{"id":176850,"date":"2023-12-29T09:44:50","date_gmt":"2023-12-29T15:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/?p=176850"},"modified":"2023-12-29T09:53:17","modified_gmt":"2023-12-29T15:53:17","slug":"best-of-three-questions-2023-coffee-leaders-speak-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/2023\/12\/29\/best-of-three-questions-2023-coffee-leaders-speak-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Best of \u2018Three Questions\u2019 2023: Coffee Leaders Speak Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Three<\/a><\/p>\n

Never in Daily Coffee News history has our “Three Questions” series<\/a> traveled so much ground in a single year.<\/p>\n

In 2023, we gathered insights from people working in all corners of the coffee industry, including a groundbreaking Rwandan educator, a charismatic coffee influencer in North Carolina, an artistic coffee curator in Guatemala, a revolutionary coffee roaster in Paris and many more.<\/p>\n

All of the people above happen to be women \u2014 some in the early stages of their coffee careers and others whose gifts have graced the coffee community for decades.<\/p>\n

In total, 12 of the 14 “Three Questions” stories published by DCN focused on women, all of whom were asked some variation of the same three questions: 1) What about coffee inspires you most?; 2) What about coffee troubles you most?; and, 3) What would you be doing if not for coffee?<\/p>\n

As we continue our Year in Review smattering of our favorite \u201cThree Questions\u201d answers of 2023. If there’s someone in coffee who inspires you, nominate that person for a Three Questions feature here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[Note: We’d like to extend a special thank you to freelance writer Jen Roberts, who’s reporting made this collection possible. Find out more about Jen and her work here<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n

The answers below come from interviews with: Rwandan coffee expert Laetitia Mukandahiro<\/a>; coffee trader and entrepreneur Aimerance Merveille<\/a>; Muna Mohammed<\/a> of Canada\u2019s Eight50 Coffee; Cydni Patterson<\/a> of Sweet Finish; Mar\u00eda Andre\u00e9 Negreros<\/a> de Dur\u00e1n of Artista de Caf\u00e9; \u2018Engineering Better Espresso\u2019 Author Robert McKeon Aloe<\/a>; Gloria Montenegro<\/a> of La Caf\u00e9oth\u00e8que in Paris; Ella Fatima McElroy<\/a> of Clove Coffee Shop in Paris; Coffee sustainability expert Chad Trewick<\/a>; Brazilian coffee luminary Carmen Lucia de Brito<\/a>; Marisa Contreras<\/a> of Brazil\u2019s Fazenda Capoeira; Joanna Alm<\/a> of Stockholm\u2019s Drop Coffee; and Kahawa 1893 Founder Margaret Nyamumbo<\/a><\/p>\n

What about coffee inspires you most?<\/h2>\n

Gloria Montenegro: <\/strong>Tasting the coffee.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cydni Patterson: <\/strong>The industry is small enough and with a wide enough reach that you actually can change lives, and all of this can happen over a cup of coffee, and I think that is freakin\u2019 magical.<\/span><\/p>\n

Margaret Nyamumbo:<\/strong> <\/span>It\u2019s a delicious beverage that\u2019s social and can create bonds, but I also see the potential that it has to transform communities in a positive manner.<\/span><\/p>\n

Aimerance Merveille: Coffee is mostly consumed in places that it isn\u2019t grown, and the layers of relationships needed in order for coffee to be what we need it to be is one of my favorite things about it.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Mar\u00eda Andre\u00e9 Negreros de Dur\u00e1n: I love Guatemalan coffee and how it magically comes accompanied by people. A cup of coffee is accompanied by the work of generations, the hope of many people and the passion of an entire country.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Robert McKeon Aloe: <\/strong>Coffee is like a neural network: We have an input of coffee plants \u2014 do a lot of processing steps in different ways until we have an output coffee beverage \u2014 but it is challenging to know how the intermediate layers affect the final cup.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chad Trewick:<\/strong> <\/span>Coffee can be a bridge or a connection between different lands and to the people who make it happen. And not just producers\u2026 So many souls make their mark on coffee as it travels to our cups.<\/span><\/p>\n

Marisa Contreras: <\/strong>What inspires me, motivates me and makes me go further and further is being part of the production chain, where people transform people \u2014 where we deliver to our consumers not only unique coffee beans, but the story of each family that draws its livelihood from coffee and has its life transformed by coffee.<\/span><\/p>\n

What about coffee troubles you most?<\/h2>\n

Aimerance Merveille: <\/strong>I think one of the saddest things is the dishonesty. I don\u2019t want to say ignorance because I think there are a lot of people with a lot of power and money involved who can see that they benefit off of gatekeeping.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chad Trewick: The way we apply value or price to \u201cspecialty\u201d or differentiated coffees and remunerate producers too often fails to adequately consider the risk and work that they contribute.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Muna Mohammed:<\/strong> <\/span>The future of coffee and the impacts of climate change are troubling. The reduction of coffee yield has become more frequent, yet it\u2019s still a crop consumers take for granted.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cydni Patterson: <\/strong>I would like coffee to stop pretending it is apolitical. From 2016 to 2020, we witnessed coffee beans coming to our border and treated with more dignity than the people from the countries that grew them. We sat and watched children punitively put in cages from these coffee producing countries, and our industry, as a whole, had zero to say about it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Laetitia Mukandahiro: <\/b>The prices change a lot and the instability of the market is very challenging. The producers are always wondering. One year they can get a good price, and the next year they can only get half the price. <\/span><\/p>\n

Mar\u00eda Andre\u00e9 Negreros de Dur\u00e1n: <\/b>As a coffee shop, there are always challenges. One of them is educating palates to consume specialty coffee.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gloria Montenegro:<\/strong> The first is to change the burlap coffee sacks. They are over 60 kilos and are absolutely horrible. It should be forbidden to have anything over 30 kilos. <\/span><\/p>\n

Ella Fatima McElroy:<\/strong> <\/span>I come from a poli-sci background, so I sometimes think, \u201cIs it really necessary to insist that we have a washed coffee from a country that\u2019s struggling with water or insist that we get this expensive lot of coffee from Yemen when they\u2019re in a civil war?\u201d We don\u2019t talk about this.<\/span><\/p>\n

Carmen Lucia de Brito: <\/strong>The agricultural sector needs to build stronger and clearer narratives to more legitimately clarify its role in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

Joanna Alm: The prices and the structure. We have to start paying more for coffee. If you look at the risks taken [in the coffee supply chain], so many of the risks fall on the coffee producers.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Margaret Nyamumbo:<\/strong> I wish that the gains or the profits were fairly distributed. We\u2019re still working through that colonial structure that has disadvantaged producers. Part of making that situation better or improving equality in coffee has to do with creating a new architecture for how coffee is traded. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Never in Daily Coffee News history has our “Three Questions” series traveled so much ground in a single year. In 2023, we gathered insights from people working in all corners…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":176851,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58320881,35627,58320886],"tags":[58345724,58333436],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBest of \u2018Three Questions\u2019 2023: Coffee Leaders Speak Up<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Never in the history of Daily Coffee News has our "Three Questions" series traveled so much ground in a single year.\u00a0\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/2023\/12\/29\/best-of-three-questions-2023-coffee-leaders-speak-up\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Daily Coffee News Staff\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/2023\/12\/29\/best-of-three-questions-2023-coffee-leaders-speak-up\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/2023\/12\/29\/best-of-three-questions-2023-coffee-leaders-speak-up\/\",\"name\":\"Best of \u2018Three Questions\u2019 2023: Coffee Leaders Speak Up\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2023-12-29T15:44:50+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-12-29T15:53:17+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/#\/schema\/person\/93628b01be110c4b8f3c725d4ce53856\"},\"description\":\"Never in the history of Daily Coffee News has our \\\"Three Questions\\\" series traveled so much ground in a single year.\u00a0\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/2023\/12\/29\/best-of-three-questions-2023-coffee-leaders-speak-up\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/\",\"name\":\"Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine\",\"description\":\"Business news for specialty coffee professionals\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/#\/schema\/person\/93628b01be110c4b8f3c725d4ce53856\",\"name\":\"Daily Coffee News Staff\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/author\/dcnstaff\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Best of \u2018Three Questions\u2019 2023: Coffee Leaders Speak Up","description":"Never in the history of Daily Coffee News has our \"Three Questions\" series traveled so much ground in a single year.\u00a0","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/2023\/12\/29\/best-of-three-questions-2023-coffee-leaders-speak-up\/","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Daily Coffee News Staff","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/2023\/12\/29\/best-of-three-questions-2023-coffee-leaders-speak-up\/","url":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/2023\/12\/29\/best-of-three-questions-2023-coffee-leaders-speak-up\/","name":"Best of \u2018Three Questions\u2019 2023: Coffee Leaders Speak Up","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/#website"},"datePublished":"2023-12-29T15:44:50+00:00","dateModified":"2023-12-29T15:53:17+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/#\/schema\/person\/93628b01be110c4b8f3c725d4ce53856"},"description":"Never in the history of Daily Coffee News has our \"Three Questions\" series traveled so much ground in a single year.\u00a0","inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/2023\/12\/29\/best-of-three-questions-2023-coffee-leaders-speak-up\/"]}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/","name":"Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine","description":"Business news for specialty coffee professionals","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/#\/schema\/person\/93628b01be110c4b8f3c725d4ce53856","name":"Daily Coffee News Staff","url":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/author\/dcnstaff\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176850"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/103"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176850"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176869,"href":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176850\/revisions\/176869"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}