Reflections from a Video with Doug Cole from Because Coffee

Recently, I got the opportunity to sit down and have about a long conversation with Doug Cole, co-owner of Because Coffee (and their second entity Myth and Legend). Firs of all, I just want to give a big shout out to Doug for taking time out of his busy schedule to sit down with me and talk coffee. Our topic of conversation was roasting, and that video will be up soon on my YouTube page, so be on the lookout for that. But, today I wanted to discuss something else that I was thinking about as a result of this opportunity. Building community through local coffee collaborations.

During my conversation with Doug, we talked about many things as it pertains to specialty coffee and roasting, but a major emphasis that kept coming back up no matter the exact topic of conversation was community and the importance of the individual person who grows and/or harvests it. Specialty coffee places a major focus on the individuals who grow the coffee, and in turn, (it's hoped) that those individuals enjoy growing, cultivating, and harvesting coffee more and that they take pride in what they do. Since specialty coffee is focused on how good coffee can taste, it only makes sense to incentivize taking pride in the processes that lead to better tasting coffee.

As we spoke, it was clear that the more cafes can do to educate consumers (Specifically, our guests that we serve on a regular basis.) the better we can all help support each other, and particularly, the more we can give back to the farmers who work so hard to provide us with our daily fix of caffeine and sweet, complex, juicy coffee that we all love so much.

It's my belief that frequent collaboration with farmers, other cafes, coffee business owners, roasters, pretty much anyone in the coffee industry will help us all achieve a healthier coffee supply chain in terms of conditions and pay for workers all the way through to the final cup of coffee that the consumer has. One way that this is already being done is via podcasts like the Valor Coffee Podcast, Cat and Cloud Podcast, but also YouTube channels. Building community through collaboration has to be the future of coffee if we want to build a sustainable coffee supply chain so as to have specialty-grade great tasting coffee for many years to come.