The Boss Barista takeover is brought to you by Chobani . A few weeks ago, I put a call out to coffee folks, fans, and drinkers across the globe to pitch ideas about the podcast they’ve been dreaming of making—and today we’re turning the mic over to the third in our series of guest creators. Sebastián Diácono is a country manager for Latorre & Dutch, an international coffee-trading and -exporting company. He’s based in Colombia, and his job is to act as a liaison between people who want to bu...
May 11, 2021•52 min•Season 6Ep. 11
The Boss Barista takeover is brought to you by Chobani . A few weeks ago, I put a call out to coffee folks, fans, and drinkers across the globe to pitch ideas about the podcast they’ve been dreaming of making—and today we’re turning the mic over to the third in our series of guest creators. Today’s episode comes from Linn Tsang, who is kicking off her podcast called Pressure Profiles. Pressure Profiles is a Berlin-based interview-style show where Linn chats with baristas and other hospitality pr...
May 04, 2021•53 min•Season 6Ep. 10
The Boss Barista takeover is brought to you by Chobani . A few weeks ago, I put a call out to coffee folks, fans, and drinkers across the globe to pitch ideas about the podcast they’ve been dreaming of making—and today we’re turning the mic over to the first in our series of guest creators. Today we’re airing the first episode of the Updose Podcast , a show that chronicles American coffee in the 20th and 21st centuries. This project is near and dear to my heart because there are so many strange,...
Apr 27, 2021•33 min•Season 6Ep. 9
We’re taking a quick break from our Boss Barista takeover this week—folks are busy working on their projects, and will have lots to share with you soon—to revisit an episode from April 2020. Sahra Nguyen is the founder of Nguyen Coffee Supply , a coffee brand based in New York that’s dedicated to promoting specialty Vietnamese coffee. In this episode, we talk about why Vietnam, which is the world’s second-largest producer of coffee beans, goes largely ignored in the specialty coffee industry. Th...
Apr 21, 2021•53 min•Season 6Ep. 8
The Boss Barista takeover is brought to you by Chobani . A few weeks ago, I put a call out to coffee folks, fans, and drinkers across the globe to pitch ideas about the podcast they’ve been dreaming of making—and today we’re turning the mic over to the first in our series of guest creators. Today’s episode spotlights Cafetera Intelectual , hosted by Doris Garrido and Sandra Loofbourow. Their show explores the connection between coffee-producing and coffee-consuming countries and is bilingual, sh...
Apr 13, 2021•40 min•Season 6Ep. 7
When a refugee—someone who has fled war, violence, conflict or persecution and has crossed an international border to find safety in another country—comes to the United States, they’re typically given very little help when resettling their lives. 1951 Coffee Company hopes to change that, using the coffee industry as a tool for empowerment and self-determination. In this episode, I talk to Doug Hewitt, co-founder of 1951 Coffee Company, which is based in Berkeley, California. 1951 created a baris...
Apr 06, 2021•43 min•Season 6Ep. 6
A few weeks ago, the folks at Amor Perfecto , a coffee roaster based in Bogotá, Colombia, reached out to me. They offered to send some coffees from a new project they were launching: a collaboration with the Frida Kahlo Corporation , which highlights women producers and innovators within the country’s specialty coffee scene. After I tried the two coffees they sent, they asked if I’d be interested in talking to the women who had grown them. One coffee was from the Tolima region in southern Colomb...
Mar 30, 2021•42 min•Season 6Ep. 5
In these interviews, I connect with people in different ways. Sometimes it’s immediate, sometimes it’s helped by a previous encounter or even a longtime friendship, and sometimes it never comes. I had never met Jiyoon Han before I asked her to be on the show, but her clarity and deep intentionality clicked for me instantly. Jiyoon is the co-owner of Bean & Bean Coffee in New York City. Her parents opened Bean & Bean’s first location in 2008, a few years after immigrating to the United St...
Mar 09, 2021•48 min•Season 6Ep. 4
This episode is brought to you by The Barista League . Register for High Density today! Tax season is almost upon us, and if you’re like many service workers, you’ve probably been juggling a number of different jobs and gigs. Feel your blood pressure rising already? Take a breath: To help soften this always-stressful time of year, we’re re-airing an episode with Tiani Wright of Coffee and Tax. Listen along, and she’ll help you figure out how to file correctly—and how to stay on top of your money...
Mar 02, 2021•48 min•Season 6Ep. 3
To walk into Everybody’s Busy is to walk into a precisely curated space—like a gallery, but without pretension. The coffee, supplied by Onyx Coffee Lab , is spot-on; the menu design changes monthly and reflects a deep love of music; the speakers are always playing something fun, selected by the shop’s owner, Melissa Stinson. This is the second time I’ve sat down and recorded with Melissa, and we’re revisiting a few of the themes we covered in the first episode , including our local coffee scene—...
Feb 24, 2021•48 min•Season 6Ep. 2
This episode is brought to you by The Barista League . Register for High Density today! “It’s almost five o’clock, and Darlene and I just realized we haven’t even eaten today. It’s been such a wonderful day, such a busy day, but we’ve just been constantly in motion that we didn’t even stop to eat.” The person you just heard was Shanelle County, co-founder of Standard Pour, a new coffee shop in Valley Stream, Long Island. Shanelle reached out to me just a few weeks before the soft opening of her ...
Feb 16, 2021•48 min•Season 6Ep. 1
Every year, the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) hosts a conference called Sensory Summit , where coffee folks come together and explore wild ideas about taste. I went one year, back when I was the online editor for Barista Magazine , and tasted some of the most bizarre, unexpected, and wonderful things I’ve ever had. For this year’s conference, the SCA announced that it would give out a certain number of scholarships so a handful of people could attend the virtual event for free. And instead ...
Feb 09, 2021•55 min•Season 5Ep. 50
Hi, friends. A quick note before we get started: This is a re-release of an episode I did in November 2019, and features David Hu, former owner of The Peccary, a coffee shop in New Jersey. I wanted to re-release this episode for two reasons. One: David is an incredible resource, and I regularly turn to social media for his insights (you can follow him @the.david.hu ). Second: I’m preparing a presentation on how to advocate for yourself at work as part of a coffee conference called High Density ,...
Jan 26, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Season 5Ep. 49
Let’s say you’re trying to get good at playing the guitar. Maybe you’re taking a class, or you have a tutor. How do you get improve? You practice—and a lot of that practice involves going home, sitting alone with your instrument, and taking time to work through every new skill or small snag: a couple of chords, finger placements, some tricky pieces of music. Now imagine you don’t have a guitar at home. When would you practice? Would you get as good if you were only able to play at school, or wit...
Jan 19, 2021•46 min•Season 5Ep. 48
In the last three years, there have been a number of unionizing efforts within the coffee industry. Baristas across the United States have come together to organize and demand accountability from their leaders. They’ve expressed the need to have a voice in decisions such as hiring and firing calls, wage increases, and workplace conditions. We’ve covered a number of those efforts on previous episodes of Boss Barista. From the Gimme! Coffee Union in New York to the Slow Bloom Coffee Cooperative (f...
Jan 12, 2021•48 min•Season 5Ep. 47
This episode is full of laughter and joy, and shared moments of growth and reflection. On The Go Jo is a coffee company based in Chicago, Illinois. Founded by three friends—Crystal Graham, Toni Dale, and Quiana DeBerry—the business started out as a mobile coffee cart and has since expanded to a bustling e-commerce site whose reach extends well beyond Chicago city limits. In this episode, I chat with Crystal and Toni, and we talk about how On The Go Jo came to be. The two met in college, and thei...
Jan 05, 2021•51 min•Season 5Ep. 46
What makes a great coffee? When we talk about food, drinks, and other agricultural products, our metric of goodness is typically based on visceral experience. We can taste it, smell it, and otherwise perceive markers of quality through our five senses. In coffee, quality is also equated with the experimental and the rare—a coffee processed in a new way, or a highly-sought-after varietal, is imbued with value. But what if we were to shift our understanding of goodness, and what makes it? What if,...
Dec 30, 2020•51 min•Season 5Ep. 45
Ask anyone here: If you come to Chicago, you have to go to Loba Pastry + Coffee . For the coffee, but also for the food: Loba goes well beyond the typical muffin or croissant options that you would expect to find at most coffee shops. Instead, it boasts a pastry menu that is both highly creative and technically ambitious. Valeria Taylor is the owner and baker behind Loba. “Loba” is Spanish for “female wolf,” and Valeria named the shop after a particular wolf, the ’06 Female. Scientists studied t...
Dec 15, 2020•47 min•Season 5Ep. 44
Life is especially hard right now. We’re in the ninth month of a global pandemic, the days are getting shorter and colder and darker, and the dread of the current moment can sometimes feel paralyzing. Against that backdrop, how do you take a step forward in any direction—and how do you know if that step is right? The short answer is that, even though you can’t know the results before you start moving, taking a step in any direction is often enough to shake something loose. Carlos Sims Jr. believ...
Dec 01, 2020•45 min•Season 5Ep. 42
It’s hard not to picture it, once you hear the name: little waves lapping on the sand. Water rushing in between your toes. The warmth of the sun on your shoulders. An abiding feeling of calm. Areli Barrera de Grodski came up with the name Little Waves in a text message. She’s the co-owner and founder of the roastery and its accompanying retail locations, Cocoa Cinnamon, in Durham, North Carolina. She’s admittedly shy, someone who describes herself as quiet and reserved, but she relishes moments ...
Nov 18, 2020•54 min•Season 5Ep. 41
‘Sonder’ is one of those words you don’t hear often. It’s a noun, and it means, “The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries, and inherited craziness.” And it feels sort of right that this word would be used to describe the experience of going to a coffee shop. Coffee shops are universal meeting places, places you can sit, watch people come in and out, meet new friends, and contemplate ...
Oct 25, 2020•49 min•Season 5Ep. 40
Hi friends, this is part two of a conversation with Rachel Northrop, freelance writer and PhD student about coffee markets. If you haven’t listened to part one, I highly suggest you do since a lot of this won’t make sense. But just a quick recap—in part one, we talked about how coffee is traded, how contracts for trading coffee work, and what a coffee futures market looks like. Most of what we talked about was foundational, explaining the history of commodity markets and their original intent. I...
Oct 16, 2020•49 min•Season 5Ep. 39
I’ve been in the coffee industry for almost ten years. For most of that time, very pompously, I had this idea that I had seen it all—I’ve been a barista, I’ve been a manager, I’ve trained people how to make coffee, I’ve written about coffee. But there’s a part of the industry that I really, really don’t know much about— how coffee is bought and sold. Coffee is in crisis. It’s been in crisis for years—the commodity market price of coffee hovers around a dollar per pound, which is significantly un...
Oct 16, 2020•48 min•Season 5Ep. 38
Coffee workers—or really anyone who has ever worked in service or earned tips as part of their wages—has likely been told a number of conflicting things about taxes. Declare your cash tips. Don’t declare your cash tips. Your tips cannot be taxed. You owe a tax liability at the end of the year. The varying narratives we’ve been told about taxes can be confusing at best, and financially harmful at worst. My guest today is Tiani Wright, a tax professional and founder of the group Coffee and Tax . T...
Oct 02, 2020•44 min•Season 5Ep. 37
In this episode, I’m talking to Korie Pickett. Korie is a creative in the coffee world and finds ways to uplift and support other creatives. She’s the founder of Queen Spirit Magazine , which is described as for creatives, by creatives, and she’s also the guest editor of Issue Ten of Coffee People Zine . Coffee People Zine has always been a place for coffee folks to express their creativity. It was born out of a desire to showcase the other work coffee people do outside of their jobs. This issue...
Sep 25, 2020•33 min•Season 5Ep. 36
If there’s ever been a wild wild west of podcast interviews on this show, this might be the one. I’m recording with my friend, Ian Williams. He’s the owner of Deadstock Coffee in Portland, Oregon, which is a coffee and sneaker-theme shop. There’s no other feeling like walking into Deadstock—you’re always greeted by the baristas, customers and staff clearly know each other well, and the space invites a lot of discussions, a lot of back and forth. “Yes, this is a sneaker-themed coffee shop, no the...
Sep 17, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Season 5Ep. 35
In her new book, COFFEEMILKBOOK , Vava Angwenyi tells the stories of coffee producers. Stories about coffee are often told by importers, roasters, and consumers—the narrative is about "the foreigner looking in." Vava is going to change that. COFFEEMILKBLOOD uses Vava's own personal history and the stories of others living in coffee-producing countries. Brilliantly told alongside stunning photographs, Vava challenges you not just to question the stories you hear, but question who gets to tell the...
Sep 10, 2020•48 min•Season 5Ep. 34
In this special episode, T. Ben Grimm and I walk through the Glitter Cat application process! IF YOU LOVE COFFEE AND WANT TO LEARN MORE, YOU SHOULD APPLY ! Glitter Cat is a non-profit organization that provides free resources to baristas who want to compete in coffee competitions—every year, baristas from around the United States come together to show off their coffee skills in a number of different competitions, and Glitter Cat specifically lowers the barrier to entry for people of marginalized...
Sep 04, 2020•25 min•Season 5Ep. 34
Smayah Uwajeneza has a story like many of us do. She wanted to save money for school, so she began working in a cafe, and then found her passion for coffee through connecting coffee drinkers in Rwanda, where she’s from and is currently based, with the women who grow their coffee. Along with being the Head Barista at Question Coffee in Kigali, Smayah leads tours of co-ops and helps folks make connections between what’s in their cup and the people that make drinking coffee possible. Along with her...
Aug 25, 2020•59 min•Season 5Ep. 33
On July 4th, Augie’s Coffee, which is a branch of five coffee shops in the Inland Empire region of California, announced that they would be closing their retail locations. They made this announcement on social media and cited concerns because of COVID-19 as the reason they were closing their doors. And because of the stores closing, they were also laying off 54 members of their retail staff. However, just a week prior, on June 26th, dozens of Augie’s employees were sitting in a town hall with th...
Aug 06, 2020•49 min•Season 5Ep. 32
