WHAT IS Map It Forward?
Map It Forward is a neutral intersectional voice in the coffee industry where discussions about the challenges in the coffee value chain's past, present, and future are being witnessed and solved around the world.
These discussions predominantly occur on The Daily Coffee Pro Podcast by Map It Forward where our host, Map It Forward founder, Lee Safar has discussions with guests from across the global coffee value chain and vertically integrated industries. Conversations are predominantly focused on business, supply chain, coffee production, economics, regenerative agriculture and agroforestry, logistics, labour, and much more.
These discussions have also taken place in person around the world in Australia, The United States, Asia, and the Middle East at conferences such as World of Coffee in Dubai (2023, and 2024), as well as WCC in India 2023.
We feel that to maintain our neutrality in the industry, our podcast should remain free of external sponsors so our main revenue streams come from business advisory and consulting services, mastermind groups, and business-focused education in the coffee sector.
WHAT IS OUR AGENDA?
From the time Map It Forward started, the intention was to be a part of making the industry less dysfunctional in its business practices. Today, our vision is to focus on helping to build “responsible businesses with responsible pricing models”. Our values since the day we started, integrity, curiosity, openness, and authenticity have not changed.
In 2024, we coined the term “Coffee Crisis” on the podcast to describe the urgency of the converging challenges facing many stakeholders in the industry. These challenges include reduced coffee supply caused by climate change, rising temperatures, and conventional farming practices, stressed businesses due to financing, operational challenges, and dysfunctional market practices, and finally broken business models and industry practices that are leading to continued consolidation and a dishearted labour force across the supply chain. Our role to play (and our mission) in this process is to encourage an attitude of “conspiring to each other’s success” because the challenges ahead of us demand this. This approach doesn’t negate capitalism or competitiveness but rather seeks to prolong a fairer marketplace that sees coffee as a viable value proposition for coffee producers, thus enabling the rest of the industry.
We must remember, given the reality of this coffee crisis, the future of coffee is not guaranteed!
HOW Map It Forward CAME INTO EXISTENCE…
“After speaking on ‘The Coffee Podcast’ about talent retention as a major challenge to the future of specialty coffee, Elixir Specialty Coffee founder Lee Safar found herself inundated with emails about how to make barista work a sustainable career. Inspired by the challenge, Lee created MAP IT FORWARD, an event series developing different coffee careers down a 10-year time frame.
The inaugural event focused on developing barista career strategies, delving into realistic goal setting and career planning to make barista work a sustainable, long-term profession. The workshop included segments on networking, mentorship, and continuing education to cope with burnout. The second event, featuring roasting consultant and writer Scott Rao and roasting entrepreneur of YES PLZ Sumi Ali, concentrated on mapping career paths for roasters, from apprenticeship to community building to combatting stress to developing your own brand.
'The idea is to provide top-quality affordable career mentoring and coaching from people in the industry who have demonstrated that they built a career from the ground up by leaning to navigate their path with integrity, craft mastery, and professionalism,' Lee says. In the future, she plans to continue to assemble experts and help more coffee pros think critically about developing their career paths.”
- RJ Joseph, BARISTA MAGAZINE, FEB-MAR 2018.