In the Grinder - Our Daily Coffee Weblog

Cafe Imports, the independently-owned, high end boutique green coffee importer is seeking a new entry-level sales/account manager/customer service person.

The ideal candidate is a college graduate with a minimum 3.2 GPA who is a coffee fanatic/Foodie/beer wine lover-type of person who is aesthetically inclined with the skills to back it up. Must have the ability to focus and get job done while able to multitask at the same time. Excellent phone skills and a human touch for customer service are essential. Fluency in Spanish, Portuguese, Swahili, or French is a major plus. Great mathematical and analytic skills are needed.

You will be participating in daily cuppings, where we taste coffees to look for defects and flavor attributes. This is essential in determining which coffees we purchase and general quality control.

You will initially learn how it works here and help input sales, field sales calls, answer customer questions, etc. You may also help with monthly Fair Trade reporting, and other general tasks, all of which will help you build your understanding of the coffee business. We are hiring here with the assumption that you are going to excel here and grow into a coffee professional.

Salary is commensurate with experience level, and if you have an outside skill set from another industry, please include that in your cover letter to accompany your resume.

Please email your resume and cover letter to jason@cafeimports.com

This trip was assembled with a number of buyers of Cenfrocafe coffee and we wanted to focus on the producers, quality controllers and association from whom we buy the coffee.
(This is my first Blog ever!!!)

We were introduced to this association a number of years ago by Cafe Verde and have been impressed by their professionalism and capabilities in producing great coffees.

They have individual day lot cupping at their lab backed up by Cafe Verde which means that the lots are built properly and achieve quality objectives.

We gathered in Lima on Monday and had a calibration and educational cupping @ Cafe Verde which is a cafe and cupping facility in Mira Flores. It is just up the road from the beach and it was awesome to have great coffee just next to the hotel in their cafe.

KC O'Keefe is the founder and owner of Cafe Verde and has been living in peru on and off for the better part of his adult life. He is shown here with Luis who is the lead cupper in the Cafe Verde Lab.

It is a long road to Jaen in Northern Peru. We flew to Chiclayo from Lima and from Chiclayo on the coast it is a 4.5 hour drive on a nicely paved road. We were excited by the new toyotas and the apparently professional drivers.
The trip at night might be bearable but our driver decided that he was going to be the first to Jaen no matter how many times we stopped to vomit.

We arrived in Jaen on Monday night and slammed into our pillows in the brand new Luna Del Valle. Jaen is a fascinating little town with lots of Che Gvera and Tiger (Shining Path) mud flaps.

The 3 wheeled taxis have motorcycle front ends. We ended up using these for rides around town in the evening. Jaen is a bustling little town even though it was established in the 1970s.

Our first stop in the field was an association in San Ignacio called Nueva Generacion in San Ignacio.

The managers of the associations that were part of this area were present at the initial meeting before a farm visit.
We visited the farm of Maximilliano who was one of the more energetic and enthusiastic farmers in the area.

He explained his pruning techniques and replacement of aging trees. This was a relatively new production area having been planted in 1994. His farm was 3 hectares with production of 40qq/hectare. (400 lbs)
He harvests about 15 times/year and employs 20 employees seasonally to harvest and prune as they harvest.
His farm is around 1650 meters and is a great example of how to grow coffee in this region.
One important advantage of these growers is drying. They use Solar Driers and are very good at getting the coffee to 12% in parchment before delivering to the Cenfro Receiving station (More later on this)

These driers can take a little long to dry coffee if it is rainy and the growers are looking at options to make mechanical drying available in micro drying mills around the growing regions.

We had lunch and a meeting with the association heads and enjoyed some of the local CUY (roasted guinea pig). At the end of the meal they brought out coffee for us which was delicious and much needed. This coffee was roasted at Cenfrocafe where they sell roasted coffee around the country.

The farmers in this area are leading the way in pricing in the country and have contributed to Cenfrocafe delivering the highest ave prices to any group of farmers in Peru.
The farmers who have their coffee find it into the best categories get paid extra for their efforts.

Our next stop was a farm owned by a woman in the Flor y Fauna Association. Her name was Jenara Campos Garcia.

She is looking to start using the Guano de Isla (sea bird Guano) fertilizer on her farm to improve tree health and production. The trees have a better chance of resisting Ojo de Pollo (Chicken Eye fungus) if they are healthy.

This rust can effect both the leaves and the cherries.

We visited another producer in Flor y Fauna Association who had much healthier trees after using this fertilizer.

On our second full day we stayed in Jaen & visited the Cenfrocafe Coffee Bar.

It is always good to have producers drinking their better product. Cenfrocafe roasts coffee in Jaen and is exposing the producers to the better coffee through their retail store and providing quality coffee to the producers. We were visitring this cafe in the mornings and apparently the producers go there for a cup after they drop off the parchment. This is a positive for the producers to taste what their coffee can be like.
The cafe has excellent Tamales and other pastries.

We visited the receiving warehouse for CenfroCafe the next day and saw the exquisitely detailed and transparent procedure for receiving and issuing first payment to a producer.

After estimating yield based on post hulling weight and grading the coffee to see how much will be lost in defects, a certificate is issued to the producer which allows him to receive a partial payment for the coffee he has just delivered. All cupping information travels back to the producer.

We went over to the Cenfrocafe lab for a long day of cupping.
The lab is very tight and the cuppers are methodical, accurate and clearly have great tasting skills>

We were able to cup the coffee we saw received earlier in the day and will be cupping it this week in our lab.
After cupping the results are given back to the producers. They are paid basis the points received for the cup and there is a clear connection between quality and price. This cupping lab is one of the best we have seen. We have never witnessed such an extensive cupping of individual lots and such an accurate and methodical method of keeping track of them.

After the cupping results are finalized the coffees are grouped by association and by quality.

We finished up our cupping with a tasting of some pulped natural coffees for espresso. Results are still out on these and we will be cupping them in our lab this week. The lot size is still experimental and these coffees will not be available for purchase until 2010 if they end up being a good idea.

We finished the trip with a meeting with Theodore Miro (GM Cenfrocafe) Elmer Pena (Sales Manager) and the heads of some of the associations from which we buy coffee.
We discussed many things over the course of our meeting and it was a good opportunity to encourage them to keep moving in the direction they are in producing better coffee which is specific to associations and regions in order to build a name for their brand.

We headed back to Chiclayo for the flight to Lima and then home.
The road is gorgeous in daylight and there are many little cement shrines along the road to those who have been killed in crashes.

We will be keeping you posted on these coffees as we cup pre-ships and as they arrive later this autumn.

This trip was assembled with a number of buyers of Cenfrocafe coffee and we wanted to focus on the producers, quality controllers and association from whom we buy the coffee. (This is my first Blog ever!!!) We were introduced to this association a number of years ago by Cafe Verde and have been impressed by their professionalism and capabilities in producing great coffees. They have individual day lot cupping at their lab backed up by Cafe Verde which means that the lots are built properly and achieve quality objectives. We gathered in Lima on Monday and had a calibration and educational cupping @ Cafe Verde which is a cafe and cupping facility in Mira Flores. It is just up the road from the beach and it was awesome to have great coffee just next to the hotel in their cafe. KC O'Keefe is the founder and owner of Cafe Verde and has been living in Peru on and off for the better part of his adult life. He is shown here with Luis who is the lead cupper in the Cafe Verde Lab.

It is a long road to Jaen in Northern Peru. We flew to Chiclayo from Lima and from Chiclayo on the coast it is a 4.5 hour drive on a nicely paved road. We were excited by the new toyotas and the apparently professional drivers. The trip at night might be bearable but our driver decided that he was going to be the first to Jaen no matter how many times we stopped to vomit. We arrived in Jaen on Monday night and slammed into our pillows in the brand new Luna Del Valle. Jaen is a fascinating little town with lots of Che Guevara and Tiger (Shining Path) mud flaps. The 3 wheeled taxis have motorcycle front ends. We ended up using these for rides around town in the evening. Jaen is a bustling little town even though it was established in the 1970s.

Our first stop in the field was an association in San Ignacio called Nueva Generacion in San Ignacio.

The managers of the associations that were part of this area were present at the initial meeting before a farm visit. We visited the farm of Maximilliano who was one of the more energetic and enthusiastic farmers in the area.

He explained his pruning techniques and replacement of aging trees. This was a relatively new production area having been planted in 1994. His farm was 3 hectares with production of 40qq/hectare. (400 lbs) He harvests about 15 times/year and employs 20 employees seasonally to harvest and prune as they harvest. His farm is around 1650 meters and is a great example of how to grow coffee in this region. One important advantage of these growers is drying. They use Solar Driers and are very good at getting the coffee to 12% in parchment before delivering to the Cenfro Receiving station (More later on this)

These driers can take a little long to dry coffee if it is rainy and the growers are looking at options to make mechanical drying available in micro drying mills around the growing regions. We had lunch and a meeting with the association heads and enjoyed some of the local CUY (roasted guinea pig). At the end of the meal they brought out coffee for us which was delicious and much needed. This coffee was roasted at Cenfrocafe where they sell roasted coffee around the country. The farmers in this area are leading the way in pricing in the country and have contributed to Cenfrocafe delivering the highest ave prices to any group of farmers in Peru. The farmers who have their coffee find it into the best categories get paid extra for their efforts. Our next stop was a farm owned by a woman in the Flor y Fauna Association. Her name was Jenara Campos Garcia.

She is looking to start using the Guano de Isla (sea bird Guano) fertilizer on her farm to improve tree health and production. The trees have a better chance of resisting Ojo de Pollo (Chicken Eye fungus) if they are healthy.

On our second full day we stayed in Jaen & visited the Cenfrocafe Coffee Bar.

We will be keeping you posted on these coffees as we cup pre-ships and as they arrive later this autumn.

In early August, Tim and I made a whirlwind trip to northern Peru to visit Cenfrocafe. This is Café Import’s first year working with Cenfrocafe, an association that consists of 2100 producers. The association is incredibly committed to supplying high quality Fair Trade and organic coffee, with 3 Q-graders on staff and a cupping protocol that requires every lot delivered by a producer to be cupped the next day. We were amazed by their quality control procedures, not to mention their coffees!

We started the trip with a cupping session in Lima, then a flight to Chiclayo, and finally a 5 hour drive through the Andes to Jaen. We nicknamed our driver “the Dale Earnhardt of Peru,” who was determined to make it to Jaen as quickly as possible, passing along blind curves and having very strong faith in the protection of flashing headlights and the horn. One piece of advice regarding this drive: if you are prone to carsickness, don’t make this trip at night! The combination of nighttime, our race-car driver, and some strange side effects of Dramamine made this car ride one of the most interesting of my life.

After safely arriving at our hotel, we awoke to a cool, rainy day – the perfect weather for a farm visit with Unidos por el Progreso, one of the associations belonging to Cenfrocafe. We piled into the car for another road trip and visited the farm of Zacarias Neira Melendres and his family in Alto Ihuamaca, about 25 kilometers from the border of Ecuador. Along with members of the association, we toured his processing station and hiked through muddy paths on his picturesque farm. He has produced top-notch coffees and excitedly told us that this year he was going to deliver coffee that scored over 90. We wished him best of luck as we departed! The association hosted us for lunch and provided us with our first taste of cuy. I had no problem trying this delicacy as I never owned a pet guinea pig, and now I can happily cross this off my list of culinary to-dos.

The next day, we visited Cenfrocafe warehouse in Jaen. The 10 minute drive was welcomed after the many hours spent in the car during the previous days. While at the warehouse, we watched a producer deliver his parchment. Samples were taken, parchment was removed, moisture was measured, coffee was sorted, and receipts were filed out in a very efficient and orderly system. Their traceability system and documentation, in the opinion of this former organic inspector, was flawless. We then had a cupping session with Cenfrocafe staff, and to my surprise, Tim and my favorite coffee was the one we had just seen delivered! The sample had been brought from the warehouse, roasted, and added to the cupping table.

Before making the 27 hour trip back home, we met with the management of Cenfrocafe and producers to sign purchase contracts. Meeting with growers to sign contracts that show our commitment to their association and acknowledgment of their hard work was the perfect end to the trip. We will be receiving coffee from Cenfrocafe in October and will keep you posted on arrival dates. A very large thank you to all at Cenfrocafe and K.C. O’Keefe who helped to host our visit!