Honestly, I don't see this here as an association that presents us for many reasons and for many aspects. If I recall the time of the COVID, you know, we were suffering as an industry, I remember 90% of our sales went down because our clients couldn't get into supermarkets. And at that time, you know, you would imagine that a strong coffee association, special coffee association? A trade association.
Yes, exactly. Yes, exactly. You know, like to say, nationally, we're going to have meetings with supermarkets to grant an access to specialty coffee roasters. Specialty coffee roasters are a part of an association and those kind of things don't happen because they don't truly represent an association.
Ethiopia's coffee harvest is wrapping up and coffee samples are becoming available and ready to ship in the Arcana coffee marketplace. Arcana coffee connects roasters directly with smallholder farmers in Ethiopia and builds in the hard parts, integrated QC, logistic support and produce a lead transparency. With every passing day, new samples are being registered on Arcana's online marketplace. With all the information you'll need to help you make buying decisions and build direct relationships with farmers across Ethiopia.
Registering for an account now helps you understand timelines and can assist in planning your 2026 buying with confidence, even if you've never bought direct before. The minimum is around 20 bags and Arcana can pull multiple roasters to make that M.O.Q. so you can participate without overcommitting. If you're curious, listen to our recent conversation on the podcast with founder Matthew Thornton, then explore the marketplace via the link in our show notes and register for an account.
You can also book a meeting with Matthew and he'll walk you through requesting samples, the order process, pooled orders, QC and shipping once coffees are ready. Samples are becoming available now and supporting our advertisers is a great way to support our mission at M.O.Q. forward to build responsible businesses with responsible pricing models. Check the show notes for details and explore Arcana coffee marketplace today.
Welcome to the daily coffee program, M.O.Q. Friends, I'm your host Lee Safar and this is episode five of a five part series, our first series for the year. We are talking about coffee in 2026 with Feliban Angel and in this episode, I think this is, while all the things that people want to hear about, we have talked about in the first four episodes. But in this episode, we're going to be talking about how do people prepare for the year ahead.
And in this episode, we're going to talk about some of the things that have happened on social media. I know I said we were going to talk about it in the last episode, but there wasn't time. So guys, we started to talk on the SCA and we started to touch on things like how they funded. And Angel, you mentioned that they are funded by corporates.
Can you tell me what you mean by that, please? It's very simple. You know, when you go to the shows and when you go to the website, you can see clearly some brands that sponsor that are members. And of course, in the speciality of association, it depends on the size you are, on the size of your company, to what the contribution you need to make.
So by all means, you can imagine the large corporation, they pay more. Right. So basically, they found in a good part, an association like speciality of association. I always think that it is not an speciality of association that takes into consideration the global coffee industry, but rather from the consuming part.
I would say from roasting to the consuming part, less for not saying completely excludes the producing part of the industry. Why I think that that is interesting is because when you look at the 2024 filing, they made $21 million in revenue, and the majority of that came from education. The majority of that came from sort of like the fees that they get from people getting certificates and for getting qualified as trainers, which actually really surprised me because I know they make a ton of money out of trade shows. And even that amount of money that they get out of trade shows, which is where the corporates are paying money for sponsorship and for all of that stuff, education outstripped that, which, and I think when the 2025 numbers come out, that will be even higher because they now have the, the trading has turned to be their thing now.
Yeah, but I imagine it and I anticipate it. I don't know if you remember when you had this conversation when they absorbed the CQI that I tell you. I think the CAA is doing this more because they see that the ratios are going down. Yeah.
And guys, this week, we are recording this on the 14th and the 15th of January. In a couple of days, World of Coffee Dubai is happening, and by the time you're listening to this, it will have finished. And I can tell you the vibe here is that people are really uncertain about whether there's, is it going to be successful? Is there not going to be successful?
I'm not coming to World of Coffee Dubai because I want to be doing business. I'm coming because I want to have fun and Dubai is a great city to come and have fun in. If they're going to World of Coffee, they're probably going to go for one day. That's the general vibe around that.
And I think that you're up. The people that have reached out to me and said, Hey, can we catch up? Can we have a meeting? When I asked them, why are you coming to World of Coffee?
Like, are you coming? How has it been for you the last 12 months at trade shows? And like, yeah, host was the smallest it's ever been. All of the other trade shows, it wasn't a great way to do business.
It was a great way to meet people and to build, like, socialize and do that kind of stuff. But to actually do functional business, there was not very much new business. Felipe, you were going to say something at the end of the last episode. And I used your, I practiced your French knot.
Go ahead. It's liberating, isn't it? Yeah, I'm not going to scare the knot. I just wanted to add a point to there.
At the beginning of my coffee profession in 2007, I worked in a restaurant in St. Louis, Missouri. And I remember my boss at the time had just bought a machine that everyone was just so, they were going, everyone was going crazy over. It was just revolutionized coffee.
This was the best thing ever. And it was called a clover. And I remember they brought in, they did this whole gig that they bought a couple of excellence coffee first place. And Guatemala had it delivered an armored truck and the TV was there filming.
And it was just like, all these things, you know, and it was just, and then I think it was a two years later. Starbucks bought clover and killed it. And that always stuck with me. That was like, no strange why, you know, it was like the first really good brewer automatic brewer and why someone do that.
So I do think that it's in the big corporate industry to push people away from filter coffee. I think it's in there in the interest to push people towards sugary espresso based drinks that you can roast darker. You can buy worse coffee and you can blend milk in because I don't think it's the big guys don't want people to be drinking plain coffee. They want coffee to be masked with a lot of other stuff.
And I think as a special industry, we should always look at it. Well, what are their weaknesses and where are my strengths? And I think going back to what I said in the beginning of the podcast, a luxury experience is also about time. It's also about the experience and how long the experience lasts.
And I do like myself and espresso, but I think it's the weakest of all coffee drinks because it's meant to be consumed in less than a minute. And then you're gone and it's concentrated and you can't really taste the flavor. And, you know, if you go back to why the espresso even was created, it was created in Italy that was impoverished after World War II without access to beans and all of that. So I would urge people to, I think every single specialty coffee rosary and coffee shop to have a leg up when it comes to filter coffee and bring people back around that and bring people back around the discussion.
And, you know, and we have a we have an uphill battle bringing Gen Z into the story to drink black coffee because they're not doing it. But if you go back to the trade shows and the organizations, I've always found it really weird why the barista in the espresso arena took all of the glory for the last 20 years. And although I'd love the watching the barista competitions and I'd love the innovation that comes out of all that. Not so much anymore.
I enjoyed watching it for a long time. I did. I did enjoy it. I have to be honest in the last eight years.
Maybe I haven't even I didn't even bother walking by a competition. But I do enjoy anything where people put a lot of time and effort to improve something. I just think that all I just think that all of the juice has been squeezed out of there. Like that's why I invest another dollar in that with that area.
Whereas there are no forums for producers to be talking about new varieties. There are amazing new varieties being developed that are fundamentally changing coffee and there's nothing in any picture talking about that. Occasionally you get like a co-fermented conversation, but there's very little high quality conversation going on. And the trade shows have become more and more about equipment.
And alternative milk and equipment and everything else except for the experience of coffee itself. So I think we need to be careful about that. And when I go back and I think why did Starbucks kill that? It's just really strange because that's maybe that's the weak point.
And I think that people overestimate the importance of trade shows sometimes. But the amount of money that you invest in, the amount of trade shows out there, traveling, booths, the amount of people. I think that in a world where we're seeing companies, departments stores, like Satsad Avenue, I think is just one bankrupt and all these other things. Chapter 11, yeah.
And so maybe you don't need to get travel so far. There's a different way to connect with people. So I agree with Enthal, I think that the SCA investment in the CQI, they probably see that there's something going on there with trade shows losing a bit of steam. Well, and it connects back to what you were saying, Enthal, but the fact that the trade shows no longer, well, the SCA really represents from the roaster on in the supply chain.
They're not really providing anything. If anything, what they said was he's CQI have $250,000 a year and go and do the development work that we're not going to do. And the CQI is going to go and do that now, but they're going to keep focusing on what they're focusing on. And so the trade shows are not a place where we can have a conversation about how do we improve the longevity of this industry.
And that actually is the part of the industry where most of the innovation needs to happen if we are going to transform this industry into having life long beyond the next 20 years. Because right now, it's pretty clear to anyone who's paying attention that the corporates are really giving small businesses on the consuming end a run for their money. And we have no idea what's going to happen. The consumer that is drinking coffee is saying, I'm not going to spend $15 twice a day to go and have my regular coffee that I would normally have in a cafe anymore.
I'm going to start brewing that at home. So every second reel I'm seeing now on Instagram is, Hey guys, we just want to tell you unfortunately closing our doors where next month is going to be our last month because rents are going off. And it's just getting much, much harder to run these small businesses. I saw that we can keep in the timeframe allotted to us.
I do want to make sure that we talk about the salary of the SEO that there's SEA's CEO, Janice Postolopoulos. There's been a lot of commotion online created from the salary of $900,000. What do you guys think that that says about our industry when we're paying CEOs of associations that are so far removed from the supply chain? Those kinds of salaries.
Honestly, I don't see SEA as an association that represents us for many reasons and for many aspects. If I recall the time of the COVID, we were suffering as an industry. I remember 90% of our sales went down because our clients couldn't get into supermarkets. And at this time, you know, you would imagine that a strong coffee association, a special coffee association.
Yes, exactly. You know, like to say, okay, nationally, we're going to have meetings with supermarkets to grant an access to a special coffee roasters that are part of an association. And those kind of things don't happen because they don't truly represent an association. And at the same time, at the same location, I think it would be better for the industry, for Baddestas, for roasters, than an association would work with local universities and schools to make a truly recognized nationally education.
Because at the end, what you're doing is what? Giving the promise that don't have any legitimacy. They don't have any legitimacy. And at the same time, you know, even in France, I remember when I started working, some Baddestas were not even employed legally.
And you know, you say like, you could advocate for different things. So I prefer not to get in order to do that because it's an association that I don't think represents our interests, our industry. And you know, there is something very, there is a saying in Mexico. They say who pays the mariachi's gets the song.
And I love that. It pays the mariachi's because. Exactly. And who are contacting who are sponsoring you the most?
Who are you funding by? Well, it's these people. So you represent their interests. And that's it.
I had spoken to somebody who contacted me after we released the video. Anyone who hasn't seen it, go and check on our social media or LinkedIn or YouTube. And this person had said to me, I don't think you understand it. Because I hate the SCA.
But I am this many years into it, so ingrained in their ecosystem that if I wanted to get out of it, I couldn't because there's no alternative. I make all my money from education. And I can't do it any other way. And I'm like, but you could, you could just do it and be a trainer without offering a certificate.
And she says, yeah, but then I won't be a judge. I'm also a judge. And I also like going to competitions. And I want to be able to do that.
Do you get paid to go to competitions? No. It's a messed up system, in my opinion. And it has used a lot of trappings where it sells itself, particularly this idea of getting people to volunteer for these competitions and to work at these trade shows when these executives are making mid to high six figure numbers, which are way above any averages.
It is wild to me that we still consider them as like a part of representing our industry. Sorry, fully big. Go ahead. I think the SCA is falling to a pattern that many, many companies fall, which is they went from playing an infinite game to a finite game.
So they had a big grand mission and proposal, which was to establish a language and train people to talk. My grandfather was producing selling coffee. Everyone said I had good coffee. And that was that.
And there was no apparatus trained. There was no feedback. Everyone thought they had a best coffee in the world and that was that. And I think we have a success story in creating a quality language and a way to work on that, where as you can travel around the world, big and small cities and you can find coffee that's been sold on that system.
So the problems I think the SCA and CQI successfully did that job, but there's nothing after that. And so now it's just, yeah, evolution, as you said, it's just, it's just play and plug. And there's no bigger mission involved. You know, I think the reco symposium is brought a little bit of that and I don't know what happened.
Those disappeared quickly or lost the interest in that. But I think it's time for it's like I said, the corporates brought us this far. But now life evolves. It has to move on to something new.
I think also these big, once you get big and you get relevant, you, I don't know for sure. But I imagine getting into some difficult situations where I see the organic movement, the organic certification has completely corrupted and just destroyed the politics around it. To me being 20 years in organic as an exporter, as an importer, I clearly see the entire system set up for failure. It's made to not, like it's politically, and in the US, they just started charging 3000 more dollars a year as of 2024 for importers.
I'm charged every single place on the way. Like they just keep adding and adding and adding costs so that it just becomes so hard that everyone quits organic. And I wonder, you know, how does something involve two associations that they get so big? Yeah, who is behind swashing a movement?
And maybe that's that's time for something new. And I think we need a new, you know, a vision that everyone can join. It's inclusive. It's grandiose.
It's optimistic. Decentralized. Ultimately, decentralized, ultimately unachievable because that's the problem with something you achieve. It's like, now what?
You know, and I see is at that, we're at that moment. It's like, now what? Well, and the very interesting thing is people keep saying to me, like, why do you care so much Lee? And I've said it many times on these podcasts.
Like one of my big pet peeves is when people are either predatory or they're manipulative and trick people, right? Like, I don't like that. And what I think there is a taste of that happening here, in my opinion. If the SCA was a business, a private business and not a corporate, we would look at their education system and compare them with all other education systems that are out there and judge them on that same playing field.
But because they have that name, the Specialty Coffee Association and they are a registered trade nonprofit, we see them through a different lens. And they take advantage of that lens, of that filter, because they're acting like a corporate, but we don't get to treat them like a corporate because they're a nonprofit. But if we, if they had to pay taxes, if they had to compete the same way that everybody else competed, this would be a completely different story. And that's where I feel that the trick is, because all the other people trying to have barista schools are competing with what is called the Specialty Coffee Association, who defined the standards based on what they think the standards should be.
And the issue was certificate that's not with shit. And people can't really get jobs with them. They can't really like go and say like, I'm more qualified than anyone else because you can pay for that certificate without doing the course. So then the next question comes and people say to me, okay, so what's the alternative?
Guys, the alternative is build a community. You don't need a trade show to build a community, build a network, build like find a way. We're a part of a monthly discussion group, the three of us with like 30 more other people. We meet every month, we discuss things.
A lot of the people in the group didn't know each other before that. And a lot of these people are starting to do business outside of that group and start to bring more people into that group. Who knows where this is in a year, two years, 10 years, 20 years, who knows the things that come from that. But finding like minded people and building those small communities and coming together very intentionally, I think is a decentralized version of what the trade shows and what the SCA was sort of thinking of doing.
But go ahead. No, no, please. The main coffee school in Brazil for coffee education and I would say the best. And mind you, we are the coffee growing country in the world.
It is not a C.A. or B.S.A. It's coffee lab. Which you have on your podcast.
In Sao Paulo, everyone takes classes there. And she teaches people not just coffee, but how to run a coffee business. And people who take her classes are still in business. She teaches them how to set up the whole business.
There's all these different courses. I think she has her customers and best intentions and success in mind. And she's created a very successful business out of that. There's no one way of doing things.
There's no one network. There's nothing last forever. Maybe there's an opportunity for people there. A thousand percent.
And that's my point. In my opinion, I had high hopes for what the SCA could achieve. I think it's a failed objective. But they're going the corporate route.
From what I've heard they're going to look at saying we want to take over Starbucks or any of these corporate education programs, we'll sell them these packages. And that's what we're going to do. Great. That's not about small business.
That's why I see delineation. That's more appropriate of the corporate industry versus the independent industry. That's where we should be delineating things in my opinion versus specialty versus commercial. But as we wrap this up, I want to ask you guys, with regards to how do we prepare for the year ahead?
Given there's all of this potential for newness and all this potential for change in amongst the chaos and volatility. Felipe, I'll start with you. What's one piece of advice that you would give people for how we prepare for the year ahead? Well, I would say to people, go back to the basics.
It's time to, like everyone's been in survival mode, now go back to what you're good at, go back to revisit why you started, what you did, what your values are. I think that people will, should get over time over the course of the year and then over the next few years, a bit of a breeder in terms of volatility of coffee. And there should be more incentive for producers to produce high quality coffee again as this e-market goes down. Again, we already talked about volatility for other issues, but I think that hopefully the pressure will slowly feel back a little bit, and now it's time to re-engage with why you went into this in the first place.
And so, yeah, go back to connecting with final consumers, what it is that gives them a motive to go to your shop and not everywhere else, so that you prepare yourself to grow. Yeah, and prepare yourself to grow, because I think that I do think that especially coffee will, I think we will start to grow a lot in the world over the course of the next five years. Okay, Angel, how about you? I think we're completely online.
It's exactly what I was thinking. I think it is a time for companies, for owners of companies, managers of the companies to think back, what are your core values? What is what, why did you create your company? Why is the core value of your business and get back to it and highlight it to your clients?
I don't know if you ever read the book of Ivan Chinark, the founder of Patagonia. There is a moment on, I think that the book, if I'm not from, it's called that people go surfing, if I'm not to run. There is a moment in their history, I don't recall exactly the year, I think it's in the 90s, that he felt that they were losing direction, completely as a company, and he brought, he took all his executive board to Patagonia, and they think, he said, I want us to think why we started this company, what were values to reinforce them again and be that company that we are right now losing it, because we are right now losing our direction, so I think it is very important. And I hope that external conditions will be less shocking than what's left here last year to give us the time to focus on what is important for our businesses.
I hope so too, and as we wrap up very, very quickly, just like 30 seconds each, Angel, what do you hope for the future version of you when he comes back and sees this? It's a very hard one, I think I really lost 30 seconds. Felipe, do you know what you, when the future version of you comes back and sees this, what do you hope for him? This is a question we ask every series, and you got asked this the last two times you're on the podcast.
You're right, there's a tough one, proud. Okay. Yeah, I hope I look back and feel proud, you know. Okay.
Okay. Have you thought of one Felipe? Angel? No?
No, I think I hope I would see it and I would say I did what I said, to others. I love that. Guys, I am so glad that you two were the first two on the podcast this year. I think I'm very intentional about who the first is.
I'm very intentional about every series, but the first I put a lot of thought into, and I asked you guys months ago to be the first. So I'm really glad that it was you guys. I hope that people listening got a lot out of it. Please check the show notes for links how to get in contact with these guys or to follow them on social media.
One thing left to do guys, would you sign us off for this series? He's just loving people. Okay, better guys. Have a great time.
If you enjoyed this episode, consider supporting Mapper Forward, our guests and advertisers on social media. Also, subscribe, hit the like button, leave a comment, and share this episode with a friend to help get the show to more people. 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, add free, deliver directly to your inbox each week. You can find links in the show notes.