Local roasters roam globe in search of best coffee

Mark Capriotti and Mark Corpus of Kensington-based ReAnimator Coffee are well-aware that their travels to remote coffee-producing regions might seem extravagant to, say, your typical accounting department.

"If you put it in front of a business guy, he'd be, like, 'You're paying thousands of dollars to go on a trip, and then pay so much for this coffee?' " Capriotti said. "But we see it as an investment in our future.

"If you want to grow and give someone outside Philadelphia a reason to buy your coffee, you have to have outstanding coffee."

They're not the only ones doing this math.

As Philadelphia's coffee culture has exploded over the last few years, spawning at least a dozen upstart roasters with sophisticated ideas about what coffee should taste like, more of them have been pouring significant time and funds into visiting farms - in industry parlance, "going to origin" - to sample coffees, select exclusive micro-lots, and negotiate prices.

For these small businesses, it means plunging into an extraordinarily complex global coffee market, while muddling through a thicket of terms such as fair trade, direct trade, and relationship trade, the meaning of which most consumers (and some roasters) don't fully understand. What these trips accomplish - and what they mean for farmers, on one hand, and the contents of your coffee cup, on the other - can be even more difficult to untangle.

There's a certain mythology around going to origin. It makes for invariably alluring Instagram fodder.

"People romanticize the whole direct-trade thing," Capriotti said.

Some importers have even begun hiring videographers to document their visits. (The expeditions of La Colombe cofounder Todd Carmichael are, of course, chronicled on the cable-TV reality show Dangerous Grounds.)

In actual reality, though, "it's tedious," Corpus said. "You're driving in a truck for eight hours to get to a farm on a dirt road where every 30 seconds you're stopping to go through the biggest potholes you've ever seen."

But many roasters have come to the conclusion that it's necessary - and not just for marketing reasons. The so-called third-wave roasters are often focused on light roasts that don't mask the flavor of the coffee bean itself, so starting with good ingredients becomes even more critical.

Jess Steffy, who owns Lancaster-based Square One Coffee with her husband, Josh, is one of them.

When Square One started 11 years ago, they simply bought coffee from an importer. They stuck to fair-trade coffee, meaning that the farmers or cooperatives are certified by Fairtrade International, which sets standards for the treatment and compensation of workers, and in return are guaranteed a premium over the commodity coffee price.

But they soon found that there were better beans to be had outside the fair-trade system. (Because the fair-trade price isn't negotiable, many argue, there's no incentive for quality.)

"We started wrestling with that question: 'How do we know where our money's going regardless? And what does fair trade really mean?' "

The cost to the farmers to get certified seemed high to her. Meanwhile, the fair-trade price was only a fraction of the going price for better specialty-grade coffee. So, Square One began buying from importers, seeking coffee they believed was ethically produced and traded, and paying $3 to $6 per pound for it. In that shift, trips to origin became essential, she said.

"It's our jobs as roasters to say: If we're not going to vet these farmers . . . through Fairtrade, we should be vetting them somehow."

Roasters such as Square One tend to work with the same farms year after year, and in some cases to reinvest in the farms' growth.

Square One pays a premium over the going price at a women-owned cooperative in Guatemala. Last year, the farmers used the extra money to train midwives, Steffy said. At other farms, it's a matter of procuring equipment so that the farm can improve its coffee quality, and thereby command better prices.

Visiting farms year after year, Steffy has been able to observe the impact of increased income from specialty-coffee buyers such as her, in the form of new infrastructure and improved quality of life for farmers.

"We're seeing the rise of the rock-star coffee farmer," she said. "That's something I never would have imagined 10 years ago. Beyond Juan Valdez, there's no person that you can think of that's a celebrity for being a farmer in a coffee-growing country. That's changed. That would never have happened with fair trade."

Many serious coffee-roasters smirk at fair trade these days.

Steve Hoffman used to be one of them.

But now, said the head roaster at One Village Coffee in Souderton, about 70 percent of his coffee is from fair-trade sources. He thinks the quality is high - and the impact on farmers' lives is striking.

Fairtrade International is currently helping One Village with a project in Honduras to fund the installation of beehives on 40 or 50 farms and the training people on raising bees and producing honey.

But in the last few years, they, too, have been traveling to origin to buy single lots at negotiated prices (in one case tacking on a premium to fund the purchase of a soil-analysis tool the farmer needed).

"If you want to present yourself as a company that does good quality coffee, and is socially and environmentally responsible, part of that puzzle is going to meet the farmers," he said. "Where it gets blurry and confusing for consumers is how travel and coffee sourcing is marketed."

Direct trade means drastically different things to different roasters.

For ReAnimator, it's pragmatic. Corpus said the roaster buys about 15 percent of its coffee directly. His goal is 100 percent. For that, they need to build relationships with farmers and help farmers build their capacity.

"It's building the supply chain," he said.

But some roasters use the term loosely, Capriotti said, even applying direct-trade logos to coffee purchased from an importer.

For Chris Molieri, co-owner of Greenstreet Coffee Co. in South Philadelphia, there's no science to this. For him, these trips are mostly about relationship building. He describes some of his coffees as "relationship trade." That could mean a relationship with the farmer or just with the importer.

"It just means that there's a relationship in place," he said.

At the other end of the spectrum is Elixr Coffee, where owners David Amos and Evan Inatome make regular origin trips and buy 70 percent of their coffee directly.

They started traveling to farms two years ago. Inatome said that's just how you get the best coffee.

They'll sample numerous cups, then purchase a specific microlot, set apart by plant variety, processing method or location within a farm. Normally, they'll pay at least $4 a pound; last year, they splurged on one exceptional lot at $28 a pound. Elixr signs a contract with a farmer, then hands it to an importer to fulfill.

Given that Elixr spends $600,000 a year on green coffee, Inatome thinks the travel expense is worth it.

This year, a farm they'd been working with had an off year. Elixr bought their coffee anyway.

"We believe in these people," he said. "We maybe won't feature it as a single origin, but we can still blend it. And maybe in the good years, when they win Cup of Excellence" - a competition that selects the very best yields from various coffee-producing countries - "they'll give us the coffee at the same price."

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