Intelligentsia Coffee

Henry Hu is the Founder and CEO of Cafe X, the robotic café that opened to curious customers in San Francisco in January. It has earned rave reviews from publications in the tech and finance sectors, and raised concern in coffee circles of a future without baristas. Today, we publish a conversation with Henry Hu on technology and the future of coffee in the latest episode of the Intelli Sourcing Sessions podcast. Intelli Sourcing Sessions -- conversations about coffee's origins to advance our mission: Illuminating Coffee.

Way back in 2004, Daniel Canales made coffee history when his Los Delirios lot became the first certified organic coffee to ever take top honors at a Cup of Excellence competition. Our Vice President of Coffee Geoff Watts bought that lot, and we have never looked back: this year year marks the 14th consecutive season we have purchased organic coffee from Los Delirios and the Canales family. During this Buyer's Notebook episode, Geoff discusses the way the Canales family's dual commitments to coffee quality and environmental sustainability have evolved during that time with Michael Sheridan, Director of Sourcing and Shared Value and the buyer for our current Los Delirios Organic Nicaragua offerings. The Intelligentsia Buyer's Notebook: the stories of our coffees in the words of the buyers themselves.

Our La Tortuga Honduras takes its name and inspiration from the moral of Aesop's fable about the toroise and the hare: slow and steady wins the race. In this episode of our Buyer's Notebook series, our Vice President of Coffee and Green Coffee Buyer for Honduras Geoff Watts tells the story of La Tortuga and the extraordinary growers who made their way to the front of the pack through discipline, persistence and unwavering attention to detail: Don Fabio Caballero, his daughter Marysabel and her husband Moisés Herrera. The Intelligentsia Buyer's Notebook: the stories of our coffees in the words of the buyers themselves.

The Buyer's Notebook is back, and just in time for a month of new releases of Northern Hemisphere coffees, beginning with a perennial favorite: our Flecha Roja Costa Rica. In this podcast, our Logistics Manager and Green Coffee Buyer for Costa Rica explains just what makes our Flecha Roja so special. Here's a hint: it has a lot to do with the members of the Coopedota cooperative, which has been the source of Flecha Roja since its inception. The Intelligentsia Buyer's Notebook: the stories of our coffees in the words of the buyers themselves.

Most roasters name their single-origin offerings after the farms on which they are grown or the farmers who grew them. We do some of that. But many of our single-origin coffees are released under Intelligentsia marks, or I-marks, that we apply to each of the origins where we source coffee. Our I-marks invoke gods, angels and saints, animals, plants and minerals, and other sources of inspiration. They may be fun, but the serve a serious purpose as perennial testaments to the seed-to-cup curation you expect from our single-origin coffees. In this Buyer's Notebook episode, our VP of Coffee Geoff Watts explains the what, how and why of our I-marks and wrestles with the suggestion that they may undermine our commitment to transparency. The Intelligentsia Buyer's Notebook: the stories of our coffees in the words of the buyers themselves.

Simran Sethi is the author of Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love that Smithsonian Magazine named one of the best books about food in 2016. Although coffee doesn't make the title, the book contains a section that amounts to a love letter to coffee, the places it grows and the people who make it delicious. In our wide-ranging conversation with Simran, we discuss the book, consider the cultural and environmental importance of coffee, assess comparisons between coffee, beer, wine and chocolate and explore the psychology and strategy of reporting on sustainability issues. Intelli Sourcing Sessions -- conversations about coffee's origins to advance our mission: Illuminating Coffee.