Over the weekend we announced that we’ll be allowing any of our fully vaccinated customers to choose to not wear a mask inside our shop starting Friday, June 4th. We’re thrilled to keep seeing new milestones after such a crazy year.
Our Director of Administration, Zach Joseph, put together a comic that puts some of the past year and the these next steps into words, pictures, and emotions.
We hope you enjoy!
After two flights, a night in San Jose, and a two hour drive up the side of a mountain, we found ourselves at Hacienda La Minita. The excitement that Sal, Zach and I felt was soon replaced with a cool, calming sensation. It was in Tarrazu, Costa Rica that we found ourselves surrounded by beautiful coffee, on a beautiful farm, with the most beautiful view.
It’s been a year later (although it feels like 4) and we are still trying to unpack all of the information gained from Magic Beans’ first origin trip. There are three lessons I've learned from the trip and have reflected on since. For anyone wanting to take a coffee origin trip, or just wanting to learn about an origin trip experience, hopefully these points share some perspective!
Lesson #1 - Learn The Language Of The Land
My biggest regret for the origin trip was that I didn’t practice speaking spanish before. Luckily for me, Zach practiced some leading up to the trip and Sal has been speaking spanish his whole life. Because of them, we were able to navigate our way through the city of San Jose and converse with some of the workers on the farms. But I had to rely on them heavily to translate what was being said, and the lack of understanding on my end limited my overall learning ability. Questions that I wanted to ask and any conversations I wanted to have had to be done through another party. That said, learn and practice the language!
Lesson #2 - Coffee Has Different Purposes
The Costa Rican coffee that Magic Beans roasts is an extremely close resemblance to the coffee that Sal, Zach and I had while we were on the farm. The smooth and subtly sweet coffee reminds me of a nice glass of bourbon. Whenever I have the coffee, I am immediately transported to the porch on the farm that overlooked the most beautiful valley (I took 14 pictures of this view, and none of them did it justice). However, I did not realize that on the farm would be the only place that would serve this high quality coffee. As an American barista, I view coffee as the end product. A product that is beautifully crafted and made solely for the enjoyment of the consumer. For people in Costa Rica, coffee is viewed as their cash crop. In other words, the coffee is not grown for their consumption but as a way of provision. Any coffee outside of the farms were more than likely the lower grade coffee that was not good enough for export. This definitely helped me appreciate the coffee that I was tasting while I was there on the farm.
Lesson #3 - Appreciate The Hands That Bring You Coffee
One of the biggest lessons learned from this trip was how many people/parts go into making a good cup of coffee. Starting with the coffee picked from the trees, to the weighing station, to the mill, to storing the different coffees, to picking out any deformations, to bagging the coffee, to shipping the coffee, to receiving the coffee, to roasting the coffee, to brewing the coffee, to serving the coffee, there are people involved with every part of the coffee process. One reason why this trip was so important was to build relationships with the farmers and establish a direct trade relationship. We care deeply about the quality of our coffee AND every hand that helps prepare the coffee to go from bean to cup. We will continue to strive to build more relationships like the one we have with Hacienda La Minita.
Lesson #4 - Appreciate Every Cup Of Coffee
This point is built off of the last, but when you think about all of the hands that went into preparing you a cup of coffee, every cup you drink should be deemed as important. So much time, sweat, and care went into every part of the coffee process to make sure you have a cup of coffee you can enjoy. As a consumer, I try not to waste any product and I try to take my time enjoying the drink in front of me. As a barista and roaster, this also means that I want to treat the coffee with respect. This happens by taking time to learn about the origin of the coffee, as well as the profile it has. It means making sure that I prepare each pot of coffee, shot of espresso carefully so that the product is as good as it can be.
Maybe you won’t be traveling to a different country to explore an origin coffee any time soon, but hopefully this blog post will help share some perspective of what an origin trip can look like. As someone who makes, delivers and drinks coffee in Lexington, Kentucky, I’ll conclude by saying this; Every cup of coffee is important. Every cup of coffee has a story.
Jake Bryant // Wholesale and Training Manager
I didn't want to open my eyes that morning.
I didn't want to wake up and enter the nightmare.
The weight of it all sat heavy on my shoulders.
It pressed aggressively against my entire body, making it even harder to get out of bed and face my new reality.
After much effort, I managed to stumble into my bathroom.
As my eyes met my reflection in the mirror, I wept.
Everything was different. Everything had changed.
Everything I had grown so incredibly fond of in my life had seemingly been ripped away, with hardly any warning… no chance to bid it a sweet farewell.
//
A week ago I was celebrating my 24th birthday.
Everything felt normal.
Everything felt right.
I started the day by sitting and drinking coffee at the shop I work at, surrounded by customers who feel more like family than patrons of the shop. When a friend spilled the beans that it was my birthday, they all sang to me. Our shop grandpa, Don, said something to me about seeing me married. It was such a joyous start to the day.
I then had breakfast at one of my favorite local restaurants, Doodles, surrounded by some of my greatest friends. I followed breakfast with another coffee from another coffee shop, where i was once again greeted with warm hugs and cheerful song.
It was the most beautiful day I could have asked for. The sun was shining, and it was probably the warmest day we had yet experienced this spring. The grass was green. The skies blue.
My friend (who insisted that I have the best possible birthday) went with me to the arboretum where we drank our iced coffees and read while laying out in the sun.
I ended the night with my brothers and longtime friends, who came over for a bonfire and birthday cake. My best friend of 14 years bought candles that don't go out when you blow on them, which provided lots of laughter and entertainment for us all.
That day was perfect.
Everything was in its place.
//
That next week is when the rumblings of the virus started to reach America and, even closer to home, Kentucky.
I remember just weeks ago not even knowing what coronavirus was.
I had no idea what was coming.
But in the days following my birthday, things started changing faster than i could keep up with.
It started with reminders to wash our hands regularly and not come to work if we felt even slightly sick. It evolved to posting infographics about COVID-19 in the shops and implementing more rigorous cleaning procedures. And, before we knew it, we had completely closed the shops to the public.
I was on my way to open one of the shops on that Monday morning.
The Monday when it all changed.
I got a call from my boss and was told that we couldn't let any customers into the shop that day and could only offer curbside service. After this phone call, I read an update from the owner of the company about all the changes happening while i was sitting at a stoplight.
Everything changed so fast.
My fellow barista and I cried while we were opening the shop that morning. Fear was pressing in. And quickly.
Later that night, we received another message from the owner of the company that we were temporarily closing two of our three shops, and that we no longer would be working any hours for the foreseeable future.
When we thought things couldn’t change any quicker, they did.
And things were incredibly grim.
Incredibly dark.
Incredibly hopeless.
But I was not alone in the darkness and fear.
Me and a few coworkers, who were meeting up to play Scrabble, decided to go to one of the two closing shops one last time. And something about being together while making that one last visit, gave me hope.
I found hope in the solidarity. In the unity. In the togetherness.
Deep down I knew that, even if this virus changed everything we knew about our jobs, our city, our lives... it couldn't change our community.
It couldn't change our togetherness.
It couldn’t change our resilience.
You see, that night when all our lives were shaken in the most abrupt and reckless way, i felt something else happen.
I felt fear. And panic. And deep deep sadness.
But I also felt something a lot stronger.
It's hard to put it into words... but it felt like even though everything around me was falling and crashing into some abyss - I wasn't.
And the reason I didn't fall is because I had my friends, my community, there to pull me up.
It almost felt like we metaphorically linked arms that night and said to ourselves, "this is uncharted territory. and it's scary as hell. and we don't know when or how or if we will even come out on the other side of this. but we know that in this moment, we have each other."
Of course this didn't actually happen, but this is what it felt like when we all put on our shoes and walked down the street to buy our last drinks from Chocolate Holler.
This is what it felt like when we sat around the table at Holler in silence, holding back tears, soaking in this moment we had at this shop together.
This is what it felt like when we joked our way through a game of Scrabble, laughing over the most trivial things.
And when I think about it, I really don't know how I would have made it through that night without my friends.
Even though we were all experiencing the same loss and the same fear, somehow when I looked in their eyes I saw courage. I saw hope. I saw strength.
And it lead me to find those things in myself.
//
The days to follow were incredibly difficult.
Remember how I mentioned crying in the bathroom that morning?
I sobbed.
When I woke up that morning, it felt like waking up from a nightmare to realize that nightmare is your real life.
All I could think of was what I had lost.
What might never come back.
But then I wiped the tears off my cheeks and looked myself in the eye once again.
And in that moment I chose to keep moving forward.
For my friends.
For my family.
For my community.
For Don.
For Bob and John and Christian and Becca and Anna and Jaime and Tori and Andy.
For Sal, Alex, Emma, Zach, and Jake.
For Cup and Holler and all the lovely places that make Lexington so special.
I called to mind what I had felt the night before. I remembered what I had felt when I looked in my friends' eyes, when I heard their laughter.
And I remembered a truth that has kept me going through all of this:
That we are all resilient.
Deep within each of us burns a flame that cannot be extinguished.
This is our resilience.
It reveals itself in moments of weakness, coming when we least expect it. When we think we have not an ounce of strength left in us, something keeps us going. When we think we have reached the end, this light inside us flickers and reminds us who we are.
It reminds us that there is still strength within us.
It reminds us that we are resilient.
And while there are many rough days ahead of us… and we are still very much in uncharted territory… and things will likely get worse before they get better…
It is in these times of profound uncertainty and chaotic darkness that we prove ourselves more resilient than ever.
//
So I have decided to keep moving forward.
Because, in the end, all of this will be worth it.
Just to relive that feeling I felt on my birthday just a few weeks ago... that all was perfect.
And to provide a chance for someone else to feel that way, too.
Everything will once again be alright.
Everything will be in its place.
We just have to keep moving forward.
By Beka Santrock
