Burundi and Haiti Coffees Storm Espresso Royale

Monday, May 13, 2013
Landmark coffee roasting co. and multi-location cafe, Espresso Royale, launched a new "single origin" initiative today in SE Michigan. Owner/founder Marcus Goller is introducing what he calls two single-origin "gems" -- one from Burundi and the other from Haiti. They are "gems" because they both create a direct connection between an Espresso Royale customer and a coffee producer or specific small group of producers half-a-world away. 




Crop to Cup - Burundi Single Origin Training @ Espresso Royale

In a staff training event at the State. St. store in Ann Arbor, MI, Goller invited Crop to Cup representatives to deliver a workshop on the topic "what is single-origin coffee?" and the story behind the Burundi Buhorwa coffee that Espresso Royale will now carry. After all the words and talk, it was time for some tasting. The Burundi coffee was brewed with several different brew methods by staff working in teams.

Crop to Cup has been engaged with Burundi farmers since 2007. Jake Ester, one of C2C's partners, explained his story of how he got started learning about coffee in Uganda, then moved to neighboring Burundi. He describes a pivotal moment where he and his partner were standing in an export warehouse and a colleague pointed to the 2 or 3 pallets that were shipping to a café that is heavily marketed as "helping farmers by buying direct." Jake explains how in that setting, with aisles of coffee stacked floor to ceiling, and a football field length long, it did not seem like 2 or 3 pallets of coffee could possibly make much of difference at all. That's when they decided as a company that they would do "whole crop" purchasing. The Burundi Buhorwa coffee Espresso Royale is now selling is part of that whole crop project.

 

 

Coffee Week: Women in Coffee Highlighted by NPR

April 25, 2013

NPR's Morning Edition has been highlighting coffee week with some excellent reporting! Allison Aubrey reported this morning on the International Women in Coffee Alliance (IWCA), http://www.womenincoffee.org/, an organization I have been supporting with my volunteer hours over the past year. Click here and listen to this great short story.

 I've been supporting IWCA in spirit since 2007, when I first went to their fund-raising breakfast, and finally this year "I got involved."  Contrary to what you might guess, IWCA is much more than a bunch of women sitting around drinking coffee! The NPR story does a good job of describing the organization's purpose - to help women working in coffee around the world to organize and develop leadership skills, thereby finding strength and voice to make changes.

One example of what IWCA has done so far (it's only 10 years old) is a leadership training conference held in Nairobi for about 15 women from 3 or 4 African nations. All the trainers' donated their time and travel costs. Once they were done in Nairobi, they brought 4 or 5 of the women to the U.S., including a visit to Washington D.C. and then they attended an International Trade Commission (part of the United Nations) meeting in Mexico City, which included a trade show of women's businesses. Not surprisingly, these women in coffee now have much bigger and more solid ideas of what their coffee businesses can be.

To support my business, (which is a woman-owned coffee importing business) go to www.ArtisanCoffeeImports.com and ask your favorite roaster to check us out!

Great Coffee, Cafe and Ideas in Chicago

Thu., Mar. 21, 2013
Had the opportunity yesterday to be in Chicago and check out a great coffee, a great cafe and a truly great example of community building with a coffee connection.

Great Coffee: during my stop at Metropolis' roastery on Clark St., I was treated to a delicious Bolivia Bo-Linda from the Caranavi region hand-poured by roaster Sean Capistrant. To make it even more enjoyable, owner/founder Tony Dreyfuss discussed the importance of setting a vision for your business. He and accountant John White are big fans of Zingerman's philosophy: Building A Great Business . Also mentioned a TED talk by Simon Sinek, "The Why of Business."

Great Cafe: thanks to an acquaintance I was meeting, I was introduced to a wonderful cafe in the Roscoe Village neighborhood -- Victorys Banner. Sorry to say I did not get the background story on how this place came into existance, but it was wonderful. It's got the classic 'corner cafe' feel, not only because you literally enter from a door on the corner of the building. As soon as you enter, feelings of peace and contentment begin as you see the waitresses swish about in their Indian saris and hear the soft, chanting of Indian music played from a hidden speaker. I was there around 8am so the place was also flooded with morning sunlight, seeming to make the pale blue walls shine. Refills of decaf coffee were great! I enjoyed a ramaquin of fresh fruit and homemade muffin. My friend had a bowl of gourmet oatmeal.

Community Building: My next stop Misericordia was inspiring! This beautiful campus of trim red brick buildings and white fences is home to 600+ residents -- all disabled adults. I was treated to a visit to the room where one of the many workshops is -- the coffee room! Here about 6 or 8 workers were packaging coffee for Crop to Cup.

Decaf Coffee Feature in Barista Magazine

Mar. 17, 2013
Barista Magazine did a great job in the current issue highlighting the sensible part of the industry -- decaf. A whole article by Andrea Piccolo (from Swiss Water Process) on a wide variety of things baristas and roasters need to know. She even stayed relatively neutral to the Swiss Water branding/marketing. Until she was talking about the other processes available -- her description of precision processes like methylene chloride had very little promising to say. This isn't the case, though.

Q Grade Recalibration Passed!

The best present for me this Christmas was passing the Q Grader recalibration in a 1/2 day class with Ted Lingle instructing. The other Q Graders were a terrific 4 - 5 people from Gavina Coffee and Paul Allen from Caravan Coffee.

Getting ready for the Q Grader Recalibration

Dec. 12, 2012 (it's 12-12-12!)
I'm checked in to my hotel in Long Beach, CA. The soft warm air here is helping me relax, but I'm still nervous about tomorrows tests. I'll be doing the Q Grader re-calibration with Ted Lingle teaching.

Burundi Agricultural Project (BAP) Comes to a Close

November 29, 2012
Today I was able to visit with Dr. Dan Clay at Michigan State University (MSU), he's the Director of Global Programs in Sustainable Agri-food Systems. It's a bittersweet time for Dr. Clay as tomorrow will mark the end of a 5 year, $20 million USAID grant program called the "Burundi Agriculture Program" or BAP. The lead on the program was Development Alternatives International (DAI) and the technical coffee-related portion was contracted to MSU.

The purpose of the project was to develop the value chain for three critical products: coffee, horticulture (flowers) and dairy. Work in coffee was designed to elevate knowledge across the coffee growing sector about technologies to improve quality and to provide new market linkages. Through these methods, small farmers with coffee could improve household incomes.

Burundi is a country whose agroecology and well-developed coffee infrastructure support the production of highly prized “mild arabicas,” and where political will is being mobilized to realize this remarkable potential.

An exciting outcome of the project is a website that provides not only technical but many visual and cultural insights on Burundi. Check out: www.cafedeburundi.com. For coffee roasters and importers who appreciate transparency, you will be amazed with the site's interactive map and listing of all the washing stations: http://www.cafeduburundi.com/processing/coffee-washing-stations/.

Another impressive deliverable Dr. Clay showed me was before-and-after maps of each of 12 "technologies" brought to coffee growing regions across the country. The maps visually showed (with small circles that grew to large circles) to what extent important technologies like pre-selecting cherries or using water-efficient de-pulping equipment, had been adopted. There was also an intensity measure incorporated, indicating MSU's involvement on a level of 1-4. These maps accomplished the often difficult task of quickly conveying how where MSU had been working intensely, there was a correlated increased rate of adoption of new technologies.

Michigan State University has definitely set the bar high for future work in developing specialty coffee markets and making wholistic paraticipation by the entire industry possible!