What is the Role of Coffee Roasters in the Industry’s Response to the Price Crisis?
By SONJA GRANT
Last month, I had the pleasure of participating on a panel about the coffee price crisis as a representative of the Coffee Roasters Guild. The panel was moderated by the CEO of the Specialty Coffee Association, Yannis Apostolopoulos, and included Barista Guild Chair Stuart Ritson and Coffee Technicians Guild Chair Hylan Joseph. If you missed the webinar, I encourage you to watch the recording here on our blog.
The discussion centered on the following question: What is the role of the guilds in the industry’s response to the coffee price crisis?
The role of the guilds in the price crisis, itself a complex issue, is such a broad topic but still so relevant to our daily business and to the roasting community. As a coffee roaster myself, it goes without saying that we in the coffee roasting business would like to pay higher prices to farmers for their coffee. Every member of the specialty coffee value chain deserves to make a decent living from their hard work. Coffee production is a business at the end of the day.
Unfortunately, farmers struggle, roasters struggle, and coffee shops struggle. Sometimes, it appears like the only happy members of the value chain are the shipping companies, for they are not shipping coffee, they are shipping cargo, so for them it is all about size and weight.
We as a community of roasters are buying coffee, and behind coffee is trust and relationships between the farmer, broker, roaster and the consumer. It’s a business with benefits, if one can say that.
I personally have different hats to wear, being a barista, roaster and business owner in an island far away from coffee growing countries. To me, it all comes down to making a living doing what I love, what inspires me, and for which I have a passion.
Farmers are no different. They also seek to make a living doing what inspires them and seek to achieve their goals through their business. But the majority of coffee farmers are in a situation in which they lack options for expanding their farming operations to increase volume or quality.
Claudia Albir, Honduran coffee farmer and good friend of mine, once said to me, “No farmer wants to leave their mountain or farm.”
This sentence remains indelible in my brain and I think about that conversation with Claudia often. It seems obvious that farmers should have the option to stay in their farms, producing great coffee and securing a future for their families. But I can see that there is a gap in our value chain with regards to trust in relationships, communications, and the respect for the time and hard work that goes into coffee production. Consumers in many communities may not respect the time and hard work that goes behind the cup of coffee which is why I believe it is up to us to do our best to be more transparent about pricing.
During the panel, Yannis asked us what aspect of the price crisis has impacted our guild members and what worries us the most.
As roasters reading this will know, the worries or issues vary depending on the size of a roasting operation and on whether one is speaking of a new company or a well-established one.
The biggest issue for new roasteries is that of cash flow with which to start operating. Roasters who are just starting their business tend to buy green coffee through brokers who allow longer repayment periods. Brokers pay the farmer upfront for the coffee but delay the payment of the pallets so that the new roastery gets the coffee shipped and some weeks until they have to pay the broker. This roaster-broker relationship is all about trust and will help the new roastery get up and running. However, small roasters are in competition with big roasting companies who can afford to buy more volume and push prices down. This means that wholesale consumers, who are also running their businesses on a tight budget, will find it easy to choose a cheaper coffee from a big roasting company rather than buy from the smaller roaster.
This is how the market works. How can we change it? Those of us with small microroasters with retail operations can start by taking the opportunity to engage in dialogue with our customers, share stories from farmers, and explain the price structure behind the coffee. Many of you reading this are already doing just that. Let’s keep that up.
I believe the biggest worry for coffee roasters when it comes to the future of coffee prices is that it is becoming increasingly harder for microroasters to access microlots from small producers. We also worry about farmers’ ability to invest in their farm infrastructure and the domino effect this can have on the environment and the quality of relationships across the value chain.
I am personally concerned about the fact that coffee is still widely seen as a commodity, taken for granted, as exemplified by the fact that coffee is freely available in banks, offices, and other places where it is offered little respect. The average coffee drinker does not think about coffee as a farm product that requires years of expensive, time consuming work from farmers and their families. It can be complicated to explain to consumers that farming is a real business. What can we expect of consumers if, after all, it’s the coffee industry that sells a romanticized version of their livelihood?
In his final question to the panel on the price crisis, Yannis asked, “Sometimes a crisis is a chance for groups to come together. How might the Guilds lead the way in collaborating across the value chain?”
I do believe that we can do better and more than we are doing now. We do not have all the answers, but we should be doing more to help change attitudes about the coffee supply chain. We should continue being more transparent about prices with each other and towards consumers so that they understand the price structures behind their cup of coffee.
We are a strong global community with common goals. From the standpoint of the Guilds, I do believe that our outreach and events— including CRG Retreat, Camp, and Sensory Forum and Summit— are excellent platforms to have these discussions and I look forward to continuing to seek solutions with the global community of coffee roasters.
We on the Coffee Roasters Guild want to hear from you. Visit the Coffee Roasters Guild Facebook Forum and share your thoughts about the coffee price crisis, how it’s affecting your business, and what you think our role is in finding solutions.
