Raise The Bar (Part One) — Communicating With Your Green Coffee Department
By Sandra Loofbourow and Rachel Apple
This article is the first in a five-part series that will tackle green buying, financial planning, roasting and quality control, sales and marketing, and educational initiatives, discussing the responsibilities and relationships of each department in your coffee business. You’ll see themes of communication, strategic planning and collaboration. Coffee businesses of different sizes may have fewer departments, or those departments might have slightly different responsibilities, but understanding the information each team needs to complete their tasks and the information they must communicate to other teams to support their tasks will make everyone’s job easier.
The sun sets over coffee growing at origin. Photo courtesy of Mountain Harvest
The green buying position in a coffee company is often romanticized and carries a certain air of mystique. While this position may include travel and adventure, the reality is that the green buyer is the one most likely to run a coffee business into the ground. According to the RoasterTools’ Business of Roasting Report (roastertools.com/business-of-roasting-survey), green coffee accounts for 54 percent of the total cost of goods sold for a roaster, more than triple the second largest expense (overhead, at 16 percent). Coffee is a famously poor investment, one that will only ever lower in value the longer it’s held and is subject to a volatile commodities market.
Many green buying positions grow organically out of a small roasting team and don’t always get the benefit of a detailed job description or list of responsibilities. Companies feel the pressure to solve problems quickly and efficiently, and rarely realize that their problems are not unique. In fact, most roasters and green buyers run into the same series of problems and, as a result, there are myriad innovative solutions. But these solutions aren’t easily available, so it’s difficult to find training materials or “best practices” for green buyer or director of coffee positions. Most people in these positions forge their own way, building their job description from responsibilities that need fulfilling and finding their own solutions to problems that are likely plaguing all of their colleagues.
GREEN BUYERS ARE PRIMARILY RESPONSIBLE FOR:
Menu design
Inventory management
Fostering long-term business relationships
Finding and sharing information about the green coffee on their menu
The coffee industry deserves access to information on best practices, standard operating procedures, and tips and tricks to make a business more successful. To guide this conversation, we’ve enlisted four seasoned coffee professionals from both sides of the supply chain. Through the lens of their experience, we’ll explore the main responsibilities and challenges facing a green buyer and offer some pro tips on how best to approach them. Since this series is focused on interdepartmental communication, there will be a focus on understanding what green buyers need to do their jobs well, and the information they need to communicate to other stakeholders to ensure that they are able to do the same.
Menu Design
Green coffee is the foundation of every roasting business. Understanding how the raw material impacts the end product is essential. Even if the business has been operating for years, it’s never too late to explore and redefine the coffee menu with a critical eye.
As business owners, we strive to clearly communicate our company ethos and values in many ways, including through our green coffee. Design a menu that works for your customers and represents your brand. What is the mission that drives your company? How does it get translated into your buying practices? This could mean only buying coffees of a certain quality or a certain origin. It could be that personal relationships are what propels your buying strategy, or it could be that price is the determining factor in your purchasing decisions. Whatever it is that guides your company’s ethos should be the driving force behind green coffee buying.
When done well, and in conjunction with thoughtful roasting and stringent quality control (QC)—which we will cover in future articles in this series—using your company’s mission and values as the driving force behind all business decisions can build a coffee program that seamlessly supports the branding, marketing, communication and sales efforts that make your company successful.
When the company ethos is crystal clear to all the decision makers and used as a framework for all buying decisions, customers can feel it. For Kyle Ramage, one of the founders of Black & White Coffee Roasters in North Carolina, authenticity and integrity drive every area of his business: The coffee “is an authentic expression and real version of who we are,” Ramage says, “and people buy our product because they care about us and want us to succeed. It’s humbling for sure, that people care about how Black & White makes them feel, maybe even more than the quality or the story or cultivars or processing or whatever else.”
PRO TIP: The more clearly you understand your menu, the easier it will be to supply it with great coffees.
What is your brand identity?
Who are your customers?
What coffees do YOU want to feature?
What coffees do you need to have on the menu? (Think espresso, cold brew, producer relationships, customer needs.)
Communication and Supply Chain Management
Buying coffee involves detailed logistics and a lot of communication with producers, exporters, importers, and warehouse and logistics partners. Green buyers must manage these relationships—which often turn into real friendships—while carefully tracking the concrete details like price, ship dates, arrivals, releases and contract specifications, and communicating these details to the right people.
Green buyers must have good intuition, sound business skills, and be skilled and open communicators. In the best cases, communication with exporting and producing partners can span the entire year, with green buyers providing feedback on how the coffee is selling, how it’s holding up as it ages, and what customers respond to from the marketing materials provided.
Katie Carguilo, buying manager at Counter Culture Coffee. Photo courtesy of Katie Carguilo
Some supply chains require more time and energy than others, and some coffees (or relationships) are worth that extra effort. For Katie Carguilo, a buying manager at Counter Culture Coffee, there is some room for “high-touch” supplier relationships—ones that require more communication, management, time and, likely, stress—but as a buyer for a large company, she needs some supply chains to run themselves. “In high-impact, high-touch supply chains, hopefully there’s high quality, too,” she says. “For a company our size, we do need some [relationships] where we can just get containers of coffee and not stay up at night worrying about quality or whether they’re going to make it out of the country.”
Still, complex supply chains did not dissuade any of the buyers we spoke with from purchasing exceptional coffee. Matt Ferraro, director of roasting and operations at Black & White, says the company values working with “people who are willing to make it work, even when it’s challenging.” Carguilo, who’s helped create some incredible systems for green buying at Counter Culture, says, “I love working with people that are organized. That’s what I strive to be. We’re focused on continuous mutual improvement.”
This desire for values alignment is mirrored on the opposite side of the supply chain. For Kenneth Barigye, founder and managing director of Mountain Harvest Coffee in Uganda, new customer relationships usually start with conversations about Mountain Harvest’s mission-driven work rather than a focus on samples or prices. “They need to connect with me before they ever see the coffee,” he says. “A good customer starts by asking questions around the business model. They want to understand the impact the coffee has on the environment and the communities. They want to understand the cost of production.”
Kenneth Barigye, founder and managing director of Mountain Harvest Coffee. Photo courtesy of Mountain Harvest
“For me, sustainability starts with financial viability,” Barigye continues. “Coffee is a value chain. It’s called a chain, and each part of the chain is very important. If one part is not sustainable—if a roaster is losing money, if a coffee shop owner is losing money, a transporter, a producer, an exporter, if one of them is losing money—the entire chain is at stake. So for the sustainability of all of us, we need to make sure that each part of the chain is making money.”
Common Frustrations for Suppliers
Understanding market contexts
Understanding different market contexts is a critical skill for a successful green buyer. Along with Barigye in Uganda, we spoke with Rafaela Iturralde, who works for a boutique exporter in Ecuador and has been a supply chain manager for more than 10 years. Both work in unique markets: Ecuador is an origin that produces both arabica and robusta, but which is also one of the largest exporters of soluble (instant) coffee in the world. Uganda is the birthplace of robusta, with arabica making up just 20 percent of total production, according to World Coffee Research. Both suppliers expressed profound frustration with buyers’ continued reliance on the commodities market. Rather than focusing on C market differentials, Barigye says, buyers should ask if the coffee meets their quality needs and fits into their business model. “The focus should be on our production cost and justification for our prices,” he adds. “The focus should be on the quality of the coffee.”
Mountain Harvest’s green coffee prices are close to 100 times the price of cheap robusta in Uganda. Barigye preempts sticker shock by providing detailed information about the cost of production, right down to the profit margin for each of the approximately 1,750 producers he works with. He feels that C market prices simply do not work in Uganda, even as a point of reference, “New York [Intercontinental Exchange] is set by the coffees available, or perceived to be available, in Brazil, in Colombia, in Vietnam,” he says. “The cost of production in Uganda does not change whether there is a lot of coffee or less coffee in Brazil. We still pay the same labor cost. Transportation costs are the same.” Putting it bluntly, he adds, “Mountain Harvest and smallholder farmers can only run sustainable businesses if they are getting a price higher than their production cost. So, an ideal buyer will therefore not focus on the New York commodity price but the cost of production in the country of origin.”
Rafaela Iturralde, supply chain manager. Photo courtesy of Rafaela Iturralde
A responsible green buyer works with their finance and sales departments to understand their buying power and should come to the table with a clear idea of how much they can spend on each lot. Communicating price limits to green coffee purveyors as early as possible can help mitigate misunderstandings down the line, and having open, honest communications about quality and other preferences can also aid in negotiations. But expectations must be realistic and informed. Iturralde often faces customers with unreasonable expectations. “I’ll say, ‘This coffee is $10 per pound. It has a cup score of 88 or 89,’ and they respond, ‘I will offer you $6 per pound. I scored it an 84.’ I’m thrown off,” she says. “That’s totally illogical. There’s no way to move forward.”
Price negotiations and volume discounts have their place in this process, but offering a price that’s 40 percent below the original offer is insulting, and comparing prices in Ecuador to Brazil, for example, will not lead to productive conversations, nor to long-term relationships.
It’s incredibly frustrating for both Barigye and Iturralde to see their products compared to coffee origins that operate in completely different markets. “Even when Mountain Harvest produces high-quality coffee, it takes me much more effort to convince the buyer that the coffee I am producing has its own unique production cost and therefore should be priced based on the coffee itself, without comparing the price that maybe Ethiopia is getting now,” says Barigye.
PRO TIP: Barigye urges buyers to approach each relationship with an open mind, saying, “This is not the company that made you happy last year or disappointed you last year. Therefore, they should approach us as Mountain Harvest, or any other company for that matter, to assess us objectively. They should not bring past biases while approaching our coffee.”
How to be a better buyer: long-term contracts and prompt response times
Both Iturralde and Barigye lament the unwillingness of roasters to contract for multiple years. When asked about her ideal customer, Iturralde says, “I do not want a customer who buys my coffee just once. I want one who buys every year, planning out and communicating their purchasing needs in advance.”
Barigye explains the uneven and unfair risk that exporters face in clear economic terms, saying that it raises the cost of doing business. “Specialty buyers rarely commit for multiple-year contracts, so every year we have to buy coffee in speculation,” he says. “There is a high risk that buyers will not buy it, but I’ve already bought it ... That makes my business more expensive, which makes coffee more expensive. If we had a relationship where we could commit to multiple years, then it would reduce the cost of doing business.”
Another frustration beleaguering suppliers is long response times on samples. Iturralde says it’s not unusual for customers to take months to evaluate samples, and she rarely receives any feedback on her coffees beyond “Yes, we’ll buy it” or “No, we won’t.”
This is disheartening for importers who have already spent time and money preparing and shipping coffee samples, and who will have to reserve coffee on the off chance that a customer decides to make the purchase. The frustration that comes from prolonging this stage of the buying process leaves suppliers feeling powerless. “We feel here at origin a kind of frustration that there’s this barrier between us, that I can’t just say, ‘Hey! Did you cup or not?’ to my potential customers,” says Iturralde. “I mean, we don’t want to step on your toes, but things move fast here, and you’re not our only client.”
Rafaela Iturralde cupping coffee in Ecuador.. Photo courtesy of Rafaela Iturralde
When requesting samples, be as clear and precise as possible. Sharing this information with suppliers makes it easier for them to provide samples that meet your needs. Carguilo says this conversation usually starts by letting suppliers know that Counter Culture is only interested in reviewing in-season arabica coffee that’s been dried to 11 percent moisture content, as these are the threshold requirements for the company’s buying practices. “We are not going to positively cup your last season coffee, so don’t waste the DHL money to sample us,” she says.
Communication needs to be an ongoing activity, so there’s no need to limit conversation with producers and exporters to peak buying times. Even if the relationship is strictly professional, updates throughout the year can be invaluable for both parties. For the buyer, getting updates on how flowering and weather patterns change over the season can give an idea of how the new harvest might look. But more than asking for information, buyers should be proactive about sharing feedback with suppliers. This kind of information sharing is invaluable for exporters and producers. “How did you promote [the coffee]?” Iturralde asks. “Did you use the pictures we sent, and were they useful? Were there public cuppings, and if so, how did people respond? I want to know how to keep supporting your marketing efforts so that I can keep selling Ecuadorian coffee.”
PRO TIPS:
Set aside one day each week to process samples. (No samples to process? Review your current inventory or host a continuing education cupping for your staff.)
Save sample information (including cupping notes, physical evaluation, etc.) to reference when the coffee lands, or when contracts are renewed the following year.
Build some flexibility into your green menu by creating a roasted coffee menu that allows for dynamic changes.
At Counter Culture, Carguilo has begun sending the promotional materials, photos and write-ups about new coffees directly to the suppliers to review and correct before publishing. “We ask them to give us feedback on it and let us know if there’s anything about the story that they’d want to change,” she says. She makes sure to get permissions from photographers where applicable and ensures that people featured in those photos consent to having their photos taken and used for promotional material.
Another way to foster better communication with suppliers is by traveling directly to them. So-called “origin trips” can be a little fraught, we’ve learned—most business can be done over WhatsApp or email, and many origin visits feature more ecotourism and voyeurism than any real business agreements or transactions. Still, there’s something truly valuable about the in-person conversations these trips allow. They offer an opportunity to deepen relationships and solidify future buying plans, and they can be incredibly inspiring. For Iturralde, origin visits are one of the signs of a great customer. “Firstly, it is incredibly inspiring for the producer to see that someone from this important roasting company came to visit them on their farm in the middle of the forest,” she says. “It makes them really excited to stay in specialty coffee. It makes them feel important. They feel part of the global industry.”
Inventory Management and Interdepartmental Communications
Sound green buying practices can make or break a coffee business, but most green buyers have to learn on the job. “I had absolutely no idea what I was doing,” says Ramage of Black & White, recalling his earliest days buying coffee. “I was ignorance on fire.” His best attempts to make good buying decisions relied on looking toward other green buyers and roasteries that seemed to have successful businesses.
Of course, Ramage’s confidence in his buying practices improved dramatically over time. With a firm commitment to high quality and building long-term relationships, Black & White now has one of the most interesting and rapidly changing menus in the United States, releasing three or four new coffees each week even as it scales its purchasing volume. As the company grew, it became clear its buying practices had to change. Black & White is currently building systems and forecasting that moves beyond Ramage’s intuition toward making strategic, data-based decisions.
On the other side of the spectrum is the methodical planning that takes place at Counter Culture. There, the coffee department takes cues from the sales department, which is responsible for reporting the company’s anticipated growth each year so that coffee buyers can book out 95 percent of that projection with forward contracts. Twice a year, the green buying department forecasts annual purchases—Southern Hemisphere coffees get planned in March or April, and Northern Hemisphere coffees are decided in October/November.
(LEFT) On the road in Uganda. Photo courtesy of Mountain Harvest (MIDDLE) Rafaela Iturralde and others in Ecuador. Photo courtesy of Rafaela Iturralde (RIGHT) Uganda’s landscape and climate create unique challenges that affect the cost of production. Photo courtesy of Mountain Harvest
Both of these buying strategies maintain flexibility. Projections are never going to be 100 percent accurate, and whether the team is planning purchases for the next year or the next month, the reality of inventory management will likely differ from projections.
“You can have a plan, but you have to be ready to break from that plan. As much structure as we put behind this, something will happen—the coffee fades too early or doesn’t show up,” says Ramage. Black & White relies on agility; it has a few subscription models that can easily accept menu changes, and some interesting blend designs that change regularly. The coffees Ramage and his team buy push the limits of funk and flavor, and customers know what to expect from new releases. Ferraro and Ramage aren’t afraid to make unique and delicious blends or feature a different coffee than anticipated for the month’s subscriptions.
For Counter Culture, flexibility comes from the 5 percent that’s not booked. If buyers have underestimated projections, they can easily add another lot to the inventory without risking going too long. If they overshoot their projections, they have a lower risk of drowning in coffee.
PRO TIPS: Here are some of the coffee quality and contract terms the green buyer should be proactively sharing internally across departments:
Producer relationship
Origin and microregion
Coffee specs: elevation, density, moisture content, water activity
Offer, preshipment and arrival sample cupping notes, with details
Intended role on the menu
Total volume booked
Arrival and release terms
Green buyer as gatekeeper
Like it or not, green buyers are privy to a lot of information to which colleagues in the rest of the company don’t have access. Depending on team structure—which could include roasters, QC, sales and marketing, retail and cafes—the green buyer might operate independently, but their decisions impact every aspect of the company and product. Not only is there significant financial risk in these buying decisions but, according to Carguilo, “As a coffee buyer, you’re kind of a personal shopper for your clients,” selecting products that represent the brand and the client’s needs.
Given the interdependence between coffee buying and every aspect of a coffee business, there is no excuse for green buyers who do not share their decisions or their workload with the rest of their team. In most cases, this kind of secretiveness is nothing more than an attempt to make up for lack of strategy and planning. Green buying is too critical to the success and health of most coffee businesses for it to happen in the shadows, or in the chaotic mind of a single individual.
Like all company operations, communication around green coffee purchasing strategies, inventory, and cycling coffees in and out of the roastery should be systematized. These days, there are plenty of programs for building successful businesses that prioritize clear communication over pretty much everything else. Organizations who want to prioritize the health of the business and its employees can implement management systems like the Great Game of Business, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, or myriad other tools and books designed to help businesses thrive.
The green buyer works with teams both within and outside their organization, and managing relationships on both sides of the supply chain is an important part of their role. Overseeing contracts, logistics and deliveries is a critical part of the green buyer’s role, but so is updating the rest of the team about how those relationships and contracts are developing. Carguilo is realistic about how promises of “open communication” can fall flat. “We have an ethos at Counter Culture to be transparent,” she says. “We don’t have trade secrets. If anybody has a question about the coffee, they can come to [Google Chat] or to our office and ask, but we realize that that’s a very reactive way to be transparent, and we’re always looking for ways to be proactive.”
Carguilo goes on to say that this constant effort toward transparency and open communication within the company is “not just about our coffee and where it comes from, but really a way to show Counter Culture’s values in action.”
Baristas, roasters, QC professionals, salespeople—they are all hungry for information about the coffee on their menus, the people who produced and exported it, and the relationships that exist around the product. Well-informed, enthusiastic staff members will be more successful in promoting your company’s products, their curiosity and professionalism influencing interested customers. Bring employees into the conversation by updating them regularly about coffees landing in the warehouse soon, sharing stories from origin trips, talking about longstanding producer relationships and discussing market contexts. This can be done in Slack, by email, at staff meetings, or however your company typically shares internal communications.
Be sure to make the information you share accessible to your employees. Share the release packet with your entire staff whenever a new coffee hits the menu. Ask your QC and training teams to host tastings and calibrations with each department. Make it easy to find information by providing it in a variety of formats—in physical binders, via QR codes, in a newsletter and at staff meetings, for example.
Though green buyers can often fall into silos of independent or even isolated work, the reality is that they are a nexus of communication and relationships. They are responsible to people at both ends of the supply chain, and there’s always room to improve systems and planning and to streamline communication. Buyers have a unique opportunity to set the tone for nearly every aspect of the business, from ethics to product development to sales, marketing and education. By being thoughtful, strategic and proactive, a green buyer can create relationships that embody the mission of their business by speaking openly and often about what that mission is.
For Barigye, this speaks to something universal. “In Africa, we have a philosophy of Ubuntu, which is about the role of the society in the success of the individual,” he says. “It says that I am because we are. Therefore, it is important that buyers pay attention to the business viability of every actor in the value chain. You cannot focus on yourself as a coffee shop owner or a roaster or an importer alone. If you don’t look at the entire team and support each other to be viable businesses, then even you are at a risk.”
When we plan strategically, work together and communicate openly, we can work toward a better, more equitable supply chain. Follow this series to learn about best practices for all critical departments in a coffee company. In future installments we will be covering roastery operations, QC, education, finance and sales.
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Sandra Loofbourow is the founder of Loupe Coffee Consulting and specializes in green coffee quality, education and market linkages. A certified Q Instructor, she brings leadership experience in building sustainable supply chains and creating strategic partnerships in the coffee industry.
Rachel Apple has been in specialty coffee for 19 years. Her resume includes roles in quality control for George Howell, global supply chain manager for Cometeer, and head judge and sensory education training instructor at Cup of Excellence. Apple is also a U.S. Barista Championship head judge, sensory lead and committee member.
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