Buying fresh coffee bean from farmer directly!

[JustinWu]

Hi sirs,

I am the owner of coffee shop and looking for fresh coffee bean.
I am looking for fresh coffee bean from Panama, Costa Rica, Quatemala, Columbia and Brazil.
Could experienced people teach me where to buy that directly?


BRs,

Justin

 

[peterjschmidt]

You're looking for green or roasted coffee? If roasted, you don't want to buy from the farmer.

 

[John P]

And if you are looking for raw (green) coffee, you should seek a professional unless you:

A) have the expertise to evaluate and grade coffee and
B) have the time to develop a network of farms, handle all the shipment, importing fees, FDA compliance, etc, and
C) have the need for a sizeable amount of coffee (it has to make sense to both you and the farmer)

Otherwise, it's far too much to delve into while trying to open a shop. Perfect one skill at a time.

There are people who have already developed these relationships and networks and have 20+ years experience doing it.
I'd suggest looking at some of these first unless you want to make coffee importing part of your business.

 

[Bereka]

If you are interested in Ethiopian Arabica Coffee, you are welcome to meet with my family and visit our coffee farm from any of three locations we have in south western Ethiopia. We also process our coffee using our own coffee processor with color sorter and Export our own coffee.

 

[jessika]

You should try Wolthers Douque, they have a website with an offer list and you can contact them and ask for samples. They have coffee beans from all those places if I'm not mistaken and also great articles about the current coffee market. Check it out. Look for it on google or even facebook.

 

[topher]

Jessika do you work for Wothers ? I see you are just up the road from them.

 

[jessika]

No i Don't, however i do Know someone who works for them periodically. I have tried their coffee before and i really liked it

 

[nv305]

Hi JustinWu,

Preferably, if you don't already, learn the language in the country of origin...at least enough to get around and learn the vocabulary for the industry in the native language. It will definitely go a long way because you will need to travel there if you are serious about sourcing directly.

I second what JohnP said. One of the hardest things I you will encounter sourcing directly from any farmer is travelling through the channels to export the coffee. Upon it arrival to the US it, usually, is not a problem. It takes a lot of time to get the supply chain to work efficiently, but when you start to deal with volume it is interesting because you are with it every step of the way. In addition, FDA Food Registration Facility Applications for the plant(s) in country of origin. If you can set those up your limitation is $, but then again so is everything haha.

Hope this helps a bit. Best of luck

 

[GKcoffee]

If you are are running a small coffee shop, it is probably not economical for you to source coffee beans directly yourself. We at HiLine Coffee decided to partner with several specialty roasters who source either directly from the farmers (with whom they've had decades-long relationships) or from green coffee importers. You can get the advantages of scale and produce better product cheaper this way. We sell hundreds of thousands pounds of coffee annually and believe that we are better off working with roasters that have the relationships, the equipment and the expertise. As you probably know most of the specialty coffee industry has quite a bit of spare capacity. So I suggest you check out Counter Culture, Intelligentsia or any local roaster where you are. You will save yourself a lot of money and heartache. Also, feel free to reach out to us at HiLine Coffee if you have any specific questions. Best of luck!

 

[sarwanov]

That's very interesting post.Good Job