Description
2, 12oz bags of strong dark for $16!
For months, I have been working on a way we can have a competitive coffee for the commercial market.
The biggest challenge has been on how to do it meaningful, without losing our vision, and providing pride on the work we do.
When I moved to the U.S. seeing the prices people were paying for coffee was a shocking reality. That shock was because where I was coming from, there is no way we could get paid that amount for our coffee.
However, as I learned more about the specialty coffee industry, the more sense the prices did for me. Now that I have access to hundreds of details that go into all the processes of working with coffee, from planting the coffee seeds, to serving a cup of coffee to our customers, the future for our business looks stronger than ever before.
Nonetheless, the existence of my business is not to promote my coffee only, is to lift each other’s up. Therefore, finding ways to scale up in volume to involve more farmers is my daily goal, and we have slowly moved towards that direction.
In the past I have criticized the darker roasting profiles because of the fact that many roasters use that roasting technique to cover up imperfections of the coffee, or because doing blends of low quality coffee with “good ones”
However, this roasting profile can allow us to compete with a market that can change people’s reality by giving them an option for better prices while still being commercial, with the goal of becoming specialty.
The coffee is rated from 0 to 100, the highest the better. The coffee we sell at our shop is a 84.5 points rated coffee. Several small coffee roasters here in Portland work with 86+ and their prices go from 14 to 20 dollars or more for 12oz bags.
Most of the commercial coffee is a 70-75 points rated coffee that you find for cheap prices in the market.
Many 76-82 are used for blends to make “decent coffee” and you can find them on Brazilian or Vietnamese Blends with Guatemalan or Colombian coffee.
These practices are used on companies such as Folgers, McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts, Green Mountain and Starbucks to mention a few examples.
By the above, for me is very important to find a way to compete against that market on their own territory, and promote a coffee that is good, but has been underrated for being a 80-81 points (80+ is considered specialty coffee)
Now we have knowledge, we have resources, and we have a market. Guatemala produces around 600 million pounds of green beans per year. My village produces near half a million pounds of green beans per year with hundreds of farmers that now, more than ever are getting my message, and finding on me an opportunity to believe again on the coffee industry.
Our project with the coffee we already sell at the shop, has a capacity to grow up to 120,000 pounds per year.
The 0.5 million pounds we can get from my village for our new coffee roasting profile has the same varieties of coffee, and is also shadow grown. The difference is the altitude (climate) and soil variations, that make it difficult to increase the quality without heavier investments, but we are already working on improving that.
I invite you to switch from your commercial brand of coffee to ours, and invite your friends and family to give it a try.
Thank you in advance for your support ??
Hector Mejia Zamora.
