Although it took a dozen years or more, JA Folger, in a very disciplined and deliberate manner, paid all his creditors after bankruptcy. Although he did not bear sole responsibility for the debt, he assumed sole responsibility when he took control of the company and was so persistent in addressing his debts, according to Pendergrast, one of his creditors wrote on a receipt, “This payment being unexpected, I hereby gratefully acknowledge the honorable transaction of a noble merchant.” It is said that JA once wrote in a letter to his son, "money-making was always secondary to a good reputation."
Remain focused on sales, be disciplined with the numbers, remain committed to quality, and don’t compromise your integrity. Any coffee roaster, whether in their first year or fifth decade, can learn from Folgers coffee history and will be well served by following in the footsteps of a young James Athearn Folger.
The transition to fully-washed processing at this fully-equipped centralized mill, combined with quality-focused agronomic training for farmers, has increased the quality of Uganda coffee throughout the region dramatically, with cupping scores improving four to 14 points. There has also been a significant effort to attain certifications and most farmers hold multiple marks, including RFA, UTZ, and Organic. The Nebbi Mill is also home to a quality lab and full-time quality controller. The project was developed and is overseen by Kawacom, Uganda Unlimited, and was created with an emphasis on sustainability, which includes more than certifications.
Yemen coffees prepared for export are known for offering a wide and completely unique variety of complex flavor profiles, body, and acidity, making it one of the world’s rarest coffees, but not because it’s difficult to obtain.
My advice on how to keep your finger on the pulse? Do your research on what “influencer” accounts inside and outside of the coffee world your target customer follows, and follow them too. Pay attention to the unique language millennials are using – much of which, you’ll find, is adopted within days from newly released music lyrics and viral meme content. Take advantage of the opportunity to play into millennials’ anxieties, humor and nostalgia and in turn open the door for them to spark their own discussions. Lucky for you, social media has become the generation’s chosen form of escapism. And the need to share relatable content? It’s nothing short of compulsive.
...creating a blend is ultimately about the flavor profile and not the components. While you would never (one hopes) sell a Colombian coffee as a coffee from Costa Rica, for example, your obligation when blending coffee is different. Your obligation is consistency. If one of your blend components becomes unavailable, your job is to find a replacement that can deliver the same contribution to your blend, resulting in the same taste experience. It doesn’t matter if it’s a different guitarist, as long they can play.
In the early part of the eighteenth century, coffee was a luxury, relatively scarce and imported from far away and mysterious places. De Clieu had a plantation in the northwest region of Martinique, one of the Caribbean islands that rain down on South America from Puerto Rico. He knew the climate, where cocoa was thriving at the time, was right for coffee propagation, and he imagined growing coffee would make him a wealthy man.
By hook or by crook, by boat or by monk, the coffee shrub was emancipated from what is now Yemen in the mid-seventeenth century, but it did not arrive in the new world for another 60 years or so, and when it did, it came from Java by way of Amsterdam and France. Although coffee was grown in India and Sri Lanka over those six decades, the Dutch, growing coffee in Java, were the first to grow enough coffee for export and challenge Yemen and her famed port at Mocha. So, for all practical purposes, the old Mocha Java blend wasn’t a choice so much as, well, the only coffees available to blend for many years.
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