Ryan Soeder: My name is Ryan Soeder.
I work for Counter Culture Coffee.
We're a wholesale coffee roaster based in
Durham, North Carolina.
I work on the Customer Support Team in Boston.
We are in the New York training facility right
now.
So, what we do.
We're predominantly a wholesale coffee roaster.
We source coffee from farms and co-ops and
washing stations in coffee-producing countries.
That gets shipped to Durham, North Carolina,
where it's roasted and packed up.
Then, we would sell the coffee to coffee shops
or restaurants, or markets that would want
to sell our roasted coffee products.
What I do, I'm on the Customer Support Team.
Any coffee shop or restaurant that does sell
our coffee gets me as a trainer and consultant.
We teach a lot of classes in the training
centers.
I work with my co-worker in Boston, Jake.
He does the tech side of things.
If your machine needs to get fixed, Jake will
take care of it.
If you want some training for your staff,
I'll come and do training.
We both teach a curriculum of courses in the
training center that we have, like this one,
where we teach Beginner Espresso, Intermediate
Espresso, Brewing Science 1, 2, and 3.
We teach a class on coffee origins that's
really interesting.
And Milk Chemistry, what we're about to do.
Really cool stuff.
Counter Culture was started in 1995.
It just evolved slowly into what it is now.
We have two coffee buyers that go and seek
out coffee and build relationships in coffee-producing
countries and farms that we try to work with
for years and years at a time.
Roasting it in a way that shows off all the
great stuff that that coffee can taste like
because of all the hard work.
Then, teaching and being very excited about
and pushing forward preparation methods that
also show how excellent this coffee can be.
In every step of the process, there's a lot
that can be gained or a lot that can be lost.
Our mission as a company is to pursue coffee
perfection in everything that we do.
On the website counterculturecoffee.com, you
can find out more about our direct trade policies,
how we work with farmers and co-ops and washing
stations in coffee-producing countries.
You can find out more about our sustainable
initiatives, because it's very important that
we find and champion and promote different
sustainable ways to make coffee.
It's a fairly unsustainable thing to do.
So for us, it's vital to do that respectfully
and well.
