ROASTER INTERVIEW W/ JEFF HUEY
Jeff Huey: Co-founder of Seeds Coffee Co.
Seeds Coffee Co. | Birmingham, AL
So to start, what’s your morning coffee routine?
I very rarely make coffee at my house, maybe twice a week tops. Most of time I'll come into Seeds in the morning and I'll get a cup of batch brew and that's really all I’ll drink. Every now and then you know there's something exciting that we have and I'll come in and make a cup of that. But yeah, for the most part its just a cup of whatever Seeds is brewing on batch.
What do you look for when you’re buying green coffee, your buying philosophy so to speak?
My mindset for buying coffee is that we want to do it through relationship and share the burden of business, not just have all the power, but share the risk with the people that were buying from; and the coffee has got to be good. I'm not gonna take a risk on coffee that's not quality because at the end of the day, the product that we put out in front of people has to be good because we have already set those expectations. If I buy a bum coffee and put it in front of people, it's gonna confuse our customers. Quality is number one, and then, secondly, it's story. If the coffee doesn't have a purposeful or meaningful existence I'm not really interested in it. That's why I don't want to buy coffee from large green providers, not to say that large suppliers aren’t doing good things, but that isn’t compelling to me because there's so many other pieces and people of the coffee trade that are just being overlooked. And then thirdly is, what impact does it have at origin and on the producers? What does the supply chain really look like and can I know the intricacies of the trade? This farm that we're purchasing from, what do they practice? Do they pay their employees well? Do they care about their environment and the people around them? That's why we've stuck with the coffee producers that we have because we respect what they do. It’s not just that they have great coffee. It's that all that they do is good. I didn't even say price by the way, and I think that's kind of typical of our coffee purchasing, is price doesn't need to be number one and that's backwards when it comes to a lot of thought and honestly can get you in trouble at times but you know, price is probably number four or five for us. I think you can find competitive prices almost anywhere, but can you find a coffee that's quality traded and the people behind it are quality people?
What benefits and challenges have you experienced from buying co-op?
The benefit is the pursuit, that largely keeps me interested in coffee. If you can compare it to fishing in saltwater. The fact that you know there are these big, hard to catch fish out there that any given trip you could catch, probably not, but there’s the pursuit of it and I think that part of green buying is the benefit. I know there are really amazing people out there producing really good coffee and I think we can find them.
The negative is most of the time you have to end around all the systems that have been set up. I'm not gonna go through a traditional importer, I'm not gonna go through a big importer that's got a hundred different coffees for us. A lot of times if you want those relationships, you kind of have to do it on your own, which is hard because you gotta know the producer you gotta know the middle man, the exporting and the importing and the warehouse, all that stuff is very difficult to do. So I could get this great product to my door and roast it, but that actually wasn't profitable and it was a very difficult to do and so while I do have this great coffee, all the things involving getting it here were really hard and made it a lot more difficult. So, I think that the negative is anytime you're trying to build new platforms, there's a little bit of machete work that you have to do. That's difficult because it takes dedication; it's not easy and you get burned a lot. You're dealing with multiple countries, currencies, lifestyles and culture that are not like yours.
Last Question. What was the best coffee you had this year?
I would say two coffees from Colombia that we bought through Cafe Uba, a geisha and the Toffee would probably be the best coffees I had this year. Yeah, all the good coffees I had this year were from Colombia. They have the resources and the creativity and I think that’s changing the game there. I’ve also had some really intriguing coffees from Indonesia this year, I think Indonesia could make a comeback.