The Way Forward
I’ve been working as a coffee professional for some years now. One thing I love, one thing that keeps this industry free to evolve, is how few of us started here. Nearly everyone I’ve worked with came to coffee from somewhere else: art or design, finance or pastry. We bring those old tools to a new bench.
When a product with such a long history is constantly seen by fresh eyes, it becomes free to change.
So the questions never stop:
What if we tried this?
Why hasn’t anyone ever made coffee like that?
Who grew this variety, and why not another?
Instead of “We do it this way because we’ve always done it this way,” we get “This is what we know now. Maybe something better is ahead.”
In a few decades our understanding has shifted dramatically. Not only in cup preferences, but in the science and the numbers behind them. Fermentation and drying practices are deliberate in a new way. Roasting less a witchcraft and more a repeatable act. Extraction is measured, shared, challenged, and redrawn. The map keeps opening.
And the way we move the map forward is simple: be kind, share ideas, try things. The coffee community proves that generosity compounds. People across the supply chain see the imperfections clearly and talk about them openly. We’re learning together, changing together.
As our collective knowledge grows, we research, test, and adapt. Not just for ourselves, but for the people far from our cafés whose work makes our work possible. That mindset travels.
On days when the world feels heavy, I’m grateful to be in a corner of it that runs on curiosity and care. Our hope is to keep moving in that direction, toward more informed, more impactful coffee, through small experiments, shared notes, and the particular angles we each bring from our former lives. Fresh eyes made this industry freer. May they keep it that way.
Artwork by Floris Claesz van Dijck. Photo taken by Mélanie Schwartz