The Daily Coffee Pro Podcast by MAP IT FORWARD

As much as I hate to say this, we're an industry that's lead by fabs and unfortunately, if you go against those trends, it usually means you're ousted by "the group". It's something I particularly dislike about our industry and take every opportunity available to me to encourage people to make up their minds independently of what the group is doing. In this episode of The Daily Coffee Pro by MAP IT FORWARD, we take a look at how important this is to professionals and business owners in the industry, now more than ever.

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When the coach of our coffee roasters mastermind groups, Ante Bikic @a.bikic, presented us as a group with the discussion topic "Flavours Suck", we all found it kind of curious that a National Coffee Roasting Champion would present that idea. When we heard what he had to say, we all jumped onboard and a wonderful discussion followed! Take a listen to this episode of the podcast to hear what the general thoughts were!

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Unlike in other industries, the coffee industry has no standards for professionalism that are written into law. The legal, medical, and insurance industries are just a few examples of industries that have a legal "code of conduct" that governs certain expectations around their professionalism to instruct their duty of care to the public. Our industry on the other hand is limited to professionalism based mostly on food safety standards. In this episode of the Daily Coffee Pro by MAP IT FORWARD, we're exploring the question "Who sets the standards of professionalism in coffee".

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In an ever-changing world and industry, decision-making is about more than just pricing. Increasingly, stakeholders want to know that their participation in the value chain is strengthening its longevity and not contributing to poor supply chain practices. In this episode of the podcast, we're discussing how to create value that keeps your stakeholders engaged and intact in your value chain.

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Now more than ever before, employees are an important part of your business. We're experiencing an industry-wide labour shortage, inflation, as well as a global pandemic. Amongst all this seeming uncertainty, having employees that are invested in keeping customers happy as you increase prices and make ongoing changes to adapt to COVID, may well be the determining factor that saves your business from closing. As Gen Z continues to enter the workforce, employers will notice a greater expectation than previous generations to deliver a safe, inspiring, motivating, inclusive, and meaningful workplace. Employees want to be treated as stakeholders in a business's success rather than just "workers"

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Traditionally, the driving force for decision-making in business has been profitability and cash flow. With the changing tide of expectations from different generational workforces and consumers in the coffee industry over recent decades from Gen X to Gen Z, employers who choose to be driven by profitability rather than listening to the needs of their workforce and customers, are at a higher risk of going out of business in a market where consumer and employee decision making is more wide-reaching than price and income.

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When customers are inappropriate with staff, action needs to be taken to keep staff safe. Knowing what that action looks like can often be challenging because the needs of staff are different. Some staff members may want leadership to confront the customer, others may not want you to approach the customer out of fear of retaliation. So what do you do? Let's explore this in this episode of The Daily Coffee Pro by MAP IT FORWARD.

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Straight up, I'm just as shocked as you are that I'm doing an episode of the podcast about vaccinations. This is not a subject I speak on publicly because I believe medical choices are as personal as the amount of money they make. So, that being said...I encourage you to tune into this episode either on youtube or through podcast listening apps to find why I think this episode is important no matter where you stand on vaccinations.

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We're 17 months into a pandemic that continues to expose weaknesses (and strengths) of the coffee industry across the value chain. If you're watching or listening to this podcast the chances are highly likely that you're still here, battling exhaustion and all the challenges 2020 and 2021 have brought with it. Your grit and your willingness to be of service to yourself, your staff, your employer, your customers, and other stakeholders in your value chain is a testament to you. It may not feel like it, but you're doing awesome!

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Given the compounding influences constraining the supply and price of coffee, the impact is expected to be felt by smaller roasters because for multiple reasons. Multiple green suppliers are warning that spot coffee (off-the-shelf coffee) which many small roasters rely on, will be harder and harder to come in the remainder of 2021 and 2022. Take a listen to this episode of The Daily Coffee Pro by MAP IT FORWARD as we deep dive into those reasons.

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This episode of the Daily Coffee Pro by MAP IT FORWARD is an ode to all the ill-informed insta-for-no-reason-famous coffee bro's out there who are in forums on social media claiming that the frost events in Brazil are "fake news" and a ploy by producers to artificially drive the price of coffee up. For some reason, the number of people I've seen do this happens to be cafe owners. I'm really not sure why, but that's my observation. To be clear, I'm not saying that withholding supply when yields have been low as a mechanism to inflate prices hasn't been done in the past. I'm not even saying that some producers aren't doing that now. What I am saying is that these black swan frost events (3 IN 1 MONTH), off the back of the 2020 and 2021 drought, are expected to lead to a serious drop in yield by the end of this harvest. The supply implications of those events aren't fake news and are expected to be experienced by producers across the south and southeastern regions of Brazil. If you're on our mailing list, we've been sharing this evidence for the past 3 weeks. The supply chain will be impacted by these events and listening to coffee bro's claiming you should ignore this is dangerous and entitled.

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There’s a lot going on to stress test the entire coffee supply chain right now. Pandemic, logistics, labour forces, inflation, commodity shortages, freighting prices hikes, etc. The cascading effect of these issues is creating the perfect storm that has the potential to most likely have long-term influences on the business models we operate under and will create a shake-up of what our industry looks like over the next five years.

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The pandemic has been raging for almost 18 months now and thanks to the yo-yo-ing between lockdowns and open communities, we’ve seen consumer’s shift their buying behaviours in a way that opens up opportunities for coffee professionals to consider a path to their first small business with little financial outlay if they’re prepared to seize the opportunity and put in the hard work. Check out this episode of the Daily Coffee Pro Coffee Industry podcast if you’d like to hear more.

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For years now baristas, floor staff, and other hospitality professionals have been raising the alarm about working conditions and inadequate pay rates. These same workers were amongst the first to lose their jobs as the pandemic persisted and businesses closed. Most of these same employees had no choice but to accept government assistance when it was offered and what followed has the potential to play a role in reshaping coffee small businesses into the future. Take a listen to this episode of The Daily Coffee Pro by MAP IT FORWARD to get a unique insight into why there's a good chance our workforce may not be returning...the reason may not be as you expected!

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You work in coffee but you're in a part of the value chain that doesn't really require you to know much about the particulars of how the coffee supply chain works. As the coffee industry undergoes mounting challenges from climate, the pandemic, labour shortages, logistical issues, shipping container shortages, and who knows what else will come next, your ability to anticipate potential blind spots in your business or career, caused by these blindspots may be the defining factor of your livelihood within the industry.

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In our previous two episodes of The Daily Coffee Pro by MAP IT FORWARD we discussed the 3 different frost events in Brazil and how this might affect the supply chain as well as the industry at large. In this episode of the podcast, we're exploring how these fundamental and significant shifts in supply and demand economics have the potential to significantly impact small businesses (and consequently employees) in the coffee value chain.

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