When COVID-19 laid off a substantial number of coffee workers, Valorie Clark helped start a nonprofit called GoFundBean to provide essential services and financial support. A full transcript of this episode is available at bossbarista.substack.com
The 2022 United States Barista Champion and TikTok star subverts expectations through humor and silliness. You can find a full transcript at bossbarista.substack.com
The co-founders of Cute Coffee urge you to keep it cute or put it on mute—or you're gonna get slimed. You can find a full transcript of this episode at bossbarista.substack.com
Go Get Em Tiger's very first employee wants you to praise your friends, your coworkers—everyone! A full transcript of this episode is available here .
Revisiting our February 2020 episode with the members of the Tartine Union in the Bay Area. For a full transcript, go to bossbarista.substack.com
The owner of Café con Jiribilla talks about Mexico's unique coffee scene and why you should discover its roasters. You can find a full transcript of this episode here .
My guest is Sonam Parikh, one of the co-founders of Mina’s World , a coffee shop in West Philadelphia. Sonam and their partner, Kate, opened Mina’s World 18 days before COVID-19 forced the majority of hospitality businesses to close or completely revamp how they serve food and drinks to customers. You can find a full transcript of this episode here ....
How Eric Grimm of Glitter Cat Barista and Ghost Town Oats has approached building more accessible spaces through the lens of human resources. A full transcript of this episode can be found here .
The lead roaster at Modern Times helps navigate the San Diego roastery's next phase while advocating for herself. A full transcript of this episode can be found here .
The co-founder of Three Keys Coffee in Houston talks jazz riffs, trumpet keys, and I ask him some weird questions. A full transcript of this episode can be found here .
What it means to want to do things differently—and actually do them. With David Lalonde, co-founder of Rabbit Hole Roasters in Montreal, Quebec. A full transcript of this episode can be found here .
In the last episode of our December Rewind series, Rachel Northrop digs into the coffee commodities market, and asks who this antiquated system serves. Spoiler alert: You probably know the answer. A full transcript of this episode can be found here .
The commodities market, or c-market, is how most coffee is bought and sold. It's a complicated, antiquated system that's persisted for years. Rachel Northrop explains how this system came to be. A full transcript of this episode can be found here .
Today, we're re-releasing our episode with Maggy Nyamumbo. Maggy is the founder of Kahawa 1893 , a social enterprise aimed at connecting farmers directly to consumers in an attempt to get more money back to farmers. There is so much money in coffee — with farmers making less money than it costs to produce coffee, Maggy tells us where all that money goes. This episode was originally released in November 2019. Find a full transcript of this episode here ....
In 2018, the internet lit up with debates about plastic straw bans. Disabled activist Alice Wong talks about how these kinds of conversations silence the voices of disabled people. This episode was originally released in August 2018.
At 13 years old, Frankie Volkema became the world's youngest Q grader. While she received her certification, she also learned that the average coffee farmer is in their mid-50s, and if we don’t make farming viable for young people to pursue, the future of coffee is in jeopardy. So she decided to take action. Learn more about Joven Coffee here . This episode is brought to you by Urnex ....
Today, I’m chatting with Jose Uechi, co-founder of Compadre , a coffee brand based in Peru. Jose—or Pepe, as he goes by—is an industrial designer by trade, and got into coffee because of his friend, Juan Pablo. Juan Pablo invented a solar roaster, a machine that could roast coffee without electricity. Initially, Compadre’s founders worked to get these roasters into the hands of farmers. A few years later, and Compadre is still working on raising wages for farmers—albeit in a slightly different w...
Neichelle Guidry is a storyteller. Neichelle is a college administrator and the founder of Black Girl Black Coffee . The brand began as an Instagram account, as a way for Neichelle to document her journey through coffee, and her passion for the subject, during the upheaval of the pandemic. Since then, it’s evolved into a coffee brand that reclaims the Black history of coffee. We about staying inspired, filling your cup, and giving yourself permission to seek joy in the things you love—that will ...
If you've ever asked yourself, “Is this real? Or am I imagining it? Did I take something the wrong way on purpose? Did my boss really do that thing that I now feel so angry about?” then this is the episode for you. Sierra Yeo of The Kore Directive and Alpro UK get real vulnerable. This episode is brought to you by Urnex .
Rachel Faller is one of the co-founders of tonlé , a zero-waste clothing company that believes in promoting equal value across the supply chain. Like coffee, most of the clothing we wear goes through hundreds of hands and relies on a system of manufacture and exchange that is a relic of colonialism. In this episode, Rachel explains some of the parallels between how coffee is bought and sold and how clothes are made. We talk about who gains and who loses in a world that relies on fast fashion: th...
Before coffee, Nigel Price of Drip Coffee Makers had a career in finance, working for a firm in Downtown Manhattan. But eventually, he decided he’d had enough—and he turned to cafes as a way to break away from the life he’d built and the trajectory he no longer wanted to be on. Over a decade later, Nigel credits coffee as the beginning of his second life, giving him a chance to create connections and bond with people in a way that his prior life in finance hadn’t. This episode is brought to you ...
We’re re-airing an episode form June of 2020 with Erica Chadé (you may hear them referred to as Erica Jackson in the episode). Erica talks all about intention, getting to know yourself and offers some wonderful tidbits about slowing down and how working in service can offer moments of presence. We have "We Are Not A Family" tees available now—Erica is modeling one in the photo for this episode. Order them here ! This episode is brought to you by Urnex ....
From the moment Suneal Pabari got into coffee, he wanted to know why others didn’t share his excitement, and he came to a pretty simple conclusion: Coffee is hard! Baristas are busy slinging drinks, and it’s not like the coffee roaster is sitting and waiting to answer your queries about why Coffee A tastes like strawberries and Coffee B tastes like milk chocolate. Suneal wanted to learn more, and he decided to start a game. Leaderboard Coffee is a seasonal coffee experiment where participants re...
Baylee Engberg is a roaster who wants you to embrace past crop coffees. That’s still a pretty novel position—coffee is an industry that touts freshness, which means “past crop” can feel taboo. But there's an opportunity to change the narrative. Just because past crop coffees are older doesn’t mean they can’t be roasted well and still drink deliciously. Does green coffee really have to be at the peak of freshness to be enjoyed? Is it sustainable to ignore past crop coffees? And don’t roasters hav...
Brittany Sims is a barista and coffee writer who runs the Non-Binary Barista blog . Brittany uses their blog to talk about gender in the workplace, but also to discuss accessibility issues, neurodivergency, how to deal with trauma, and big feelings at work. Essentially, Brittany’s blog humanizes service workers, and shines a light on the real experiences people go through on the job. This episode is brought to you by Urnex ....
My guest today is Vera Espíndola Rafael, a development economist working within coffee-producing countries. Recently, she wrote a paper called, “A Business Case to Increase Specialty Coffee Consumption in Producing Countries.” Coffee is a good that’s grown in one country, and then is traditionally—thanks to centuries of colonialism—exported somewhere else. Globally, coffee is a $200 billion industry. Vera was struck when she found out that only 10% of that value actually goes into the economies ...
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 last in our series of guest creators. Ana Sofía Narvaez takes over hosting this episode and interviews Sara Corrales of Finca Los Pinos in Nicaragua. Sara is part of the new face of the specialty coffee industry—one that’s dedicated to promoting i...
Partnerships can have the power to clarify and sharpen traits, skills, and ideas, and that’s true of Kaleena Teoh and ChiSum Ngai—who goes by Sum—who are the co-founders of Coffee Project New York . Originally started as a small shop in the East Village in 2015, Coffee Project has expanded to a number of retail stores, a roastery, and a Specialty Coffee Association-certified training lab. Sum is a Q grader, which means she’s passed rigorous tests to evaluate and tastes coffees, and both Sum and ...
I first met Brian Gaffney while working at an unobtrusive coffee shop in Brooklyn called Daily Press. This wasn’t the kind of place you’d go out of your way to visit—it was located right on a busy street in the southeast corner of Bed-Stuy—and mostly, it attracted folks who lived locally. Instead, the fact that it was a neighborhood spot made Daily Press what it was. Almost every customer was a regular, someone who at least one of the baristas had built a relationship with. I remember Brian dist...
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. This episode is a little different than what you’ve heard so far. This is the second of a two-part episode—in these episodes, we talk to Colombian coffee farmers about risk, white saviorism, and the future of...
