People often think of warmth and human connection when it comes to coffee culture. They think about an artistic barista and a well-crafted drink, a farmer benefiting from their own hard work, and maybe the roaster who diligently brings the bean to its fullest potential. But there are vibrant, undiscussed spaces that exist even still. There are people within the coffee industry pick cherries, who travel all year sourcing coffee, folks who sort through beans and quantify the quality of hundreds of samples sent from producers around the globe. There are people who design retail bags, who train and educate baristas, who drive through bustling city traffic to deliver coffee to cafes. All of this goes into the final cup handed over to one final and vitally important person—the consumer. This blog aims to shine light into odd-angled corners of the coffee industry, and to bring forth the amazing human beings that make coffee happen.
The point of this space is not to sell you Metric coffee (the stuff sells itself, I mean talk about stunning, eye-popping brews—okay, okay, but really). The point is to keep talking within the venue of a coffee-blog. Let’s get past the weather-talk, and move beyond the general foodie chit-chat. Let’s sit down, and contemplate the beverage we’ve decided is so important. Because in deciding that it is important, we have made it so, and along the way we have created an opportunity to connect even more meaningfully. There are so many focuses to grasp onto: sourcing, roasting, serving, science, design, photography, journalism, fashion, sustainability, social responsibility, humor, innovation and more. Whatever the topic we delve into, we’re keeping the magnificent human at the forefront.
By consciously reminding ourselves that people are what matter, by focusing on how we can impact one another, and what coffee means to us on a personal level, we can move deeper than skin, further than tastebuds. We can move from small-talk to real-talk, and in doing so we can finally get closer to the heart of things to share a genuine human moment.