I’m a small producer hoping to do everything in house with direct sales to North America. Wish me luck! Great article. I think people understanding what a bean goes through is a great start to educating people…..coffee should cost more! 🙏🧑🌾
Such an interesting post! Thanks for sharing. Your story is very inspiring, it really does feel overwhelming sometimes as to where to start to contribute positively to the coffee crisis. And I had no idea about the separate dry milling of parchment green beans, I assumed it was always done on the processing plant/farm before export so thank you for enlightening me! May I ask, are the pricing and peaks categories something you (Lulazo) have decided to implement, or is this more widely done by other direct coffee traders? And do you have any suggestions as to how we can help producers increase their value of their green beans if they cannot currently afford dry milling machinery? Would be great to hear more!
Hey! Thanks for reading and thanks for the questions.
Pillar + peak pricing is unique to our operation, I think. Tiered pricing based on cup score or volume is common, but would still likely fluctuate year to year.
Access to dry milling is not always easy, and would change quite a lot depending on the country in question. In Colombia, commercial dry mills of varying sizes are found throughout coffee growing regions. It's important to have an informed, trusted local contact who's willing to lend a bit of knowledge and support to producers first attempting to dry mill. By working with people who help bridge that gap, we feel it adds agency as well as financial value to the producers involved.
In this case, it's been a process in which producers have explored various options while purchases on my end remain constant. This is important because different mills will yield different qualities, with some having more defects/Quakers than others. In those cases, I have just done more sorting on the roasting end to compensate and prices have been left unaffected where they normally would be. Over time, and with a nice feedback loop, everyone has sort of amalgamated to the same mill, which yields the best results.
Honestly this could be a topic for a further post…
I’m a small producer hoping to do everything in house with direct sales to North America. Wish me luck! Great article. I think people understanding what a bean goes through is a great start to educating people…..coffee should cost more! 🙏🧑🌾
I wish you all the luck in the world!
It might not be easy but it will certainly be worth it. Take your time and find the right people.
Such an interesting post! Thanks for sharing. Your story is very inspiring, it really does feel overwhelming sometimes as to where to start to contribute positively to the coffee crisis. And I had no idea about the separate dry milling of parchment green beans, I assumed it was always done on the processing plant/farm before export so thank you for enlightening me! May I ask, are the pricing and peaks categories something you (Lulazo) have decided to implement, or is this more widely done by other direct coffee traders? And do you have any suggestions as to how we can help producers increase their value of their green beans if they cannot currently afford dry milling machinery? Would be great to hear more!
Hey! Thanks for reading and thanks for the questions.
Pillar + peak pricing is unique to our operation, I think. Tiered pricing based on cup score or volume is common, but would still likely fluctuate year to year.
Access to dry milling is not always easy, and would change quite a lot depending on the country in question. In Colombia, commercial dry mills of varying sizes are found throughout coffee growing regions. It's important to have an informed, trusted local contact who's willing to lend a bit of knowledge and support to producers first attempting to dry mill. By working with people who help bridge that gap, we feel it adds agency as well as financial value to the producers involved.
In this case, it's been a process in which producers have explored various options while purchases on my end remain constant. This is important because different mills will yield different qualities, with some having more defects/Quakers than others. In those cases, I have just done more sorting on the roasting end to compensate and prices have been left unaffected where they normally would be. Over time, and with a nice feedback loop, everyone has sort of amalgamated to the same mill, which yields the best results.
Honestly this could be a topic for a further post…