Topic Talk | Xochitl's Coffee Business
Description
In this episode of The A to Z English Podcast, Xochitl talks about the organic coffee business she has started with her partner.
Transcript:
Jack
Kind of a a sky blue or or light blue color with a a really cool logo and everything on there and so I was just wondering like what's going on with that?
Xochitl
Well, that I started selling organic coffee. My partner is a coffee farmer in the Sierra Juarez, which is an area mountainous area of Wahaca where I live.
Xochitl
Yeah. And he he's a farmer, so he does things like, uh, he plants beans, corn, coffee, pineapples, mangoes, avocados. But the big one of the big.
Xochitl
Sources of income for coffee farmers are for farmers here in Osaka is coffee, is coffee used to be quite well paid, but unfortunately the the price of coffee has really gone down a lot. I'm not sure what's going on, but the market.
Xochitl
It's not that there's more supply than demand. It's just I think, how.
Xochitl
Some things have been happening with exports to the United States and prices and the dollar and the peso and how they're moving up and down. It's caused a lot of issues and.
Xochitl
Well, I was talking to him and he was he was telling me that.
Xochitl
They can only sell their coffee in parchment at 41 pesos, which is about like 2 bucks a kilo. A kilo is 2 point.
Jack
Dollars a kilogram for. Oh my God.
Xochitl
Yes, it's parchment coffee, so it's not like roasted or anything. It's just it that has to go through a whole process before it's ready to drink, but it's.
Jack
MMM.
Xochitl
It's still far to cheap price for organic coffee, and they're not making any money off of it anymore. And also.
Jack
Someone's making money though. It's like the middleman, you know, they're.
Xochitl
Yeah, it's the middleman is making money because the the price of coffee, especially organic coffee and local coffee, has gone up on the market, but they're not paying coffee funds.
Jack
Yeah.
Jack
Right. But the farmers are getting screwed on the on the the back end, yeah.
Xochitl
Yes, it's exactly what's happening. So it's it's really been a disaster for a lot of people. And yeah, I was talking to him and I just had the idea to sell his coffee here in the city because I live here.
Jack
Yeah.
Xochitl
City.
Jack
Hmm.
Xochitl
And you know, we talked about it and we made some plans and we kind of it just got, I just kind of posted it on an expat wahaka group saying hey, guys like would you be interested in organic coffee?
Xochitl
And a bunch of people were like, oh, yeah, you know, we didn't know how to price it. Like, we didn't know.
Xochitl
Anything about it?
Xochitl
Because he's gonna coffee farmer and his family has done coffee farming for generations. But like he's never really been on the on this like market end of.
Xochitl
Things.
Xochitl
Because what they usually do is they they belong to an organization coffee organization called Niche.
Xochitl
Yeah. Which is like organic coffee organization and.
Xochitl
They they give them like.
Xochitl
Courses and stuff on how to grow organic coffee and different varieties that are worth more money and all these kind of.
Xochitl
Things.
Xochitl
But because of how the market's going and I don't know what's happening, they're only able to buy 200 kilos on average from each coffee farmer.
Jack
Oh, it's nothing. 200 kilos.
Xochitl
And.
Xochitl
Yeah, the the usual production is at least five. You usually at least have 500 kilos leftover after that, you know, even for a small farmer. So uh.
Xochitl
Yeah. So it got to the point, you know, they have they have like at least 300 kilos or leftovers. So I talked to him and we went through the whole process of deciding to sell it and we got a lot of attention on that's that's.
Xochitl
What I could do?
Xochitl
And so we kind of had hit the ground running because I posted this just out of curiosity and I got I got, like business out the wazoo and.
Jack
Yeah.
Xochitl
I was like.
Xochitl
Tons of people inquiring and and a lot to keep up with. And so at that point we had to go ahead and we hit the ground running.
Xochitl
So is he.
Xochitl
We we decided to go with an artisanal process because that's pretty much how he knows how to make the coffee. So what you have to do is you have to take a like mortar and pestle, which for those of our listeners who aren't familiar, a mortar is like kind of like a a stone or wooden bowl or something and a pestle.
Jack
MHM.
Xochitl
Like a giant one, though.
Xochitl
And a puzzle is like the thing that you use to pound it. So people used to do this to like grind flour and stuff. In the olden days.
Jack
Right now you see a lot of people using mortar and pestle for like medicine and stuff like that.
Xochitl
Yeah. Medicine are like herbs. A lot of people use it for, like, finely grinding herbs and teas, but he has to use a giant one to like, take all the the kind of peel the shell off of our coffee.
Jack
Right.
Jack
OK.
Xochitl
So he does that all by hand, so that's crazy. It's a lot of work and hard labor.
Jack
Wow, he must be in great shape then because.
Xochitl
He hasn't. Really. Yeah, he's a really good team. But yeah, he's very strong and honestly, I don't think I would probably last two minutes trying.
Jack
Strong.
Xochitl
To do that.
Xochitl
So yeah, he he definitely he dishes the coffee that way and then we pay a local woman to hand roast the coffee.
Jack
Yeah, me neither.
Xochitl
Which is artisanal traditional method to do it?
Jack
Wow.
Jack
That's awesome. So like if people start drinking your coffee, they're they're going to be used to her roast. Basically, she kind of determines the flavor in a way like part of it comes from the the, you know, of course the bean. But then part of it also flavor of the coffee comes from how it's roasted. Right.
Xochitl
And right.
Xochitl
1.
Xochitl
Yeah. So she so depends on how you raise the coffee and there's different roasts like you can do a light roast, dark roast and medium roast, and they all have different flavor profiles. And she does kind of a medium dark roast, which works really well because they they they're hand roasted, they have like, a different. They have color variations and the beans, but once you.
Jack
Yeah.
Xochitl
Grind them in your coffee grinder or whatever. It's an even color. It's a uniform color and uh, it's smells delicious because there's the sugars and the coffee beans are like caramelized because they're roasted by hand, so they're not burnt like in our machine. But that would be if you did it by machine process.
Jack
Yeah.
Xochitl
And.
Xochitl
It just comes out really great. It has really. It has like a bold uh flavor and it still has body for those who like dark roasts, but it's not like a bitter dark roast that has, like, acidic notes and floral notes.
Xochitl
And uh, it's very it has a very sweet aroma, a really pleasant like caramel like aroma and almost like some chocolate you.
Xochitl
Know it's really.
Xochitl
Be good. I'm. I'm not a huge coffee drinker myself, but I definitely started because I had to describe it to the clients.
Jack
Yeah.
Jack
You sound like a coffee drinker, though. Jeez, you. You're describing all the notes. I mean, I just like. I just wanna. When I saw the the post, I just wanted to grab one of those bags. And just, like, open it and just stick my nose in there and.
Xochitl
Yeah.
Jack
Just smell it.
Xochitl
Yeah, was.
Jack
I love that smell of fresh. Oh my gosh. I bet it just it is.
Jack
Only.
Xochitl
Yes, it smells amazing and.
Xochitl
There's been a lot of things to learn. We price to way too low. So now we're figuring that out because we we didn't really know about the market. And there's a single origin coffee, which means it's coffee all from the same community and the same pic of that year. And so it's like it's worth more. And then it's also organic. So it's worth more and it has expensive.
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