Sourcing green coffee doesn't have to mean sorting through endless options to find the one that works. Arcadia green coffee focuses on identifying Colombian coffees that match what roasters are already seeking or preparing to release. They only move forward when pricing aligns for both producer and roaster, they pay producers upfront, and they provide a clear landed price, helping roasters make better sourcing decisions more efficiently. Find out more about MAPPA forwards podcast advertising partner Arcadia Green Coffee by visiting their Instagram at Arcadia Green Coffee and then contact Algusto Amaya on WhatsApp or email.
You'll find all the links and details in the show notes. Welcome to the Daily Coffee Pro by MAPPA forward friends. I'm your host Lee Safar and this is episode one of a brand new five-part series with one of everybody's favorites, Kim Thompson from Raw Coffee Company into Buy. Kim, welcome back to the podcast.
Thank you, Lilly. Nice to see you. It's wonderful to have you back here. I wish it was under better circumstances, but I really want to off right off the bat.
Thank you for in the middle of what is going on in the Middle East, making some time to have this conversation and to kind of give us some insight into how you are experiencing this. So thank you for being here. Well, welcome. In this series of folks, we are going to be using the situation that is happening in the Middle East to navigate a theme which we're calling steering your business through a crisis.
And to get an understanding of what we mean by that, Kim, would you tell us what is happening right now? Well, obviously things change daily. A couple of days ago, we might have been in ceasefire, but then obviously not. It's with the war with Iran.
Yeah. So I think there is a lot of unknown. There's a lot of uncertainty. We are left in a situation where it's a little bit like COVID, but it's not COVID.
There was a certain level of fear with this unknown, whereas now it's more that you don't have control. Nothing is in your control. So we are relying on interesting the leadership of the country and actually doing an amazing job. We're dealing with a situation where every day, almost days there are alerts on our phones, which are the same alert that we had through COVID.
So it's the sound that your body remembers. It's like it's wild. And that will be an alert just to ask you to stay safely in place. And then you wait for a clearance to come to let you know that you can resume your normal activities.
And then you hear occasionally you hear the jets and things depending on where you live, where they're doing interceptions. And then we're just keeping probably a lot more time on our phones. We're looking at trusted sources to make sure that we're getting the real information. And yeah, we're back to a lot of regular communications with our team that we work with.
Obviously, we're a very multicultural team. So we have a lot of, we're now 81, 82 employees and coming from 16 different countries, I think it is, or maybe it's 80 different countries from around the world at the moment. So each individual person has their own responsibilities with regard to the salary, supporting your families, their siblings, their children, their parents. Most of them share accommodation by choice with other people that come from their nationalities.
So we get them a monthly allowance for their accommodation. But they live with the people they want to and they share their costs because they're here to try and send them the most money they can home. So they're already being impacted by a lot of the people they share their homes with that have already lost their jobs. So there's all people that are believing or maybe they wanted to leave by choice because they didn't want to be in a situation like this.
They wanted to be home with their families. We just, today, two days ago, we started having one on ones with our team and we did a big team meeting to talk to them about how we're going to look after them and, you know, sustain the business through this period of uncertainty. So it's sort of taking information you have at the moment, looking at the best and worst-case scenario with that information and then trying to ensure everyone's safety. And we're still open as a business.
We did close for one day because at the beginning of the war, because we were unsure at that stage how safe it was for the team to move around. But it's everything's really working normally. That must be a total my fuck. Well, the schools, the kids are on distance learning.
The older children who were going to be doing their big exams, they've been told they're not doing exams. So my heart goes out to the parents who have the young children and the older children, you know, all the kids, actually, because you know, being stuck at home with your embarrassing parents and not being around you, your friends. It's COVID times all over again. Yeah, so because of the schools being closed, the roads are quite a lot of families have left, because at least if they go home, you know, they have their family support.
They're maybe the breadwinner has stayed if his businesses are still open. So yeah, there's a lot of uncertainty and it changes each day. I'm happy to be here. I want to be here.
I feel, at the moment, I feel safe. But I'm definitely, you know, me, Kim, as a person. I have days where I rely on my business partner, my partners to, you know, pick me up because I'm feeling a bit low. But I think it's not so much fear of my sustainability or the viability of my business.
It's just a deep sadness for the impact on human life and the countries that are around us, you know, we are being protected. I feel, you know, as a mother, a grandmother, you know, it's we're so fortunate here that we are being protected and look after our neighboring countries. I mean, what happened in Lebanon yesterday? It's just crazy.
It's just makes you feel sick to your core, the sheer loss of life. And very sad because obviously here, I've lived here for 30 years, or I think it's, it's more than 30 years now. And I've lived in multiple different places. The business role, I've had the 18 years, 18 years in February.
I have so many friends from Palestine, from Iran, from Lebanon, from Syria, from Jordan. And we all socialize together, you know, some of them are suppliers to us. Some are just in social groups that I have, that I hang out with. So the, you know, checking in on all of them to see their okay, to make sure their families are okay.
You know, I have friends who've lost their homes, who've lost family members. So it actually, on an emotional level, it makes you feel a level of guilt if you're just worrying about your business. Right. Right.
That's such a rollercoaster. It sounds like a strange kind of, I don't even know what the word is, like a Twilight Zone kind of thing, you know, where you're living this thing, sort of dissociating from it, or at the same time, not feeling like whatever you're feeling is really valid, because everybody else is feeling more. Very much. And so you have ways, you know, like do every day.
But I think, you know, in our cafe, in our roastery, we have a big percentage of clients that are immorality, and they have become friends. And many of them are influential, important immorality men and women who come to raw because we're in our coz, in a warehouse, in our coz, they're almost incognito. And it's it's lovely at the moment, because we're all being thanked for, you know, they're thanking me for staying, they're thanking me for keeping the business open, they're thanking me for trusting them, they're looking after us. So it's funny as well, because on, you have that side of it, where, you know, it's almost making us closer.
To give people some insight, obviously, you guys know that I live in Dubai, but I'm in Australia at the moment, the building that I live in in Dubai has 650 apartments in it. And it was full before I left it, like every one of the apartments has residents in it. There are 13 families left there. Everybody else has left.
So we are, yeah, we are, it's the same again, a comparison to COVID, although not, where the hotels are very, very quiet, you know, closed, yeah. So there might be some, I don't know the percentages of occupancy, but very, very small. So the tourism is finished. People who have stayed, obviously, have been cautious with their income, because they don't know what's going to happen.
They, so the restaurants are slow and quiet. Community cafes are obviously reduced, but they're the ones that are doing okay, because people are not moving too far unnecessarily. We are busy with our be to see like our our line store, logistics online store, and we're not on any aggregating platforms or anything like that. So it all comes through our website.
Our, our, the customers that are coming into the cafe to buy bags of coffee might stay and have a coffee or a meal, but we are down in the cafe about, to about 40% of our regular sales. So we could assume if we look at our sales that maybe 60% of our clientele is left, or not spending money. From the, from our team's perspective, the people who've lost their jobs already, some of them are family families that are living together. They are in the process of deciding whether to head home or whether to wait out, because they're unsure how long it's been the last four.
And then, you know, I have family here, my family, actually, my youngest daughter is actually traveling, and she's doing a project in Congo at the moment. And we've been, you know, she, she has security up there, but it's like, you know, imagine thinking that doing a trip like that, because I think we, I might be from New Zealand, but we're so international here, and we travel so much, and we move around so much. And, you know, I love that, I love living here because of that, you know, I love New Zealand, but I'm New Zealand's quiet, and, you know, the opportunities are minimal, and you look at New Zealand because of the nature and the quality of life, and people live there with very little, because they don't have opportunities, whereas here, it's still a country of immense opportunity, and it's vibrant, and it's culture is just, I love it, I love it, and I know we get a bad rap here, but we're not superficial, I'm not dripping in gold, I don't have any diamonds, you know, and we feel that this is our home. And when I say that our Emirati, you know, clients and customers and friends are thanking us for trusting them and thanking us for staying, they're actually thanking us for not just coming here to earn better money and leave, but thanking us for acknowledging that we treat it like our home, that's what we feel at the moment, but yeah, George is in Congo, and, you know, she's taking on me, the irony of that, the irony, you know, and Gabrielle and her family are working as per usual, like we are doing, and we are hoping that the work we're doing, the time we have at the moment with it being down, we're using to work on things to ensure our business is going to be in a strong position, hopefully, when things settle down, and I hope they settle down for us in the UAE, but I really hope they settle down, and there's some sense of sanity that prevails for the neighbouring countries, because it's just devastating.
When you say it's devastating, like what can you tell us about what the vibe is like, because you are really outspoken about in the best possible way, and real inspiration to a lot of us about using our voice with regards to what's happening in Palestine, what's happening in Lebanon, what can you tell us about that situation, and for context, folks, we're recording this on the 9th of April. Well, I don't feel anything was improved for the people in Gaza or the people in Palestine, I think it's worse. I think there's all the aid agencies have been kicked out, the entry for food or medicine is restricted ridiculously, they're still being killed daily, land is still being taken as the yellow line has moved tighter, and they, you know, there's no land for themselves to grow food, there's restrictions on water, there's an ability for them to fish, so how do they live? You see some happy stories with children going back to school and these little sheds and these little girls with their backpacks on, and I just don't know how they've had the resilience to stay fighting and fighting for survival for as long as they have been, and then, you know, it's not just in Palestine, you know, the devastation that, you know, 160 strikes yesterday within 10 minutes, and not just Southern Beirut, where, you know, they're trying to take land, but in the capital, it's, and by the way we mean Israel, we don't want to make any confusion about any of this Israel.
Yeah, yeah, and America, so I think my, the news that I read, the trusted sources that I follow are probably different to what many people in New Zealand or Australia follow or other places in the world follow, and you could counter that by saying that, you know, it's more influenced regionally and more biased regionally, but I don't feel that's the case, I feel my access to information is probably way less biased, but personally my, you know, I don't know if I've told you this, but I'm not religious, I don't have a religion, my religion is humanity, my religion is very, very much about putting myself in somebody else's shoes and feeling that I could have been born in one of those countries, and how could I have survived and managed and kept my family safe. And I wouldn't have had the opportunities that I've had to have my own company, you know, as a female, a single female, I've, you know, I'm very, very lucky, very lucky, and I'm always grateful for that, that I was born in a country where I had the ability to have choice. But I have to say, if I was remotely, remotely, considering needing a religion to give me a sense of comfort and peace, I would be staring way more towards Islam than I would be to anything else in the world, anything else in the world. And I think I've watched, I've watched these people through the most horrific hardships in the countries around us, and I've seen what their faith has given them.
So yeah, I'm very, I think I'm, I have a sadness in me that's deeper than it ever has. I think it's, it's combined at a time where we're dealing with watching a genocide on our phones every day, which has definitely impacted my, my life more than I would have ever assumed it was possible. But I, but I also know I have waves of really wanting to believe that we can survive this and we can see a positive outcome. I want to add something to, to what you've said, Kim, is that, you know, my family come from Syria.
And when I speak to my family here in Australia about what's happening, one thing keeps coming up and they keep saying, you know, this has been done to our people for a long time. The world is just paying attention to what's happening in Lebanon and Palestine and Syria now. But this has been my mum's a little girl. I'm pretty sure, yeah, that I've told you that I'm, I was quite late to learn about this region and anything that's happening.
And really, only when, I mean, I'd lived here in the Middle East for quite a long time before I became aware of what had happened. And that was through reading history books, through meeting other people of other different cultures over dinner and, you know, understanding what your family's reality was, their histories were, their personal lived histories were that I, I realized that I was super naive and very complacent. And, you know, I'm embarrassed about that. But I'm still learning now.
And, you know, it was only in 2018 when I went to Palestine for the first time that I really got dropped into a Hunger Games environment. And that's when a switch for me turned on, where I am someone who hates injustice. And it could be injustice for anything. You know, I don't like being treated differently because of the color of my second skin.
I'm so embarrassed about it. I, I sometimes, because I want to, I want to change the color of my skin. I, I detest the injustice for the Aborigines in Australia, and the history from our region. And, you know, I grew up being taught a certain type of history that it's only in my adult life that I learned that there was another version of truth that, yeah, sorry, this is supposed to be about coffee.
This is exactly the perfect kind of insight that we were looking at. And it's, this is the human side of what it is to see your business through a crisis, right? I mean, it's all about, yeah, we talk, we talk about communication, we talk about relationships and community. And I, I, I, I say these things where I'm when I'm being interviewed or in, you know, TV tutorials or things where I'm saying the reason or is so as a business doing well, and we're so strong is because of the relationships.
Yeah. And the fact that we cared for our producers during COVID and, you know, whatever it can be, this is just another layer of that where it's, we are, we are on the phones on Zoom calls like this now with our producers, our coffee producers. We, we have been traveling recently as we increase some of the products that we're buying, that we've already, we are in a growth stage of our business. So, very excitedly, we had just taken on a new business partner a couple of months ago.
And it's something we've been working on for since early 2025. And really exciting. And he's our growth officer. So yeah, Charles, and it's super, I think it's actually helped both Madden and I, because we're both very different people.
And, and we look at things from completely different ways. And we usually get to the same, we can just agree on decisions we're making for our business, but coming up at it from different angles. And we now have somebody who we think compliments our start also has, you know, he's not a coffee person. He will die, but I'm going to tell you, he just upgraded his coffee machine at home and bought a espresso machine.
And he came in and told us the truth about it. He drinks the math because he's not, he's just not in coffee. So the whole thing, you know, you could laugh about that. But out of all our, out of our 18 years of running a company here in Dubai, in the UAE, he's someone like you, who we really respected.
They're business acumen there. And we felt if we could choose anyone, he was someone that would help us to grow our business and to strengthen it. So it's not about the coffee, it's about the business. And sadly, I think, you know, we're, we're being asked again, we're being tested again to run a business through crisis.
And a lot of that is not about the coffee, it's about the people and how you conduct yourself. And that is why I wanted to have this series with you is because I think that a lot of people are completely oblivious to what's coming as a consequence of this crisis. And right now, you're feeling it in the UAE and in the Middle East or West Africa, as I'm trying to refer to it more I mean, West Asia, more and more. But what people are not understanding is this is going to have ripple effects, the longer this goes on around the world.
And so join us in the next episode, folks, because we're going to get some insight into the steps that you take to adapt in these times of huge, like, tectonic shifts in your business. So join us for the second episode of this series. Peace, I'm a peanut butter, have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, consider supporting my beforeward our guests and advertisers on social media, subscribe, hit the like button, leave a comment and share this episode with a friend.
And if you'd like to support our work more directly, become a paid premium YouTube subscriber or Patreon backer to get early access to the show and free directly to your inbox each week. You can find links in the show notes.