Cafe Hound

Maher Hound

Specialty coffee can change lives.

Back at Seton Hall University in 2004 I distinctly remember needing to pull a couple of all nighters during my sophomore year.  As a crutch, I sampled some delicious individually packaged Oma chocolate covered coffee beans from Bogotá, Colombia.  This opened my mind to the fact that even eating coffee grounds  wasn’t all that bad.  Summer of 2004 came and while in Alicante, Spain I encountered a sweet powder-keg of caffeine explosion called the bon-bon.  This sugary, condensed milk, dark espresso fused drink kept me up until 6am tossing and turning one night after consuming one following an afternoon siesta.

Perhaps, like so many others, my ‘gateway’ demand for coffee came through my need to stay awake. It sure did not stay that way.  In 2006, during a period in which I resided between Bogotá and Manizales, Colombia, I mounted a horse and rode through a beautiful coffee plantation on the side of a mountain in Chinchiná, Colombia.  It was absolutely one of the most breathtaking and satisfying moments of my life – no contest.  It was perhaps at that moment that I knew coffee would hold my attention for many years to come.

So many different facets of the world that coffee embodies fascinate and stimulate my mind: Whether it be the social and moral obligation to better the lives of all global citizens through capacity building, sustainable business and passing value along the supply chain;  whether it be the solving of the complex operational management puzzles that constantly arise in dealing with an industry with so much risk, price volatility, speculation, unobserved variables, and fluctuating demand elasticity; or whether it be geeking out on the absolute pleasure it is to train one’s palate to discern the most complex distinctions between tastes, mouth-feel and finish.

I have been lucky enough to meet people at every stage of this industry through my travel, study and business experiences.  Some examples are: one-on-one private cupping of Manizales’ best crops of 2008; roasting high quality beans from Dipilto, Nicaragua while helping grow a domestic specialty coffee franchise; cupping down at Caffe Calabria in Northpark (San Diego, CA); connecting with the amazing Karen Cebreros of Elan Organic importers; consuming the roasts of Bird Rock Roasters, the blends of Intelligentsia, or the siphon brewed coffee of Blue Bottle in San Francisco.

As I’ve experienced much of the entire supply chain of specialty coffee, I find that I’m most drawn to the business aspects and traveling to farms to establish long-term sourcing relationships and establish mechanisms to ensure capacity building for producers of quality coffee.  The logic is that this will ensure producers improve sustainable practices to 1)  protect supply security through preventive capacity building 2) help producers capture more value from their output 3) serve as a facilitator for improving domestic functions aimed at ensuring social and environmental fairness and international compliance.

Through all of this:

• I’ve discovered that I know relatively little – everyday I learn infinitely more.
• I love the quality control aspects of operations management when troubleshooting the most effective way to preserve the integrity of bean quality from source country to roasters.
• I enjoy the cash flow management aspect of the commodities business.
• I enjoy using technology to improve the entire industry and those involved in it.
• I really, really… love mild, acidic, citrusy coffees from Colombia, Kenya and Central America.

It was incredibly gratifying to create a custom blend of beans in conjunction with a brilliant professor at University of California, San Diego – Krislert Samphantharak. Big thanks to Chuck Patton for allowing us to invade his beautiful shop in order to make that happen.

If there was ever anything traded, sold and consumed in the world that impacted so many of the world’s people and culture at the top and bottom of the pyramid it would probably be petroleum and/or coffee.  Perhaps not so coincidentally, both industries fascinate me.

With that, I give to you…  … …  cafehound.com