Open Door: Costa Rica 2018 Dates Announced

The Open Door program was developed in 2017 to allow our customers to visit our Central American office and lab in San José, Costa Rica. Most Fridays from March through May, guests have the opportunity to walk in to our office and join our Costa Rica–based green-coffee buyer, Luis (“Lucho”) Arocha and sales representative Omar Herrera, to cup coffees and hear about the development work with which we have been involved in Costa Rica. Our producing partners regularly join us for these cuppings, offering unique opportunities for calibration and real-time feedback.

Origin Report: Costa Rica 2018

What does it mean to be “engaged” at origin? What does it mean to develop real, genuine relationships in business? What is the true impact of immersion into the culture of a coffee and the people who grow, harvest, process, and mill it? As curious coffee people, and as importers who try to be conscious of the size of our footprint in more ways than one, we ask ourselves these questions all the time.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the answers vary from place to place, from one situation to another: Some producers operate best with little to no interaction from their buyers, while others find a more personal connection to be deeply meaningful—and everything in between.

When it comes to the producers of our microlots from Costa Rica, which is the better option—Face Time, or face-to-face time? Read more about how we strike the balance of being engaged while not being overbearing, and to create healthy, longstanding partnerships in Costa Rica, one of our cornerstone origins.

Variety: Unknown

There are still some unknowns in coffee—lots, actually—but this one in particular has us pretty intrigued… If you like mystery stories with a little bit of adventure and a whole lot of 90+ point cups, this might be right up your alley.

The Rest of the Best Cup

Saying “everyone’s a winner” might be a cliché in most instances, but when it comes to the fantastic but not auction-winning coffees we discover at Best Cup events, the saying is actually true—especially for our customers.

Origin Report: Ethiopia 2018

Times are changing in Ethiopia, and coffee is changing, too: This year marks a lot of transitions both for the farmers and exporters of the world’s oldest coffee-growing country, as well as for Cafe Imports’ presence on the ground there.

One theme seems to stand out for us as we dive into the 2018 harvest in Yirgacheffe, Guji, and Sidama, and that is a look at the past is sometimes the best way to push forward into the future.

Progress Report: Development 2017

When we think about Development here at Cafe Imports, we mean more than simply better coffee, but also better systems—that includes the contributions we make on the ground and in the field, the collaborations we undertake at the farm and mill level, and the work we do to improve our daily lives and operations in our offices and warehouses.

With the end of the year right around the corner, we are proud to share our annual progress report on Café Imports commitment to Development, which not only offers some insight into what we have been working on over the last 12 months, but also what we look forward to in 2018.

Traceable Sumatra: Bergandal Mill

Sumatran coffees are already different from coffees anywhere else in the world, and Sakdan Abdul Wahab (pictured in the hat) represents something even more different: Truly traceable coffees from a microregion within the Gayo Highlands.

You're Invited: Resource 2018

It’s a new year, a new crop, and a whole new selection of opportunities to shrink the distance between your roaster’s hopper and coffee’s source. We at Cafe Imports would like nothing more than to have you join us on our travels into the field (literally) as we seek, study, cup, and source the world’s finest specialty coffees. Throughout the year, we gladly invite our roaster partners along on visits to the producers, mills, and exporters with whom we work year in and year out, to develop personal connections and long-standing relationships, and, of course, to bring home the most delicious coffees we can find.

Origin Report Roundup 2017

The Earth made another trip around the sun, and we at Cafe Imports made another trip around the world—visiting partners, sourcing lots, making introductions, managing logistics, and rounding out another year of bringing you the finest specialty coffees. As we get ready to stow our passports for a little holiday break, and before we jet off into the next adventure, we’d like to take a moment to wrap up our year at origin as well as offer a glimpse of what’s to come. 

Chalate 2017 – The Project

“Project” is a perfect homonym, because it not only captures the work and careful planning that goes into a task at hand, but it also expresses forward motion, forecasting, prediction—the future. Read more about the present work and future prospects of our Pequeños microlot program in Chalatenango, El Salvador.

Origin Report: Peru 2017

We’ve been getting to know—and falling more and more in love with—Peru for years, and the rest of the world is starting to discover the quality and character in these wonderful coffees.

Midwest to Middle East: Cafe Imports in the GCC

Cafe Imports spent a week bringing coffee education, cupping, and community to the Gulf Cooperation Council, visiting Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates to celebrate our new partnership with Kafa Coffee, based out of Khobar, Saudi Arabia.

Minneroasta 2017: You're invited!

You’re invited to the grand opening of the Mill City Roasters Campus for the First Annual “Minneroasta!”
Minneroasta is a two-day event taking place Oct 20–21, immediately following the first two-day Introduction to Commercial Roasting Class (Oct 18–19), presented by Mill City Roasters and Cafe Imports.

Brazil's Brand-New Bag

When it comes to geeking out over coffee stuff, there’s the totally cool (drone videos over coffee farms), really cool (processing experiments at micromills), and very nerdy but still pretty cool (heat transfer comparisons between a Loring and a Probat).
Every once in a while, though, we find ourselves completely geeked out over something that’s decidedly not cool—or at least not particularly sexy.
You know… like, bags.

Origin Report: Asia Pacific (PNG, Sulawesi, and Sumatra) 2017

If we were in the BBQ business instead of the coffee business, we would never try to sell Kentucky ribs to someone looking for Texas brisket. Just because both come from Southern states known for an obsession for smoked meat doesn’t mean they’re automatically interchangeable—a fact we generally know to be true in coffee, especially when comparing, say, Colombians and Brazils, or Kenyans with Ethiopians.

GCC Coffee Tour

Cafe Imports is headed to the Gulf Cooperative Council! We will be teaming up with our partners at Nukhbat Al Marabih and Kafa Coffee to present educational coffee events and cuppings in three cities across the GCC.

Mill City Roasters Education Partnership

It is inspiring to serve the global coffee community while also surrounded by such thriving local coffee scenes at each of our offices. For example, just one Paul Bunyan–size hop-skip-and-jump down the road from our North American headquarters in Minneapolis, you will find an oasis of roasting experts at Mill City Roasters.

How We Buy Coffee

Buying the best coffees means buying coffees better: At Cafe Imports, we believe in offering both our roaster customers and our producing partners the squarest deal for every quality of coffee, from the workhorse 80–83 point lots all the way up to the 90+ microlots. Our sourcing philosophy is designed to be a holistic way to meet all of these needs, and we have found an approach that helps us develop stronger relationships at origin, discover better coffees all the time, and offer the right prices to our partners all along the supply chain. Read more about what we call our “stratified” approach to sourcing coffees, and learn how you can fit these offerings and this principle into your green-coffee buying with us, too.