lot of the ideas about

57:25

tourist activity. But then he

57:27

was invited by this sort of New York City

57:30

tour company that sort of

57:32

had fancy tours to go to

57:34

Indonesia and to tour a lot of Indonesia

57:37

where he was a specialist and spoke Bahasa

57:40

with tourists. And what he would do were

57:42

all these really interesting things where,

57:44

like, for example, they would go to Joe Jakarta

57:47

and they would observe the, the tourists would go

57:49

and they would go for a, a ese dance

57:51

that was like a traditional ESE dance

57:54

supposedly. And

57:56

then he would give a small lecture about

57:59

the dance they'd watch, and he would say, well, this

58:01

dance is, is in traditional

58:03

costumes, but it was actually created

58:05

in 1970 and it was

58:07

created for visitors. You

58:10

know, so what you perceived as authentic

58:12

here was something that was, you know, was made

58:14

for you. Mm-hmm.

58:16

Yeah. And now they, it's become this. They've

58:18

done it. And then what he would do is he would, they had full

58:20

I'm sorry, Javanese, I don't think I said Ese Javanese

58:23

costume on. So with Paint, they

58:25

would come out and he would introduce

58:27

them and they would sit down and talk to the tourists

58:30

without paint and be like, I'm a student,

58:33

I dance. My aunt did

58:35

this same dance, in the seventies

58:37

and now I'm doing it. And this was in the nineties.

58:40

And he, he staged all these very interesting

58:42

interventions where people got

58:44

to see how they observed

58:46

things and kind

58:48

of also see them in a more complex

58:51

light. And he got kicked

58:53

off the tour cause

58:56

because the owner of the company came along on

58:58

the trip and didn't like what he was doing. And

59:00

so he basically had to stay in the

59:02

back and not talk. But

59:05

it was a very funny introduction to his

59:07

book. And it reminds me of what's possible

59:09

though, when you bring people together. You

59:12

know, I think what what is possible

59:14

with what you're doing, you know,

59:17

can, can have interventions like that

59:19

that are really interesting.

59:21

No, I appreciate that. And I think it also makes

59:23

me remember the,

59:25

the dangerous grounds that you brought up in

59:28

your, in your podcast episode and

59:30

the travel channel this

59:32

idea of like the coffee hunter and

59:35

like the travel for adventure and like the caricature.

59:38

I, I had never heard of dangerous Grounds,

59:41

but I, you played the, the trailer

59:43

and then I, I googled it and

59:45

I, I was like 10 seconds in

59:48

and it says, what did I say? Said I started

59:50

with nothing and built my company from the ground

59:52

up. I was like the first 10 seconds and I'm

59:55

just like, you were born a white

59:57

male in America speaking English.

59:59

You weren't born with nothing. You

1:00:02

were born with like the lottery. And

1:00:05

so I actually couldn't watch the rest of, of

1:00:07

the video. But it's interesting that

1:00:09

that was in 2012 and I

1:00:12

still, I was hoping

1:00:14

that that would be like a much more outdated,

1:00:17

a much more outdated like mentality.

1:00:20

But I'm surprised at how many, like I just

1:00:22

ran across a new company from 2023

1:00:25

that calls himself coffee hunters, and

1:00:28

they're still like, I

1:00:30

don't know it. We're not leaving that as far

1:00:32

behind as I would hope by now,

1:00:34

more than a decade on, So it's

1:00:37

still much more prevalent. And maybe,

1:00:39

you know, I'm sensitive to it so it, it pops

1:00:41

up for me more, more frequently. But

1:00:44

I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that

1:00:46

kind of your experience with the adventure

1:00:49

and the caricature.

1:00:51

Yeah, I mean, in, in my, in that

1:00:53

podcast I referenced this crazy

1:00:56

text from a Starbucks package from

1:00:58

the nineties, I think from the nineties or early

1:01:00

two thousands, you know, of,

1:01:03

of this coffee hunter thing. And it's,

1:01:05

it's really funny. Dub

1:01:07

hay, the biggest

1:01:09

thing on there I've used, I've, I've thought of that

1:01:11

for years because, and it'd be a joke

1:01:13

if I was traveling with someone because I, I

1:01:16

turned to them and I, I'd say, I

1:01:18

think this is as far as the National Geographic,

1:01:20

people went, you know, like we are

1:01:22

going beyond where

1:01:24

the National Geographic people went, which is like,

1:01:27

we've outmanned you, you know, we're

1:01:29

more, and it's just

1:01:31

like that. It's so bad. But

1:01:35

what I do feel, and, and then I tried

1:01:37

to cite a current example, which I don't know if I

1:01:39

should have done, I felt a little bad about

1:01:42

looking at someone's site. But it's, it's

1:01:44

this, it's this thing where people really just

1:01:46

try hard, they really want something

1:01:48

to, to be the way they

1:01:50

want it to be. And today

1:01:53

I even look, read an Instagram post,

1:01:56

and it was about a farm that I know and a

1:01:58

farm owner I know, and he's

1:02:00

kind of, you know, Between

1:02:02

you and me. He is not the greatest guy. And,

1:02:05

and you know, he's just lauded

1:02:07

in this post about his bravery

1:02:10

and all he's done for the community. And it's

1:02:12

like, man, it's

1:02:15

hard to read. It's a very, very

1:02:17

long text about

1:02:19

how caring and sensitive he's been

1:02:22

and how it's been a tough relationship

1:02:25

with the community and stuff. And it's like, yeah, because

1:02:27

he's kind of a dick and that's

1:02:29

why it's tough. And so,

1:02:32

you know, sometimes you get a peek into it like

1:02:34

that and you wonder and

1:02:36

you just feel like, you know, just like

1:02:38

in a tourist narrative in

1:02:40

a way, people, the, the

1:02:42

place that they go, it's

1:02:45

only the last step of a, of

1:02:47

a story that's already been written. You

1:02:49

know, that you anticipate it and

1:02:51

then you just go and you see and it's fulfilled. And

1:02:53

then, you know, if it's not totally

1:02:56

fulfilled, you write a little bad review of something

1:02:58

and you know, trout Trip Advisor.

1:03:00

But it's like, it's how

1:03:02

much we fulfill the wish

1:03:05

that we've just already had for a place to already

1:03:07

be what we expect it to be. And

1:03:09

I feel like in coffee, in marketing,

1:03:12

in a lot of what I feel, I brought to coffee

1:03:14

for a long time and

1:03:16

still do you know, it's still, it's still, there

1:03:19

is j is just wanting

1:03:21

to see what you want to see

1:03:23

and not see what you don't wanna see. And.

1:03:27

But always wondering, you know am I

1:03:29

still just being guided by narratives

1:03:32

that I don't recognize as easily

1:03:34

as the ones I can look back five or 10 years

1:03:36

and see? And I, I think five or 10

1:03:38

years ago, let's say it was the height of this

1:03:40

really people competing

1:03:43

to go, find the best coffee.

1:03:46

And it was, it was so full of

1:03:48

itself, and I think it's passed

1:03:50

on, but what I, I guess what I've

1:03:52

seen is that a lot of people look to

1:03:54

the United States independent coffee roaster

1:03:56

scene as,

1:03:59

as being some sort of model. And, and you know, I mean,

1:04:02

I remember in San Francisco, like

1:04:04

ev people would just come as far as

1:04:06

I from little anecdotal things. They'd be like

1:04:09

visitors every week in Ritual

1:04:11

and Four Barrel and these companies.

1:04:13

And they'd be like, I'm gonna go do this in

1:04:15

my place where I'm from,

1:04:18

you know? And so, seeded

1:04:20

this idea about how you behave

1:04:22

in coffee, how you interact,

1:04:24

how you source coffee. There's

1:04:26

a lot of this modeling that goes on and it's

1:04:28

a lot of high school. Like, you know, you

1:04:31

look at what they're wearing, you look at what they're wearing, and

1:04:33

then you sort of figure out, I'm gonna mix those two and

1:04:35

that's gonna be me. And there's

1:04:37

a lot of that. And so I think it

1:04:40

spreads and I think

1:04:42

it's something to call out because I.

1:04:45

I think there are problems with it and

1:04:47

there's, you know, problems with the way people,

1:04:50

travel, people encounter other cultures

1:04:53

they're not familiar with. Some of those are very understandable,

1:04:55

just feeling overwhelmed,

1:04:58

feeling at risk, feeling a

1:05:01

need to comfort yourself or whatever when

1:05:03

you're traveling. But it leads

1:05:05

to attitudes and behaviors

1:05:07

that are, you know,

1:05:09

I think should be looked at. So,

1:05:11

Yeah, I really like what you said about the

1:05:15

kind of copy and paste behavior

1:05:17

that I see a lot too in, in, in coffee.

1:05:20

And I think that that's why Well, so

1:05:22

trying to have this conversation where you're right, it's like, it's

1:05:24

tricky because you don't

1:05:26

want to shame people cuz

1:05:28

that people, very few people learn from

1:05:30

shame, but it is important to

1:05:33

kind of call out and note this behavior

1:05:35

and say like, how, how can we talk about this

1:05:37

without saying, okay, we're not trying to shame you, but if,

1:05:40

but there's, there's problematic behavior here.

1:05:42

And if this is what's going to be copy and pasted

1:05:44

and like take in and trans

1:05:46

trans. Formed and morphed

1:05:49

into other things. Like it has at

1:05:51

its core a either

1:05:54

yeah, just some kind of problematic messaging.

1:05:56

So if it's gonna get amplified, we're gonna just amplify

1:05:58

that problematic behavior even more. And

1:06:01

something that I've noticed, especially about coffee culture

1:06:03

that you also mentioned is I also grew up in

1:06:05

the Bay Area and now I live

1:06:08

in UA and the copy shops

1:06:10

that have popped up here, it just

1:06:12

really feels like a copy of like, oh, I could

1:06:14

be in LA right now, or I could be

1:06:16

in Berkeley. Like the, everything just feels

1:06:19

borrowed and like

1:06:22

maybe 5% Guatemala. Like, there doesn't

1:06:24

seem to be that much of an influence.

1:06:26

Like, it just, especially because Unti was a particularly

1:06:29

tourist town, it's a particularly

1:06:31

high traffic area. And

1:06:33

so, and most, you know, of

1:06:35

the businesses are owned by foreigners. So it just,

1:06:37

it feels very, I

1:06:39

don't know. So then, so then

1:06:42

you got even more tourists coming and

1:06:44

they see like coffee culture in Guatemala,

1:06:46

which is just a copy of coffee culture in

1:06:49

the Bay Area. And I'm just like, I don't think

1:06:51

you're really getting, it's, yeah, it's like this

1:06:53

like kind of self-fulfilling cycle

1:06:55

of like, oh, this is what it is here, so if I go make

1:06:57

it over there, it's more authentic to what I saw in

1:06:59

a producing country or an origin country. And I'm like,

1:07:01

no, that's borrowed from your own,

1:07:03

like consuming culture. So

1:07:05

it's like this like really like tangled yarn

1:07:08

well, in the defense of that,

1:07:10

that's, you know, that kind of cultural pastiche,

1:07:13

that always sort of happens and things

1:07:15

are borrowed and copied and sometimes

1:07:17

crazy new things come out of it. But

1:07:20

not if the copy is too, if

1:07:22

there's this kind of just, I

1:07:24

don't know, well, you call it like cultural

1:07:27

hegemony where there's, somebody sets

1:07:29

the, the standard

1:07:31

and then people just faw

1:07:34

to that and, and try to borrow

1:07:36

it and try to look like it. And that,

1:07:39

that never works. But I

1:07:41

do, I mean, well there's Cafe

1:07:43

Noe, which is like my favorite name in

1:07:45

the world. I just

1:07:47

That's where I got engaged. Cafe Noe.

1:07:50

Really?

1:07:51

Yes.

1:07:51

That's

1:07:52

That's where Nick and I, Nick and I had, had a little too much

1:07:54

to drink and we're like, we should get married. Right? He's

1:07:56

like, yeah. And then it's like another drink. And then Cafe

1:07:58

Noe was closed. They closed for the pandemic

1:08:00

and they just reopened like a couple weeks ago.

1:08:02

Like they've been closed for like three years.

1:08:05

I mean, there is like the, the, one

1:08:07

of the best things that happens where people

1:08:11

I guess, sort of imitate something is they actually

1:08:13

get it really wrong and it becomes this other

1:08:15

thing. I mean, they get it, right. Getting

1:08:17

it wrong and you know, that,

1:08:20

that, I think that's really interesting.

1:08:22

And I think also, you know what,

1:08:25

what I hope you see in Indonesia is

1:08:27

people really just going to other

1:08:29

extremes with coffee that I don't

1:08:32

like and I

1:08:34

don't want to drink, but

1:08:36

it's like, they like it and it's a, the

1:08:38

way they consume it is totally different.

1:08:40

Like these super ridiculous

1:08:44

whiny coffees that that

1:08:46

you know, you just drink a thimble fall with friends

1:08:48

and you're like, you order the crazy thing on the menu and

1:08:50

you all sit with a little quaff around the table

1:08:53

at night and you share this,

1:08:55

you know, cuz they, you know, a lot

1:08:57

of places just not alcohol. And

1:09:00

this becomes a very social drink that's

1:09:02

about experiencing some wild taste

1:09:05

and like, that's coffee. Oh my god.

1:09:07

And, you know, people take

1:09:09

it to a different place in a different

1:09:12

cultural, you know, a different situation

1:09:14

of, of serving it and preparing

1:09:16

it. And then I think it's great. And

1:09:18

if it excludes me and my

1:09:20

sensibility fine,

1:09:23

I think, that's where it

1:09:25

starts to become something new because it doesn't

1:09:27

refer to how they do

1:09:29

it somewhere else that, you

1:09:31

know, was influential on you

1:09:33

or you copied, maybe really

1:09:35

neat things will come out of like local.

1:09:39

Cultures where, those guys actually

1:09:42

do say I work with a farmer. Yeah. Like

1:09:44

they went up the week before and they helped

1:09:46

ferment the lot that they're gonna buy. And

1:09:48

they're gonna go pick it up and bring it down

1:09:51

and, and that's amazing.

1:09:54

I'm also, can I just mention fresh

1:09:56

coffee, like what people can

1:09:58

do with coffee? That's

1:10:00

not a seed that's supposed

1:10:03

to last six or eight months,

1:10:05

but like is only two weeks

1:10:07

off the tree. Like what are the new possibilities

1:10:10

of people who can get coffee locally and work,

1:10:13

actually work with a farm to do

1:10:15

beverages that I don't even know what they are.

1:10:18

So

1:10:19

I think that's a really good point. There's a lot of opportunity

1:10:21

there and I think most people don't realize

1:10:23

the, the quality degradation that

1:10:25

can happen when you spend four months in

1:10:27

a container going across the world

1:10:29

or, and then experience some shipping delays and then

1:10:32

you get stuck in a warehouse and coffee

1:10:34

can, can get, a lot of

1:10:36

trauma on that road. So

1:10:41

I wanted to ask you, so

1:10:43

you've been traveling since 2001,

1:10:45

I think you said that was when you had your first,

1:10:48

Our first

1:10:49

your very first trip. So why

1:10:51

do you keep traveling?

1:10:53

Well, I, I do want

1:10:55

to. I do enjoy it and

1:10:58

I do want to like, try to

1:11:00

keep enjoying it and find out what's enjoyable.

1:11:02

Cuz it makes me want to keep doing

1:11:04

what I do. And

1:11:06

you know, that is something I'm pretty committed

1:11:09

to, you know, like I,

1:11:12

I want coffee to be interesting to

1:11:14

me. I know that sounds really

1:11:16

self-centered, but I do,

1:11:19

I do find a lot of things with coffee

1:11:21

really boring and a

1:11:23

lot of conversations

1:11:26

that interest other people. And

1:11:28

you know, I just, we did

1:11:30

the SCA for the first time with our own booth and

1:11:32

we just went as our wacky selves and

1:11:34

we did an arts and crafts booth and I know

1:11:36

people were just like, whatever. I

1:11:39

don't know what they thought, but

1:11:41

What do you mean arts and crafts? Were you like painting macaroni

1:11:44

on paper plates?

1:11:46

Yeah. We didn't have macaroni, but we would've if

1:11:48

I had thought of it. No, we

1:11:50

just did all kinds of crazy things. We

1:11:52

were, I was trying to think of what can we do for people

1:11:54

there and they always have these stupid plastic

1:11:57

badges. So I thought we could like be dazzle

1:11:59

people's badges. They can come sit around a little

1:12:01

table. We had a little table on the floor,

1:12:04

you could sit down and I just brought all my arts

1:12:06

and crafts from home and glitter, although

1:12:08

glitter is actually not allowed in the convention

1:12:11

center, but we did, we were, we

1:12:13

did it anyway. Yeah. And,

1:12:16

you know, I missed the whole show, but when I just

1:12:18

would get up and look around, I'd.

1:12:21

I'm just not that interested in

1:12:24

what I know a lot

1:12:26

of people find really interesting. So,

1:12:29

you know, part of it is just traveling and

1:12:31

thinking about what

1:12:34

is this all about? Like what

1:12:36

are we doing? you know, what am I

1:12:38

to s e? Do you, did you feel pressure

1:12:41

to just like show up and have a presence?

1:12:44

Yeah. I, I always feel like I should,

1:12:47

you know, it's what you do. You should

1:12:49

be there something. And I, I

1:12:51

I went in the year before

1:12:53

I went as a, as what I thought a

1:12:55

true middle-aged man should dress at

1:12:58

and look like. And it was totally weird.

1:13:00

I just kind of do the different thing each year, I guess

1:13:02

now and this year was to actually have a booth

1:13:05

and and just actually,

1:13:07

you know, have ourselves to be seen

1:13:09

or you could come find us. And it

1:13:12

was, it was fun. It, and it

1:13:14

was weird. And I think, you

1:13:16

know, I wanna give, I think Sweet

1:13:18

Maria's is such a weird little

1:13:20

quirk in the coffee business. Like,

1:13:22

I don't mind if we're

1:13:25

kind of like, seen as not serious and

1:13:27

dismissible. Like I brought my popcorn pop

1:13:29

or and roasted coffee and all

1:13:32

over there was people with like the, all these new

1:13:34

amazing roasters that are like, They're

1:13:37

all like five grand for, you

1:13:39

know, the roast and the cafe

1:13:42

logic was there. That's a cool one. And a bunch

1:13:44

of things, and people have gotten really good

1:13:46

at this stuff, but you can still roast

1:13:48

coffee in a popcorn popper, and it's pretty good. You

1:13:50

know, I mean, so just

1:13:53

wanted to show up as ourselves, I guess,

1:13:55

we have that in common for, for me and,

1:13:57

and making coffee and, and fermenting

1:13:59

coffee. I really like to use, you know, plastic

1:14:02

buckets and like really minimal

1:14:05

equipment and just say like, making

1:14:07

good coffee is really not that hard. Like we,

1:14:09

we put this big circus and we make

1:14:11

this like show of it. I'm like, it's good coffee.

1:14:14

Yes, exceptional coffee is hard,

1:14:16

but good coffee, really not hard. we

1:14:18

can make good coffee with very

1:14:20

basic tools, very

1:14:23

basic like principles, you know, short

1:14:25

fermentation. Like it's, it's really not that hard. We

1:14:27

don't have to make ourselves

1:14:29

crazy. Regarding Ssea,

1:14:31

I think it's interesting that I had a

1:14:33

lot of, cuz you know, it's

1:14:35

an important industry event and a lot of

1:14:37

people go, so I was getting messages like, Hey,

1:14:39

are you gonna be there? Are you doing anything?

1:14:42

And I, we didn't

1:14:44

go to s e this year. I haven't

1:14:46

been there many years, but every

1:14:48

time I told somebody that I wasn't going, the,

1:14:50

the overwhelming reaction was like,

1:14:52

oh, lucky, like lucky that you can

1:14:55

choose not to go. A lot of people

1:14:57

were like, no, yeah, I wish I could stay, but I gotta

1:14:59

do this. So I was just wondering if, if that was kind

1:15:01

of, you know, you felt this pressure to show up when

1:15:03

maybe it's not like your favorite way to

1:15:05

spend time.

1:15:07

Yeah, it's always right at my birthday. Sometimes

1:15:09

it's actually on my, I I'd

1:15:12

be there for my birthday, so that sucks. But yeah,

1:15:14

I was going to, you know, this, this

1:15:16

felt different. Like we could make our own

1:15:18

little reality there. And

1:15:21

and it was, it was really

1:15:23

goofy. And I think,

1:15:25

I think co you know, a little goofiness

1:15:27

is like, to me that's this little

1:15:29

spice that needs to be added. I just

1:15:31

think in business people

1:15:34

just really feel like they have to be seen

1:15:37

as being serious and legitimate. And

1:15:39

I, I actually have thought a lot about

1:15:42

how much that was important to me in coffee

1:15:44

travel is to legitimize

1:15:46

myself. Cuz I just always felt

1:15:48

like I didn't have

1:15:50

enough of that. I didn't have enough feeling that in coffee

1:15:53

I was legitimate and everybody else

1:15:55

had the 1953 PROBAT

1:15:57

roaster and everyone else had

1:15:59

this whatever espresso machine

1:16:01

and new things. But I

1:16:03

always wanted coffee to be easy and accessible

1:16:07

and to demystify it, you know,

1:16:09

to not, to not sort

1:16:11

of talk in code, as much as possible.

1:16:14

And when you did have to try to explain it. You

1:16:16

know, I think that's what

1:16:18

I, I like about your podcast so much

1:16:20

is cuz I was actually really intimidated by

1:16:23

it. And the first episodes are kind of

1:16:25

like bootcamp and they're they're really

1:16:27

good and there's so much there. But

1:16:30

I just realized how much you want people

1:16:32

to get it and you want it to

1:16:34

be understandable and

1:16:37

I really respect that. You want to focus

1:16:39

on producers and what their needs are

1:16:41

and I think that's really great. But

1:16:43

I do think you give a, a really

1:16:46

good access to, to everybody who wants

1:16:48

to listen, who wants to, you know, understand

1:16:51

Thank you. I appreciate that. Well,

1:16:55

I wanted to ask you what you've, as

1:16:57

a prolific blogger and a podcaster,

1:17:00

what made you feel like you wanted to do a podcast when

1:17:03

you write so much? Or how do you find those two different?

1:17:06

well I've been really bad at doing podcasts

1:17:08

cuz I have like 30 episodes in

1:17:10

like eight years or something. I guess

1:17:12

I think mostly about how hard it is for

1:17:14

me to do it, because lot

1:17:17

of times I don't want to hear myself talk

1:17:19

and I don't want to see myself. So I,

1:17:22

it's kind of, it takes

1:17:24

something to get to a point where

1:17:26

I feel like I want

1:17:28

to try and I do very much this thing you do,

1:17:30

which is I just put it out there and then try to like

1:17:32

forget about it. And it hasn't,

1:17:35

you know, it hasn't always worked for me. I, I. Sometimes

1:17:37

I've tried to work really hard

1:17:39

on something I felt needed to be said.

1:17:41

There was a thing I did about Geisha

1:17:44

a long time ago because

1:17:46

I'd read a lot about it, I think

1:17:48

the problem with my approach was that I,

1:17:51

I felt a little

1:17:53

angry about the success

1:17:56

of Geisha in Panama,

1:17:58

specifically, where I felt like

1:18:01

it was just about this little handful

1:18:03

of group of farmers that were doing

1:18:06

incredibly well. And there's

1:18:08

a lot of good coffee you know, geisha

1:18:10

is, is really nice. Coffee sometimes,

1:18:14

you know, quite often. So when

1:18:16

I looked back and I saw the history

1:18:18

of it and how it was collected,

1:18:21

and it was part of the ICO gardens and it was

1:18:23

about, you know, that program is about

1:18:25

helping all farmers to

1:18:27

fight disease and to find stronger

1:18:29

varieties, and to have a good genetic

1:18:31

database and these great

1:18:33

things that organizations

1:18:35

do, sometimes to

1:18:39

help coffee farmers I believe, and

1:18:41

that's, that's, you know, why Geisha

1:18:44

exists in the ICO collections

1:18:46

that it was taken from in Costa Rica and then planted

1:18:49

in Panama. And I wrote this

1:18:51

whole thing explaining it, and I guess

1:18:53

it was a little snarky, and I just like, apparently

1:18:56

was like disinvited from Boquete after

1:18:59

that. the reaction because people did

1:19:01

see it was terrible. I

1:19:03

got hate mail and like,

1:19:05

you can't, you're not welcome here. Kind

1:19:07

of email. So I,

1:19:10

it's made it really hard to say

1:19:12

what you think and, you know,

1:19:14

I do wanna check and make sure I'm not

1:19:16

holding some sort of grudge and

1:19:19

trying to work out some, resentment

1:19:21

I have. I don't want to do things. I wanna do

1:19:23

things that are helpful, but,

1:19:26

producing material is hard. So

1:19:29

I can understand why you don't wanna see comments. I

1:19:32

don't wanna, I don't wanna see any, I don't

1:19:34

wanna be disinvited from anywhere else, I

1:19:36

guess.

1:19:37

So looking back at that piece, would you

1:19:40

still, would you just not

1:19:42

do it a, again, would you just kind of not say

1:19:44

anything about it? Or would you say something about it

1:19:46

in a different context? Or is

1:19:48

it maybe just unavoidable?

1:19:51

I don't know. I, I, I don't think I would

1:19:53

do that again. It really took a toll on

1:19:55

me. It really hurt, honestly. I'm

1:19:58

pretty sensitive about, the energy

1:20:00

you put into things is like a lot, you

1:20:02

know, I can tell you do, and

1:20:04

I feel that I do too. And. You

1:20:07

know, I do want to check in with

1:20:10

my intentions before because as

1:20:12

a person who felt kind of illegitimate

1:20:14

in coffee and needing to prove something,

1:20:17

I need to kind of note

1:20:20

that coming from that place can make you a little

1:20:22

weird and do things that, you know,

1:20:24

you're not happy with. So, if

1:20:26

I'm trying to prove something, then I

1:20:28

probably wouldn't have written that. But I think that

1:20:31

the information was really good

1:20:33

Was, is the piece still on your website?

1:20:35

Does it still exist or did you take it down from

1:20:37

the backlash?

1:20:38

think it does, but I don't

1:20:40

really want it seen. I don't know. Cause I don't

1:20:43

know, maybe,

1:20:44

But I think that's interesting. Yeah, but you didn't

1:20:46

take it down. I'm not encouraging anyone to go look

1:20:48

for it. I'm just saying, you made this

1:20:50

thing, you had this painful response to it,

1:20:52

and yet something about you decided to let

1:20:55

it keep existing. You didn't remove

1:20:57

it from your website.

1:20:59

Yeah. It's funny cuz I did find, I did

1:21:01

realize I took down another

1:21:03

video that was really controversial

1:21:06

too, and it was a joke video

1:21:08

I made about coffee buying about

1:21:10

it was a joke based directly on dangerous

1:21:13

grounds and it

1:21:15

got some attention too. And

1:21:18

but there was a really nice article that

1:21:20

referenced it that. Was

1:21:22

pointing out how this idea

1:21:24

of the coffee hunter had, become

1:21:27

such a trope that you could parody

1:21:29

it so easily. And it's a farm

1:21:31

in like Papua New Guinea where I was there, and I'm like walking

1:21:34

around like misidentifying trees

1:21:36

and taking real, like

1:21:38

the hardest path to get somewhere with all

1:21:40

the coffee, whacking me in the face

1:21:42

and then looking at the cherry

1:21:45

and just saying, wrong, take the wrong things.

1:21:48

It's fun. And I put it up and

1:21:51

and then it, it, it it got a lot of confusion.

1:21:54

A lot of confused responses. I'll

1:21:56

say our, our video on hand cupping, Dan

1:22:00

and I made a video about how hand

1:22:02

feel we have mouth feel, but hand

1:22:04

feel nobody talks about. So

1:22:07

we actually were cupping from our hands

1:22:10

so we could feel the copy. And

1:22:12

that got a lot of, con very,

1:22:14

you know, I felt, you know,

1:22:16

I guess we were good enough this, we were this

1:22:19

straight face enough that people

1:22:21

were like, are they serious? Is this, you know,

1:22:24

so the, yeah,

1:22:26

that one is handcuffing,

1:22:29

but the but I think it says something

1:22:31

that you can make parodies and coffee,

1:22:33

but they're, they're not that

1:22:36

out there because people do things

1:22:38

that you can't believe. So,

1:22:41

And I think that was because there was a company

1:22:43

in Colorado who advertised their coffee as

1:22:46

hand scooped that

1:22:48

Okay. Can

1:22:49

their coffee was special because they hand

1:22:51

scoop.

1:22:53

Okay.

1:22:53

I'm not joking.

1:22:55

I, as soon as I hang up with you, I wanna go look up

1:22:57

that handcuffing video, because that sounds

1:22:59

fantastic.

1:23:00

It might be hard to find all. I can send it to you.

1:23:06

a lot of this regulation and the conversation around

1:23:08

adulterated coffees and like what should

1:23:10

be allowed and what shouldn't be allowed, I

1:23:12

feel like there's not enough

1:23:14

producers who are a part of that conversation

1:23:17

and it directly impacts their

1:23:19

economic livelihood. And I

1:23:21

see it as like, I'm trying to think of

1:23:23

an analogy and the only thing I could think of is like,

1:23:26

let's say I hate the color blue and I think it's

1:23:28

just a really terrible color. It looks terrible on my skin.

1:23:31

It just makes me feel really bad. I hate blue and

1:23:33

therefore I tell. Some, some

1:23:35

fashion company, you can't use the color blue because

1:23:38

I don't like it. It makes me feel bad. You are not

1:23:40

allowed to use it and sell it to other people who

1:23:42

think blue is perfectly fine. Like I

1:23:44

just feel like this type of regulation happens

1:23:46

a lot where it's like, I don't like it. My

1:23:48

feelings are hurt, so you're not allowed to

1:23:50

do it and we're gonna regulate it.

1:23:52

Well you're talking to the guy. We just offered

1:23:55

spiced coffee and

1:23:57

I really thought about it. I was like, do I want

1:23:59

to go this this way? It was like

1:24:01

a Indonesian aged spiced

1:24:03

Sumatra. So it was aged

1:24:06

with a spice blend

1:24:08

and it was really interesting.

1:24:11

But there's a lot of new things coming up

1:24:13

that aren't well determined,

1:24:16

and I think whether people. How

1:24:19

they sort of evaluate them

1:24:21

in the marketplace, you know,

1:24:23

should involve producers too.

1:24:26

And, you know, also just

1:24:28

like to let

1:24:30

people find where

1:24:32

that coffee should go. Like if it's not right

1:24:34

for this marketplace, and

1:24:36

then, but it, it works really well somewhere else.

1:24:39

You know, just like whiny coffee in

1:24:41

Indonesia or, you

1:24:43

know, the levels of fruit that they like

1:24:45

in Saudi Arabia. It's like, well, if they like

1:24:47

it. Okay.

1:24:48

And I think the other thing that comes up again is

1:24:50

this double standard of not

1:24:52

just machines, like we love our toys

1:24:55

and machines on one end of the supply

1:24:57

chain, but not on the other. And this

1:24:59

innovation, like, there's so much, especially

1:25:01

going to sca, you see so much innovation in

1:25:03

terms of equipment or recipes

1:25:05

or technology. Like there's so much

1:25:07

innovation, but we don't, we feel

1:25:10

very uncomfortable when producers innovate, like

1:25:12

adding spices or whatever that could be, you know,

1:25:14

relevant to their culture. We're like, no, no, no, no,

1:25:16

not you. We get to innovate, we get to do that

1:25:18

stuff. But not you, you need to be pure and

1:25:21

authentic and you know, stay

1:25:23

in your, stay in your box of what we know you.

1:25:26

And I just think that we don't, and again,

1:25:28

like that's a fine position

1:25:30

to have, like you can have that opinion, but

1:25:32

just understanding that there is. A

1:25:35

double standard and like I have a lot of double standards

1:25:37

with my husband of things I'm allowed to do, but he's

1:25:39

not allowed to do. And so, but

1:25:41

I'm aware of these double standards, you know,

1:25:43

I think that's what bothers me more is

1:25:45

not that there are double standards,

1:25:48

but that we refuse to acknowledge

1:25:50

them and think that there's like this equal

1:25:52

playing field all over the place.

1:25:54

Yeah, that struck me

1:25:57

when I was listening to your, your talk

1:25:59

with Vava in Kenya,

1:26:01

cuz I think she brought, you

1:26:03

know, can a producer look like this? Like,

1:26:06

people comment on how she looks,

1:26:08

you know, I believe that was text

1:26:11

and, you know, she's, you

1:26:13

know, impressive and fashionable

1:26:15

and you know, is like, and

1:26:18

just this idea that like, is that okay?

1:26:20

Right. And how people want to do,

1:26:23

yeah, we want, we want producers to do well,

1:26:25

but not so well. Like, there's a limit

1:26:27

to like our generosity and there's like a limit to what

1:26:29

we're able to accept. Where if,

1:26:32

if they do have a new car where it's like, well why aren't

1:26:34

you investing in your business and why

1:26:36

is that a new car and not a new pulp? Or

1:26:38

something like that where there's so much judgment how

1:26:40

producers are allowed to spend

1:26:43

any extra money and that that same

1:26:45

criticism is not kind of focused the other way

1:26:47

of like, you know, what you wearing?

1:26:50

Or how many vacations do you get to go on per year?

1:26:52

Cultural prejudices exist

1:26:55

and I don't think they're, you know, sometimes they're

1:26:57

just crusty old things that maybe,

1:27:00

you know, for me sometimes

1:27:02

you're, you're just not used to, you know?

1:27:05

And the first time you see them, I don't

1:27:07

think it's to disallow them, but it's to say like,

1:27:09

oh, that kind of changes

1:27:12

how I feel. I've run up against,

1:27:14

I run up against my own preconceptions,

1:27:16

and I know that's because when

1:27:18

we think of our coffee

1:27:21

and what the classic ideas of really

1:27:23

good, clean, washed coffee and we think

1:27:25

about the situations

1:27:28

that comes from where people do, what they did,

1:27:30

their parents did, and what their parents

1:27:32

did, and the traditions handed

1:27:34

down in coffee. You know, we're very

1:27:37

conservative. You know, we have this very conservative

1:27:39

bias I think that,

1:27:41

we, we come to it with. I think, you

1:27:44

know, maybe at least people like myself,

1:27:47

we like that and we want it to continue.

1:27:49

I'm very, I'm sad to hear when people

1:27:51

start single fermenting in

1:27:54

Burundi and they stop double fermenting,

1:27:57

but I challenge that. I have no reason to

1:27:59

believe that. I don't

1:28:01

know precisely. It's, it pleases

1:28:03

my mind to know that they do this old

1:28:06

system that was set up,

1:28:08

you know, honestly it was set up in

1:28:10

colonial times, and it's

1:28:12

from a British system that was imposed

1:28:15

upon people. They were forced to do this,

1:28:17

this way and to

1:28:20

innovate, to say, well, why are we doing this?

1:28:22

Is this necessary? Can you tell the difference,

1:28:24

you know, and challenge that? I think, you

1:28:27

know, I, I feel these two things.

1:28:29

One is this very conservative love

1:28:31

of washed coffee as

1:28:33

it's been. And the way it's produced.

1:28:36

And the other is like just

1:28:38

a reasonable, a

1:28:40

reasonable response to that. It's like, is this

1:28:43

really necessary? Would this be better? Oh,

1:28:45

well, hell yeah. They should do it if it's better if

1:28:47

they can ferment one time

1:28:49

or, or do something else that improves

1:28:52

the way they're working.

1:28:54

Or another like component

1:28:56

there would be. The wash process

1:28:58

creates an incredible amount of waste

1:29:00

water and a lot of pollution.

1:29:02

And so by being able to reduce or eliminate

1:29:05

one of those washing steps, you create less

1:29:07

pollution. So your emissions are lower.

1:29:10

And so even if it's not better for quality, even

1:29:12

if it's not like shedding an old colonial system,

1:29:14

it could be part of the emission of reducing

1:29:17

your carbon emissions and being more, you

1:29:19

know, I don't know, but I don't know about environmentally

1:29:22

friendly, but less environmentally polluting.

1:29:25

mm-hmm. No, PENGOS

1:29:27

has, has done amazing,

1:29:30

the use of, of Eco Pus

1:29:33

has done amazing things in coffee that I

1:29:35

realize isn't to everyone's, you know,

1:29:38

it doesn't please them. And,

1:29:40

you know, I struggled with it too, but,

1:29:43

you know, in the cases of, of Costa Rica

1:29:45

where people c create small mills and

1:29:47

locations that weren't the,

1:29:49

you know, the old Lenos owners had

1:29:51

all the properties by the rivers and

1:29:53

could use all the water they needed for

1:29:55

these giant mills. And they, they,

1:29:58

you know produce, you know, a coffee

1:30:00

farmer couldn't process their own coffee. Pengos

1:30:03

allowed that to happen where

1:30:05

they could just transport, you

1:30:07

know, one's one, you

1:30:09

know, container of water up the hill

1:30:11

and run the old mill the whole day. And

1:30:14

in Ethiopia, I mean, it, it,

1:30:16

it changed a lot in the west

1:30:19

the western part where co-ops

1:30:21

could start processing their own coffee

1:30:24

despite their location. And then, you know,

1:30:27

of course not return that coffee

1:30:30

to that water to the rivers and

1:30:32

manage it, you know, very environmentally

1:30:35

was in a very environmentally sound way.

1:30:38

So I think, well

1:30:40

some people really don't like the penagos

1:30:43

and I like seeing washed coffee

1:30:45

where, traditionally fermented. I

1:30:48

gotta respect that, what

1:30:50

that has done and how

1:30:52

that's helped people.

1:30:53

I think that's a really good point in that this,

1:30:55

this piece of equipment opened up that

1:30:58

opportunity for a lot of producers who were

1:31:01

previously forced to sell their cherry for

1:31:03

a low price. And then if they could process it and

1:31:05

sell, you know, wet parchment, or

1:31:07

if they could dry it and sell dry parchment, they could

1:31:09

make a lot more money than just selling

1:31:11

their cherry. And so that's what I'm talking

1:31:13

about where a lot of people, because

1:31:17

you, when you use this eco,

1:31:20

you, you know, eliminate that fermentation step.

1:31:22

You don't always get that opportunity to enhance

1:31:24

the flavor through this processing step that

1:31:27

the coffees can be maybe not as vibrant

1:31:29

as they could be if they underwent along fermentation.

1:31:32

So that, that's where someone's like, well, I don't like those

1:31:34

coffees. I don't like that flavor. That's like boring

1:31:37

or flat. But it allowed,

1:31:40

I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of people

1:31:42

to like now process something that they couldn't

1:31:44

before. And so I'm like, your preference

1:31:46

is really not important. It's like,

1:31:48

but we. Presented as like, but my

1:31:50

preference is the most important thing and cup quality

1:31:52

and flavor and scores is the most important thing.

1:31:55

And I just think we're really, really

1:31:57

unbalanced in that way where I'm like, your

1:31:59

opinion is nothing compared

1:32:02

to now. These people can make more money

1:32:04

and now their kids can go to school and maybe they can escape

1:32:06

coffee and they don't have to keep growing coffee. They can

1:32:08

do something else.

1:32:10

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

1:32:13

Coffee isn't the answer for everyone. And I

1:32:15

think a lot of coffee projects that

1:32:17

have gone on, it's, it's like, I always

1:32:19

wonder is maybe one of your,

1:32:21

the options that you present

1:32:24

to people is not farming coffee.

1:32:27

Maybe that's the best thing if

1:32:29

you're really thinking of, of

1:32:31

the, the lives and life

1:32:34

improvement. So,

1:32:35

absolutely. And I wanted to have

1:32:37

another this conversation hasn't

1:32:39

come out on the podcast yet, but I think by the time this

1:32:41

episode comes out, I will have shared this

1:32:44

conversation with Mark from Finka

1:32:46

Rosenheim in Peru. So he was on episode

1:32:48

27 and I just got a chance to catch up

1:32:50

with him. And he mentioned two

1:32:53

things about tourism and,

1:32:56

well, sorry. One thing about tourism is that he had some

1:32:58

people. I think he said from Switzerland,

1:33:00

come visit him. Two, two young guys.

1:33:03

We just wanted to learn more about coffee. So

1:33:05

it could have turned out to be a potentially

1:33:07

very extractive model of their, just like, they're

1:33:09

not even buyers, they just wanna come visit the farm

1:33:12

and learn about coffee. But

1:33:14

they stayed long enough. I think they stayed for

1:33:16

almost a month and they really helped out.

1:33:18

He had a building project and he, they learned

1:33:20

about coffee, but they provided their labor. He

1:33:23

said they were, he said he was thrilled to have

1:33:25

them. They worked for like a month. They were moving wood,

1:33:27

they were helping him, I don't know, with his trucks.

1:33:29

Like, they were really contributing. And

1:33:31

I think that that's, isn't I, I

1:33:33

was like, I was really impressed. I'm like, that's a really cool model.

1:33:36

So I think, you know, maybe somebody who

1:33:38

is thinking about a trip to say, how can I help? How can

1:33:40

I contribute? And sometimes it's like more effort

1:33:43

to teach somebody something they don't know. And like,

1:33:45

okay, you're gonna get hurt. I don't want you to touch those things

1:33:47

or that equipment, but to see if there is

1:33:49

something that, you know, as you're visiting

1:33:53

somebody, what you can give

1:33:55

back. And the other thing I wanted to point

1:33:57

out with Mark is that, in that episode, in episode

1:33:59

27, he was really in a difficult place

1:34:02

with the prices and he, he really

1:34:04

felt like he needed to escape coffee. And a lot

1:34:06

of the conversation revolved around, you

1:34:09

know, what else could he grow? What else could he do? Diversifying

1:34:11

and, and reducing his.

1:34:14

Like we talked about having an exit strategy

1:34:17

for coffee. Cuz you, like you said, you can't just pick

1:34:19

up your land and go somewhere else. It takes

1:34:21

a long time to replant. So there's limited

1:34:23

options. So when I asked

1:34:25

him in 2023

1:34:28

how he was compared to 2020, he

1:34:30

does have less coffee because he's

1:34:32

planted more lumber and he has, he's

1:34:34

reforesting. But that was the better

1:34:36

choice for him was to have less coffee,

1:34:38

to plant, less coffee, to concentrate on less

1:34:41

and to do other things. And so I think a lot, oftentimes

1:34:43

that could seem as like a failure. We

1:34:46

always wanna have like more coffee and plant more, but

1:34:48

maybe a way for success for some producers is to

1:34:50

think about other options.

1:34:53

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

1:34:56

I mean, here at coffee is,

1:34:58

one of the things, the cash crop, they grow

1:35:02

along with all their sustenance crops.

1:35:04

And if you don't really

1:35:06

look at the whole picture, and

1:35:08

you just talk to people about coffee, it's really

1:35:10

missing the whole point of,

1:35:13

of what balance works, and for

1:35:15

a lot of farmers here, they have too few trees.

1:35:17

The the amount of resources they have to

1:35:19

have to devote to too few trees doesn't

1:35:22

produce enough coffee to make it very worth it.

1:35:25

But you know, they kind of continue

1:35:27

to do that. So that's one

1:35:29

other recommendation, kind of going the opposite

1:35:31

direction is either have

1:35:33

more coffee or don't have any coffee, I

1:35:35

mm-hmm.

1:35:36

But I like the idea of exit. I, I

1:35:39

always wanna do this thing from the other side

1:35:41

of the mirror. I wanted to always talk to roasters

1:35:43

who quit roasting and baristas who quit

1:35:45

baristing. And you could ask farmers

1:35:48

who quit coffee and like, find

1:35:51

out because you never hear from them. Like, you

1:35:54

know, cuz a lot of times I have really candid views.

1:35:57

I talked to a barista recently when I was surfing

1:36:00

and she had quit and she just had really

1:36:02

funny and insightful comments

1:36:04

about the coffee world

1:36:07

as she saw it. You know, having left

1:36:09

it. So maybe that's that'd

1:36:11

be a great episode is, is

1:36:13

talking to the exes and you know, looking

1:36:16

back over their shoulder, what do they think? I

1:36:18

would love to know farms that that

1:36:21

left coffee or you know, how they

1:36:23

saw it. If they downscaled.

1:36:25

I love that idea. It's okay. So this is an official

1:36:28

call out for if you are somebody who has

1:36:30

left coffee or know somebody who has left coffee,

1:36:32

we wanna hear from you, so email

1:36:36

us.

1:36:36

yeah,

1:36:37

I'll have all the links in the show notes.

1:36:39

We wanna hear from all the quitters,

1:36:42

Yeah. I mean, because that's, that's the perspective I

1:36:44

have in my, in my job as

1:36:46

a consultant. It's like I, for me, success

1:36:48

is becoming irrelevant for me is like

1:36:51

I was able to share what I wanted to share

1:36:53

and now, You don't need me anymore

1:36:55

or you've graduated beyond me. Like, I'm always trying

1:36:57

to like get myself out of the

1:36:59

way. And so this idea

1:37:02

of yeah, they're making yourself relevant

1:37:04

or quitting or escaping is, is very

1:37:07

interesting to me.

1:37:12

Thanks to you for listening to this conversation.

1:37:15

I hope it brought up some interesting topics for you

1:37:17

to think about. Do you see your own

1:37:19

travel in a different way? What about

1:37:21

the role of host and guest? Are

1:37:24

there some things that you have taken for granted as

1:37:26

you visit coffee producing countries? Also,

1:37:29

are you a former barista, roaster, or coffee

1:37:32

producer? Tom and I really do want to hear

1:37:34

from the quitters. Please send us an

1:37:36

email at info. luciacoffee

1:37:38

at gmail. com telling us about it.

1:37:41

Remember to check out the Sweet Maria's podcast

1:37:43

for more thoughtful reflections on coffee travel

1:37:45

stories from Tom, as well as home roasting.

1:37:49

Another huge thanks to the patrons who make it

1:37:51

possible for me to make new episodes. If

1:37:53

you want to join our community and join the office

1:37:56

hours live to ask me questions or connect

1:37:58

with other awesome listeners, go to

1:38:00

patreon. com slash making

1:38:02

coffee. So all of this will be

1:38:04

linked in the show notes, and if you see

1:38:06

coffee in a different way after listening consider

1:38:09

joining on Patreon and helping me make more

1:38:11

episodes. If

1:38:13

you enjoy listening and get value out of these episodes,

1:38:16

please share with a friend who loves wine or coffee.

1:38:19

If you want to be notified when the next one is coming

1:38:21

out, consider subscribing to my free

1:38:24

and infrequent newsletter at lucia.

1:38:26

coffee. Lucia is

1:38:28

L U X I A. Thanks

1:38:31

for listening, and remember, life's

1:38:33

too short to drink bad coffee.