Tag Archives: Blue Bottle

The USBC Origins Project – Day One

Back in Februrary, after watching the USBC Qualifying Event in Kansas City, I committed myself to this, an initiative I called the “USBC Origins Project.”  I found myself wanting more info on the coffees that baristas had so carefully chosen for their routines—who grew those coffees?  where?  how?  which exporters and importers took such good […]

379. Just how big is the market for fine Robusta?

Over the past two years, CRS has partnered with Sustainable Harvest to create Let’s Talk Robusta, a workshop series held during the importer’s annual Let’s Talk Coffee event.  After more than a decade of working almost exclusively in the realm of specialty Arabica, we have seen Let’s Talk Robusta as a kind of market intelligence […]

374. Five survival strategies for smallholders

Two weeks ago, I suggested that the coffee business is broken and that we need to take extraordinary measures to fix it: create alternative pricing mechanisms, build a permanent institution to foster cross-sector collaboration and send explorers to the frontiers of coffee to search for new insights.  We have our work cut out for us, […]