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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.