Hey, A to Z English Podcast listeners, it's Jack here.
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Welcome to the A to Z English Podcast. My name is Jack and I'm here with my co-host
social. And today we are doing a topic talk.
And social, the topic today kind of comes from some photos that popped up
in my Facebook feed from your account. And it was really interesting because it
looked like there was all this coffee, there were like coffee bags
and really cool bags too. It's like a kind of a sky blue or light blue color
with a really cool logo and everything on there.
And so I was just wondering like what's going on with that?
Well Jack, I started selling organic coffee.
My partner is a coffee farmer in the Seattle Huatis, which is
an area, mountainous area of Huatka where I live currently.
And he's a farmer so he does things like he plants beans,
corn, coffee, pineapples, mangoes,
avocados. But the big one of the big
sources of income for coffee farmers or for farmers here in Huatka is coffee.
This coffee used to be quite well paid. But unfortunately the price of coffee
has really gone down a lot. I'm not sure what's going on. The market,
it's not that there's more supply than demand. It's just I think how
something's have been happening with exports to the United States and
prices and the dollar and the peso and how they're moving up and down.
It's caused a lot of issues. And well I was talking to him and he was
he was telling me that they can only sell their coffee in parchment at
41 pesos, which is about like two bucks a kilo. A kilo two dollars a kilogram
for coffee. Oh my gosh. Yes. It's parchment coffee. So it's not like
roasted or anything. It's just it has to go through a whole process
before it's ready to drink. But it's it's still such a cheap price for
organic coffee and they're not making any money off of it anymore.
And also someone's making money though. It's like the middleman. You know.
Yes. The middleman is making money because the price of coffee, especially
organic coffee and local coffee, has gone up on the market. But they're not
talking about the farmers are getting screwed on the on the the back end. Yeah. Yes.
It's exactly what's happening. Yeah. So it's it's really been a disaster for a lot of
people. And you know, I was talking to him and I just had the idea to sell
his coffee here in the city because I live here in the city.
And you know, we talked about it and we made some plans and we kind of it just
got I just kind of posted it on an expats will hawk a group saying hey
guys like would you be interested in organic coffee. And a bunch of people were
like oh yeah, you know, we didn't know how to price it. Like we didn't know
anything about it because he's going to coffee farm. His family is then coffee
farming for generations. But like he's never really been on the on the
like market end of things because what they usually do is they they belong to
an organization coffee organization called Nietzsche which is like the
organic coffee organization and they they give them like
courses and stuff on how to grow organic coffee and different varieties that
are worth more money and all these kind of things. But because of how the
market's going and I don't know what's happening, they're only able to buy
200 kilos on average from each coffee farmer.
Oh, it's nothing 200 kilos. Yeah, the the usual production is at least
five. You usually at least have 500 kilos left over after that, you know,
even for a small farmer. So yeah, so it got to the point, you know, they have
if they have like at least 300 kilos or leftovers. So I talked to him and we went
through the whole process of deciding to sell it and we got a lot of attention
on the expats will hawk a group. And so we kind of had hit the ground running
because I posted this just out of curiosity and I got I got like
business out the wazoo as we say. Like turns of people inquiring and
and a lot to keep up with. And so at that point we had to go ahead and
we hit the ground running. So he's he we decided to go with our
traditional process because that's pretty much how he knows how to make the
coffee. So what you have to do is you have to take a
like mortar and pestle which for those of our listeners who aren't familiar, a
mortar is like kind of like a a stone or wooden bowl or something and a pestle
like a giant one though. And a pestle is like the thing that you use to pound it.
So people used to do this to like grind flour and stuff in the old and days.
Right. Now you see a lot of people use a mortar and pestle for like medicine and
stuff like that. Yeah, medicine are like herbs. A lot of people use it for like
finely grinding herbs and teas. But he has to use a giant one to like take all the
the kind of peel the shell off of our coffee. So he does that all by hand. So that's
crazy. It's a lot of work. He must be in great shape then.
Because he's really yeah, he's a really good
drink. Yeah, he's very strong. And honestly, I don't think I would probably
last two minutes trying to do that. Yeah, he definitely he decels the coffee that way.
And then we pay a local woman to hand roast the coffee, which is our
traditional traditional method to do it. Wow. That's awesome. So like if people start
drinking your coffee, they're they're going to be used to her roast basically. She
kind of determines the flavor in a way. Like part of it comes from the the you know,
of course, the bean. But then part of it also flavor of the coffee comes from how it's roasted,
right? Yeah. So she so depends on how you roast the coffee and there's different
roasts. Like you can do a light roast dark roast and medium roast and they all have different
flavor profiles. And she does kind of a medium dark roast, which works really well.
Because they their hand roasted, they have like a different they have color variations in the
beans. But once you grind them in your coffee grinder or whatever, it's an even color. It's a
uniform color. And it smells delicious because the the sugars and the coffee beans are like
caramelized because they're roasted by hand. So they're not burned like in a machine the way that
it would be if you did it by machine process. And it just comes out really great. It has really,
it has like a bold flavor and it still has body for those who like dark roast. But it's not like a
bitter dark roast. It has like acidic notes and floral notes. And it's very it has a very sweet
aroma, a really pleasant like caramel like aroma and almost like some chocolatey notes. It's
really good. I'm not a coffee drinker myself, but I definitely started because I had to describe
it to the client. You sound like a coffee drinker though. Geez. You describe it like notes. I mean,
I just like I just want to when I saw the the post, I just wanted to grab one of those bags and
just like open it and just stick my nose in there. Yeah. I love that smell of fresh. Oh my gosh. I
bet it just is heavenly. Yes, it smells amazing. And it's been a lot of things to learn. We'd
priced way too low. So now we're figuring that out because we we didn't really know about the
market and this it's single origin coffee, which means it's coffee off from the same community
and the same pick of that year. And so it's like it's worth more and then it's also organic. So
it's worth more and it has expensive varieties inside the ensemble. Like there's different beans
that we use. So use like gaysha, which is pretty expensive. Kawha Tipeka, which is one of the original
ones that has been planted for hundreds of years here. Yeah. And yeah. So a lot of those things
that you know quality and expense and then the other things we went with in our traditional
process, which requires a lot of labor, manual labor. Yeah. So we kind of we placed it way too low.
We priced it like 10 bucks a kilo. Spend bucks a kilo. Wow. You're given it away for free there.
We did. It's 200 pesos or 200 200 pesos a kilo, which is 10 about 10 bucks.
So are you still making profit though? Like at that price point?
We're barely not if we count our hours of labor, we're not we're in red numbers. But if we don't count
the hours of labor that we put in fit, then yeah, we're making like a tiny profit. A very tiny
profit. So you guys have to you guys have to rep price that then eventually this first
round. Maybe you can you can sell it cheaply, but you know, after that, you're going to have to
you know, put it up a little bit. Yeah. I don't know what to do. I'm not
sure how to rep price it because I'm like it's scared losing customers or something.
No, that's just you guys just have a popster syndrome. You know, you're just you just don't
have the confidence right now because you're just starting out. But I think you should be
very confident in your product. It sounds like a great product. I mean, it looks amazing.
So I think you guys could ask you know, double that much and people will still pay.
You know, if they love it, they'll still pay. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, that's kind of where we're right now. I think it's going pretty well. A lot of people ask us,
you know, oh, do you have half kilo bags? Do you have light roast? Do you have D calf? It's like,
we don't have any of these things yet. I think a lot of people don't don't like know the whole
process like being a coffee farmer and working on doing all this. Like it's kind of amazing that
we've gotten as far as we have in the last month because we've only been doing this a month. We
really hit the ground running. But yeah, we can't diversify our products yet. So that is one hurdle
that we've been dealing with. But I think I'm happy about as a packaging. I'm going to pick that
and I also designed our little logo. And I think it came out really well. Yeah, that's the fun part.
I enjoy that sort of stuff. The smashing the beans, not exactly my cup of tea right there.
But no, yeah, that's his job. So he does all he's like, he's had a quality in production or whatever,
he's had a production. So he's quality people and smashing beans up and going to different like
tea farmers within his community to ski, you know, if we can either crop for the next year, but he's
yes, a verified that they're organic and that they're certified organic. And so he's doing that
whole process himself. And then my end is really customer service and communicating with the clients
and sending them, you know, information about this and that and whatever and
making sales and whatnot. That's basically my whole end designing the flyers, designing the
coffee bags, designing the different products that we're going to introduce into the market.
All that is kind of what I'm up to. Right. You're marketing and he's operations, I guess,
or something like that. Yes, that's literally what it is. I'm marketing and he's operations. And
I'm also customer service. I'm trying to come in the customer service at things, but it's like,
he's kind of shy. So it doesn't work as well for him, I think. But, you know, I'll get him,
I'll get him, I'll work him up into customer service because I tell him, you know, you should be
confident because it's your product and you're, you made this. And though a lot of people are
interested in talking to you about your project and, you know, right. Don't be shy. So yeah.
Be proud of it. Be proud. I mean, that he should be very proud. That's amazing what he's doing. So
what you guys are doing together. It's really cool. Yeah. That's really cool. I think in the
future, we're trying to do something like talks where we kind of have these like, I'm going to do
raffle tickets. So we're selling each raffle ticket for like 12 bucks, but they get to come to a
talk about about the coffee and how he produces it and everything and they get free coffee and snacks.
And then they also get a chance to win like a coffee experience. So we're, we're planning on
doing a business in the future where people can like, D shell and hand roast their own coffee.
So they can like, you know, have the experience of seeing what it's like. Yeah. That's a good for
tourists. I think they would really enjoy that. That would be really. Yeah. I have a friend who
does it with chocolate with cacao. And I think it'd be really awesome with coffee. Yeah. I think
that would be a great experience. And you can get the tourists to D shell those coffee beans for free.
So get them on the pestle and mortar. Yeah. We can use them to do labor for us.
So yeah. I think it'll be exciting. All right. Well, good for you. Yeah. Congratulations to you
and your partner for that that venture. That's really cool.
Thanks, Jack. All right. Listeners. Well, let us know if you have any more questions. Are you coffee
drinkers? I'm curious. I myself, I grew up drinking coffee, but I stopped drinking around 18.
And then I just started again. So yeah, I'm curious. Are you guys big coffee drinkers? We know
Jack is. Leave us a comment down below and let us know. Do you like coffee? Do you enjoy it? Do
you have any recommendations for our business? We'd love to hear them. Leave a comment down below
at a.tzenglishpodcast.com. Shoot us an email at a.tzenglishpodcast.com. And don't forget to join
the WeChannel WhatsApp group so you can join Jack and I on the conversation. And Jack and I started
an English corner, which is another business venture that I have on my hands now. But it's been
very exciting and really fun. And we do it Monday to Friday for an hour a day. And it's just $10 USD
a month. So you get it for 50 cents a class or whatever. And we have a lot of really strong
English speakers. And we've made some adjustments. So you guys get a lot of speaking time. And
yeah, we're really excited about this project. So if you're interested, make sure to send us a
direct message and ask about it. And we'll be happy to get back to you. See you guys next time. Bye bye.
Bye bye.
