Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
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ROASTERS REALM BY CHUCK JONES Coffee auctions—to bid or not to bid? ome of the best coffees in the world can be bought at auc- tions like Cup of Excellence and Best of Panama, but Jones Coffee doesn't buy them. We participated in a few auctions early on, but we found the process cumbersome and ultimately unnecessary. We still find great coffees to roast—70 percent of which are direct trade—and my customers keep coming back for more. But maybe we need to change our minds. Plenty of specialty roasters love COE (now in 11 countries) and other similar buying opportunities. The impact of these events speaks for itself: record prices for coffees, a marketing tool for roasters, and increased connection between buyers and farmers. Just last month, in fact, auctions grabbed headlines again when a coffee in Guatemala's Finca El Injerto event fetched a whopping $500.50 per pound. My tried-and-true method for maintaining access to great coffee is maintaining constant communication with my importers. These people are the best personal shoppers around if you help them understand what you're looking for. Give detailed feedback to your importer when they send you samples, and they'll start to under- stand what excites you. We've found some great coffees this way. SAMPLE DELUGE With auction coffees, you have the benefit of a jury of great cuppers doing all the screening for you (rather than an importer), 54 Fresh Cup Magazine freshcup.com and samples of those that make the cut are sent to you. An auc- tion jury has narrowed down hundreds of entries to the top 20 or 30 coffees. That's wonderful, but the amount of time that goes into sample roasting and cupping each one is a turnoff, especially because all the samples tend to arrive a week before the auction. John Sanders of Origins Organic Coffee in Vancouver, B.C. (and a consultant for Jones Coffee), puts it this way: "If you're going to get 30 coffees a week before the auction, unless you're really into it, they're going to be on the back burner." This is especially true for roasters who are doing production coffee on a daily basis. Also, what if we end up bidding on something and not getting it? That's a significant waste of time. Lately, many auction coffees have gone to big spenders in Asia. With the dollar in decline in recent years, American roasters could do little but accept being outbid. "It breaks my heart that American roasters are in this situation," says Susie Spindler, executive director of the Alliance for Coffee Excellence (the organization that runs COE). "I wish we could spread it out, but that would be a mess. It would be impos- sible to make it fair. When it comes down to it, auctioned goods go to the highest bidder." Finally, a roaster should consider the fact that only some custom- ers will buy the highest-end coffees, so you will likely split lots with other companies and ultimately end up with just 20 to 80 bags. While I appreciate the specialness inherent in the idea, it doesn't make sense to put in so much time and effort for such a tiny supply. DAN LEIF