Skip to content
- Background is needed. My story was deeply personal and basically the absolute perfect moment it could happen where it mattered. If it had been a year later - I probably wouldn't exist. It being so personal helped me gain the confidence I specifically needed to "sell" something.
- You cant escape the leading thing about “direct trade”: There is a lot of romanticism related to going to origin.
- This is imperialism though we don’t view it as such. Depending on your size you’re not really “saving” anyone. I feel gross reading the stories that people attach to their social media posts talking up various things like that. It makes me not want to talk about it.
- I could easily fall prey to some of the “marketing” gimmic sides of this and probably at the start I did to a degree.
- I try to approach the miersch and future farmers with respect for their work. That they don’t need me given my buyer power. This is all a choice and to be greatful for that opportunity.
- Role of the importer. They have the ability to navigate the logistics of gigantic amounts of coffee through customs and account for those coffees to be stored in the united states with little to no delay all the while paying the farmer up front. They’re not always this middle man boogy man idea we paint. There are instances of importers using local logistical buyers and that’s gets a bit muddy.
- Routes to direct trade. There is an importer that sells it as direct trade and they put it in their description direct trade so then you buy it and just copy their notes. That’s not direct. It’s still through an importer.
- Importers selling trips so you can buy a bag of coffee. There are a few doing this on a bigger scale and one company in particular who I take issue with but it’s not a hill I’m dying on. You can do it when it’s a large buy but if you’re going to pick up 2-3 bags it’s pretty disingenous to pitch it as anything meaningful. I’m working with an importer to consistently buy the same coffee I sold a lot of already and have it consistently available. It’s not “direct” but it’s going to be a farm we buy from regularly.
- There are other ways: Farms bring their stuff into the terminals and then reach out to you in email en masse. I get a lot of this and ignore all the emails as it’s a practice I want nothing to do with. I realize they have the financial ability to take on the gigantic risk of store and not selling that coffee. in my opinion this is not direct trade though technically it is. It works but they’re assuming a massive risk and it’s a moon shot on their part where we’re asking farmers who could put their entire business at risk just so you can sell as “direct trade”.
- Go with an open mind. Remove all the marketing and just observe and listen. I had a few goals when visiting first. One to get a deeper understanding of every single step in the harvesting of coffee. 2 was to get across the long term plan of my business and lineup and set us up for a very long term relationship that works for them and myself. I though somewhat that Visiting origin would make me smarter but it doesn’t make you the expert. Congrats you spent 2,000 to get some pictures is the joke.
- Lastly here is my unpopular opinion: The take away I had was there are hundreds of people involved before you get coffee. I am one of many whose impact on the bean is ever so slight. Farmers, the weather, and the earth do the overwhelming amount of work. We as roasters can just nudge it a certain way or at worst utterly destroy their work. To me I learned to hate the “expert” roasters who believe their fingers touching it makes the magic happen. Sure dropping it 10 seconds earlier makes it a little more crisp but that’s because you focused on that at the exclusion . You didn’t make a crisp blueberry appear from the ether. You just nudged it so it was less round and more crisp.