Intro

So… people who are familiar with our business, or know me personally, know we’ve been determined to start and operate some sort of coffee roasting co-op for quite some time now. We love the idea and think it could make sense for shops and us if done right, as it will increase overall ownership and understanding of the entire product path along its journey. We also believe a co-op aligns with how we personally feel about the coffee industry in general. Working cooperatively with other passionate individuals helps us to grow our understanding of the product together, helps improve QA principles and practices and, we hope, helps the Phoenix Coffee Community by providing a place of learning and growth. That being said, there’s still a lot to figure out. This is a business model that doesn’t necessarily come with a manual. Even so, what we can do is outline some of our goals and standard operating procedures:

Coffee Co-op Roasting goals:

Mutual growth of understanding of coffee and its development from green to roasted.
Respect for the product and all the participants involved in its journey from seed to cup.
The help and mentorship of our employees and clients with more experience to those with less experience.

Expectations of Xanadu Coffee and is Co-op Clients

Provide a safe place to store, roast, and package coffee: All employees and participants are expected to act with common human decency, empathy, and professionalism towards other clients and employees (those were just the first three things that came to mind, basically please check your ego at the door, nobody was born a coffee god).
Provide a clean place to store, roast, and package coffee: All employees and participants are expected to maintain good operating practices, clean up after themselves, and to perform regular, routine maintenance on any equipment they use.
Instruct participants on the use of both the probat and ikawa roasters as well as measuring tools such as the colorimeter, moisture and density reader, refractometer, etc…: The roaster here won’t explode on you, but you will be expected to read the operating manual and to understand all the roasters’ functions and operating procedures before its use. We also have a lot of fun tools here, they are there to be used, but they are also expensive. and participants are expected to have respect for the co-op and its’ members equipment.

Continue development of roasting principles and methodologies: Coffee is not stagnant, it changes, so that is the approach we foster and encourage. Trying new things, consuming relevant information provided by trade magazines, books and videos, even making mistakes can all be beneficial ways of growing and expanding our library of information.
Be forthcoming with roasting ideas and information: If I, or anyone one of our employees, sees an interesting youtube video or article it is shared with the group. If a certain profile is found to work for a specific coffee, that information is shared or made available. The same standard of openness of information is also expected of clients. There may be extenuating circumstances, but those will be addressed on a ‘as needed’ basis.

Example:

Keeping all of the goals and expectations in mind, I want to detail a scenario that I feel represents a near perfect exchange: Client A gets in a natural processed Colombian geisha, it was super expensive and a small lot so he only has a few chances to roast it a get it right, but he wants to maximize his chances of getting good results. Client A then asks Client B is she would mind him looking over some of her profiles from the last year, when she had a natural processed Colombian Geisha from the same importer. She approves, shows him the profiles, and allows him to ask specific questions about her profile and development of it. Client A then asks Client B for permission to use her profile as a starting point for his first roast, permission is granted by Client B. Client A then uses that opportunity to further develop his natural geisha. He remembers reading in a magazine that using lower fan speeds in the roast helped sweeten a natural geisha someone else was roasting. He roast the coffee 3 times, utilizing the same fan speed as a control and then changing its settings the other 2 times. That coffee is then evaluated and the results are then shared with client B, perhaps the coffees are even cupped and scored together. In this way, everyone who was involved acted in good faith with the principles and ideas of the coop. Permission was asked on multiple occasions, it was also granted on multiple occasions, the hard work done by Client B was shared but then she was rewarded with the hard work done by Client A. Obviously, real life is not perfect, things can and will get messy but this is the standard with which we would like to hold ourselves and co-op roasting clients to.