[In Lance’s recent video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiip3C9l2tk&ab_channel=LanceHedrick), he talks about the most important part of brewing coffee: the beans! He goes on to say that we should reward roasters who are transparent about the beans they source and what they pay for them so we know exactly what we’re getting and where our money is going.
I usually just look to see that the name of the producer is listed but, looking at Onyx’s website I see so much more detail breaking down the price they pay for the beans. Does anyone have a good resource or list of roasters that publish detailed reports for each bean they roast?
Edit: I’ll try to keep a list of roasters that do this based on the comments here. Also Lance recommended this resource on another thread – [https://www.transparency.coffee/pledge/](https://www.transparency.coffee/pledge/)
* SEY Coffee
* September Coffee Company
* Tim Wendelboe
* Onyx Coffee Lab
* Coffee Collective
by kuhnyfe878
11 Comments
Someone needed to say it. This subreddit is insatiable and it’s a rat race to see who can get the nicest and newest. Routine videos are very obviously brags. It’s so icky.
I find the price part very interesting. Because it’s weird in the vast majority of industries for a company to disclose the price it pays for one of its inputs.
Interesting to see how it plays out.
Sey does. I don’t know if there are resources that attempt to aggregate all roasters that are that transparent, though. (Or to validate the stated amounts.)
I’m also curious if there are specific efforts to look at wages and working conditions for the folks doing the actual labor, since there may be a big difference between producers when comparing smallholders to big plantations? It seems like there are some weird complications with stuff like fair trade certifications from what I recall in the breakdown that James Hoffmann did a while back.
Kyle Rowsell’s September coffee Co also does this.
There are no real organizations that regulate and prove the pricing stated. Further, there is absolutely nothing preventing the coffee seller from paying far less downstream and lying, or the producer from paying slave wages etc.
All of this “focus on transparency” is a lot of first world “patting yourself on the back” when in reality it doesn’t enforce what it aims to prove. In other words: you are always taking someone’s word for it” as the green buyer, the roaster, the retail customer, etc.
I’ve been doing this for 7 years as a profession, and there seems to be no legitimate reason for YOU the retail customer to believe in the function of ANY certification or equity pledge statement.
I’m extra uncomfortable with Lance bringing this up, as he’s tied to Onyx and you will find a plethora of past Onyx workers who “would never work for Onyx again” even though in the US they’re spearheading this stuff, and are made of money.
As green buyers, we meet various sellers and farmers and people in between, and we figure out who we believe and who we don’t believe. I’ve had one of our producer partners stay at my home when he was traveling regionally, and I took him to the better roasters in the area and even did a bunch of his sample roasting, because I believe in his project. I’ve had other producers who have all sorts of certs and pledges who have been downright unscrupulous and we’d never do business again. You’d never really know, as a retail customer. And you ALMOST (almost) shouldn’t have to think about it.
If you’re lucky enough to have a decent roaster close to your home, build a relationship and learn about what they do. You’ll probably separate the good guys from the bad guys much more readily than understanding what it means if you see I have a $5.51# green selling for $20/12oz. You will never work out the numbers for overhead unless you have access to everything down to utility and payroll information, bag costs, etc… everything. It’s hard for US… it’s fucking unrealistic for a customer.
When YOU look at the transparency numbers from these roasters, what numbers tell you that things are equitable/good? Like what’s the threshold of good vs evil?
I don’t think you can really know. I just bought 2 pallets: a very good Brazil PN for $3.33 lb, a G2 Ethiopia for $4.xx (low 4th… don’t want to misquote a number) and a G1 Ethiopia for $5.xx.
I know how those work with my bottom line. But also, I understand the individual differences of getting coffee to end user on Ethiopian and Brazilian coffees, and that it might as well be a pallet of apples and a pallet of asparagus. $3.33 Ethiopian coffee would be DEEPLY alarming to me.
When I look at Sey, I have NO FUCKING CLUE how the price paid influences the retail price and where the money is going. The only proof I have that they’re taking care of their people is if employees don’t churn.
When this all started being a thing, a couple roaster friends and I actually went through and compared our prices and Onyx’s prices paid and we were all around the same averages for like-origins and quality. We were all just selling for a little bit too-little at retail by comparison.
But there was no part of the data that would have given us access to whether we are doing good or causing harm with our purchases, nor Onyx for theirs, for example.
I don’t think any of this stuff will do anything positive for origin until it’s full block chain from the picker’s salary through the retailer’s sale, and even then you’d have to know the differences in the economic aspect of that chain between every origin. Getting coffee to retail from Kenya vs Brazil vs Costa Rica, are all impossibly different.
Agree with Lance that beans are the alpha and omega of good coffee. Also agree with Tapedeck that raw numbers with no context mean nothing. My key metric for roasters I deal with is whether their beans are sourced ethically. A responsible roaster who cares about his/her product will also care about the integrity of the supply chain through which it moves.
As I walk home, a few things I’d like to note.
1) obviously, without context, numbers mean little. For one to infer I suggested they did is silly. My point, which I thought was explicated well, is that if a company isn’t willing to share pricing, they’re likely not worth buying from.
2) my audience is MUCH wider than just specialty drinkers, which I imagine makes up a larger percentage of those here. My point with bringing up pricing was more than anything to deter people from purchasing commodity coffee. To infer more is just that- a misguided assumption.
3) I work for Onyx. I brought them up in my list not because I work for them but because they were the first ever to be transparent with every single coffee drop. Counter culture was first to be transparent but in an annual report.
If it was just to plug Onyx, please ask yourself why I literally never use Onyx in any video. Why all my IG lives I never use or discuss Onyx. Why would THIS be where I decide to promote a company with whom I work as an employee? It’s a silly accusation.
*edit- I am letting this stuff affect my head too much. Have been on reddit 4 hours straight worried about what people think and trying to ensure what I said was above reproach. I’m always open to critique. Sucks when I’m just being bad mouthed without conversation. Going to delete this app for a bit. Cheers and thanks for the important conversation!*
Cheers!
Imma hop off this thread. But will be sure to check my messages from @thetapedeck about a potential video chat to post.
I don’t owe Lance any participation in his social media empire. We don’t agree. I DO this work for my small company and I have nothing to gain from his bully pulpit and fan club messing with real people’s jobs. It is evident from enough of his off the cuff BS (“no experience in green buying lol”) that there’s little interest in exchange of ideas—just a dude wanting to set up a target for abuse. I imagine Lance has signed far fewer green contracts than I have, but sure, whatever.
I make a point of never mentioning my group on Reddit because I’m here for discussion, not marketing or pushing a brand at all. I don’t really care if Lance doesn’t like the direction a discussion goes. It’s fine. We don’t have to hang out.
But you’re never getting around the fact that all of this stuff is marketing. It’s for sales generation. Make the end user think there’s something benevolent being done—but take our word for it. Or else a retail customer should be able to tell me where those numbers have to land to be good to farmer X and bad for Farmer Y. Obviously you can’t do this. Because the numbers are basically arbitrary to a retail customer—but we should pay a company on the back for sharing them? It’s not a tool for equity in the supply chain. You do that with your relationships and paying what premiums need to be paid.
At least with Sey (only brought up because they’re in the list that dude posted and because I’ve spoken with them about it) they’re clear that the reason for transparency is that they need to charge more, to pay the high cost of living in NY. I take other former Onyx employees at their word, for their bad experiences working there… they’ve come up often enough in r/coffee, so no, I am not a fan, and Onyx doesn’t need me to be. And the world keeps turning.
The coffee importing cooperative Cooperative Coffees has a transparency page at [fairtradeproof.org](https://fairtradeproof.org) that has copies of executed contracts from the coffee they import and distribute to their roaster-members as well as contact info for all the farmer cooperatives they source from
Roaster members include:
44 North Coffee – Deer Isle, ME, USA
Alternative Grounds – Toronto, ON, Canada
Amavida Coffee and Tea – Santa Rosa Beach, FL, USA
Bean North Bean North Coffee Roasting – Whitehorse, YT, Canada
Bongo Java – Nashville, TN, USA
Café Cambio – Chicoutimi, QC, Canada
Café Campesino – Americus, GA, USA
Coffee Exchange – Providence, RI, USA
Conscious Coffees – Boulder, CO, USA
Coutts-Coffee-Logo Coutts Coffee – Perth, ON, Canada
Desert Sun Coffee Roasters – Durango, CO, USA
Equator Coffee – Almonte, ON, Canada
Heine Brothers’ – Louisville, KY, USA
Higher Grounds Trading Co – Traverse City, MI, USA
Just Coffee Coop Just Coffee Co-op – Madison, WI, USA
La p’tite Brûlerie –Saint-Basile, QC, Canada
Larry’s Coffee-1 Larry’s Coffee – Raleigh, NC, USA
Laughing Whale – Lunenburg, NS, Canada
Peace Coffee – Minneapolis, MN, USA
Sweetwater Organic Coffee – Gainesville, FL, USA
Third Coast Coffee – Austin, TX, USA
Thread Coffee Roasters – Baltimore, MD, USA
Wonderstate Coffee – Viroqua, WI, USA