🤝 Relationship Coffee 🤝

Photo by Jasmine Chavez

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Yamid’s name is not new around the D-dub roastery, and if you’ve had our coffees before, his name might not be new for you either. We’ve had the privilege of having Yamid’s coffees in our lineup at least three times in the past, and we're back at it again with this lovely fourth iteration. We don’t know how he does it, but every year, this coffee tastes better than the previous year.

We have a word for coffees like this, and as a coffee drinker around the Portland area, I’ll guarantee you’ve seen it used by a handful of roasters to describe their relationship to a particular coffee or producer. This word is, well, ‘relationship’. And if we’re being honest, we feel conflicted about it. Here at DW, we label coffees ‘relationship coffees’ if we have met the people responsible for producing the coffee. It’s a very simple definition, and we won’t deny the value and importance of meeting face to face, but we often stop to ask ourselves, is the word ‘relationship’ the best word in this context? Are we (and other coffee roasters) taking liberties with this word when we label a coffee a ‘relationship coffee’? We’d say definitely maybe! 

Let’s consider an example - our brother introduces us to their buddy from high school. We all grab a beer one night, we hit it off, and then years go by before we cross paths with this high school buddy again. We met this guy ✔️ but would we say we have a relationship with him? Intuitively, there’s no question about the use of this term to describe what I have with my brother, but what about to describe what I have with my brother’s friend, with whom I’ve had very little interaction? It’s less convincing, ya? 

But we’re talking about work and business and a seller and a buyer, not friends or family - so what does a relationship look like in this context? In both cases there is an informal commitment - I have a commitment to my friends and family that I will show up for them, and make time in my life for them. Dapper & Wise has a commitment to Yamid Quinayas, and other producers who we work with, that we will do what we can to continue to buy their coffee whenever we have the capacity to do so (ideally every harvest!) So, maybe ‘business relationship’ is more accurate in this context? “Business relationship coffee” doesn’t roll off the tongue in the same way that “Relationship coffee” does…

The thing that makes us pause and have these reflections is that we’re wary of the implications that the word ‘relationship’ might bring up with our customers. Should we be concerned if someone interprets our use of ‘relationship’ in such a way that does not represent our intended meaning? We want to be 100% honest with our staff, our customers, and those who we work with, but we also can’t control how everyone, each with their own unique lived experiences, interprets a word on our coffee bags. We also do think there is a good-faith reason to call what we as a company have with the individual Yamid Quinayas a relationship. We’ve met him and spent some time with him, albeit very briefly. Our Director of Coffee has exchanged some Whatsapp messages with Yamid. We are committed to buying his coffee when we have the capacity to do so. 

Is ‘partnership’ a better word, or would this word lead us down the same rabbit hole of questions? A quick google search provides us with the following definition of ‘relationship’: “The way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected, or the state of being connected.” So, if we add to this our in-house definition of having met the individuals responsible for growing the coffee, then one can argue that it's accurate to describe what we as a company have with some coffee farmers as a relationship. 

Of course there are countless ways that a relationship might look, and the term can describe several forms of friendships, families, acquaintanceships, etc, so maybe trying to make the definition work isn’t the right direction. Instead, maybe the use of the term ‘relationship coffee’ can simply signal that we want to do better as a company, as a coffee buyer, and as a roaster who occupies a position of immense relative privilege in the supply chain. We work in an industry which not only has its foundations and history in colonialism and slavery, but continues to operate based on systems that were established under these dark times. Both in the past as well as today, the vast majority of coffee that’s produced each year is bought and sold as an interchangeable commodity, where many roasters and buyers focus on cup profile and price point, and move their purchases around each year from country to country, always looking for the best deal, unfortunately at the expense of those who occupy the most precarious position in the supply chain - smallholder coffee farmers. (Can we say at the expense of their relationships with producers?) We are not saving anybody, but we are aware of these issues and want to do what we can to push the needle towards a more equitable industry in which smallholder farmers are fairly compensated for their contribution to your morning cup of coffee. By seeking to make all of our coffees ‘relationship coffees’, maybe we demonstrate our commitment to being intentional about how we buy coffee and work with the producers who grow it, with the goal that the supply chains that we are a part of are more meaningful and equitable for all involved.

(These themes and histories are all well documented in some amazing books such as Cheap Coffee, Grounds for Agreement, and Coffeeland to name a few. This brief article from Perfect Daily Grind also explores the concept of relationship coffee, and is worth a read.)

You may have noticed that this blog post is a little bit more on the abstract side compared to some previous posts - moreso kinda thinking out loud (out loud on a blog post?), trying to think through and understand the nuances and contexts involved in how we as a company talk about the coffees we roast and share. Maybe we’re putting too much weight on the use of the word ‘relationship’ in this industry, but we believe words matter and it’s our responsibility to be conscientious of the words we use. We’re still learning, and we are still trying to make sense of how to describe and talk about the coffees that we share with you. 

This year’s harvest from Yamid Quinayas is sweet, citrusy, creamy and chocolatey. It’s a daily driver but has that little something extra which makes it sparkle next to other coffees. We hope you love it as much as we do!