Meet Meredith Taylor, Counter Culture Coffee’s New Sustainability Coordinator

What is sustainable coffee?

As a member of the Specialty Coffee Association of America Sustainability Council, Meredith Taylor says this question, as simple as it sounds, is somewhat unanswerable.

“We’ve wondered in the sustainability council if we should define sustainable coffee,” Taylor recently told Daily Coffee News. “But is that our job to do? Is it possible to do? I know it’s going to be difficult for us to know what we’re talking about as an industry if we’re not transparent about this.”

Transparency is among the key charges for Taylor in her new role as sustainability coordinator for Durham, N.C.-based roaster and wholesaler Counter Culture Coffee. CCC has long been one of coffee’s most forward-thinking companies, but its 8-year-old sustainability department has essentially been manned by one person until now, green coffee buyer and sustainability manager Kim Elena Ionescu.

Counter Culture Coffee Sustainability Coordinator Meredith Taylor

While Ionescu’s sustainability efforts have naturally leaned toward supply sustainability and issues at origin, Taylor says she hopes to help the company grow a more well-rounded sustainability approach.

“Think companies like Patagonia, Seventh Generation or New Belgium — when people think of sustainable companies, we want to be on that list,” says Taylor, who got her start in coffee as a barista then manager at Washington D.C.’s Peregrine Espresso. “We’ve done a lot toward sustainability in the coffee world, but not much outside the coffee world.”

To this end, Taylor says the company plans to look deeper inward. “This new position is meant to do a lot of the projects that have been thought of, but that have been put on hold,” she says. “We’re trying to figure out all the sustainability metrics we want to track internally and figure out procedures to measure those.”

For example, under Ionescu’s leadership, CCC has measured seed-to-cup greenhouse gas emissions for several years, but it has not yet tracked internal water usage. The idea is to develop a sustainability approach that reaches every part of the company, from origin to roastery to board room to wholesale delivery.

“We’re also figuring out good ways to report all this stuff,” says Taylor. “We want to be increasingly transparent, and part of that involves getting that raw data and transforming it into something usable, interesting and digestible.”

That digestible data, she says will improve both internal and external communications regarding the company’s sustainability plan. Says Taylor, “I’ve been talking a lot with marketing about how to better communicate the sustainability of our coffees, not necessarily to consumers, but to our employees and our partners.”

This goes back to the problematic question of defining sustainable coffee.

“How do we communicate that sustainability is a spectrum?” Taylor asks. “A lot of times, sustainability is presented as a dichotomy — ‘Is this coffee organic or is it not?’ Well, there are farms that are organic but not socially or environmentally sustainable. There is no clear definition of sustainable coffee, and we need to evolve our collective understanding of the spectrum.”

Taylor is spending some of here existing time simply brushing up on buzzwords and other corporate-speak — the unfortunate result of sustainability increasingly making good business sense. “There is a lot of that corporate-speak and jargon,” she says. “I think it’s important for us to understand how other companies talk about sustainability, even if we don’t want to use that language.”

CCC has launched a new sustainability section on its site, including several new blog posts from Taylor on the company’s sustainability program, as well as coffee sustainability issues, at large.

Author: Nick Brown Nick Brown is the editorial director of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine. Feedback and story ideas of welcome at publisher@dailycoffeenews.com.

View the original article here

Meet Meredith Taylor, Counter Culture Coffee’s New Sustainability Coordinator

What is sustainable coffee?
As a member of the Specialty Coffee Association of America Sustainability Council, Meredith Taylor says this question, as simple as it sounds, is somewhat unanswerable.
“We’ve wondered in the sustainability council if we should define sustainable coffee,” Taylor recently told Daily Coffee News. “But is that our job to do? Is it possible to do? I know it’s going to be difficult for us to know what we’re talking about as an industry if we’re not transparent about this.”
Transparency is among the key charges for Taylor in her new role as sustainability coordinator for Durham, N.C.-based roaster and wholesaler Counter Culture Coffee. CCC has long been one of coffee’s most forward-thinking companies, but its 8-year-old sustainability department has essentially been manned by one person until now, green coffee buyer and sustainability manager Kim Elena Ionescu.
Counter Culture Coffee Sustainability Coordinator Meredith Taylor
While Ionescu’s sustainability efforts have naturally leaned toward supply sustainability and issues at origin, Taylor says she hopes to help the company grow a more well-rounded sustainability approach.
“Think companies like Patagonia, Seventh Generation or New Belgium — when people think of sustainable companies, we want to be on that list,” says Taylor, who got her start in coffee as a barista then manager at Washington D.C.’s Peregrine Espresso. “We’ve done a lot toward sustainability in the coffee world, but not much outside the coffee world.”
To this end, Taylor says the company plans to look deeper inward. “This new position is meant to do a lot of the projects that have been thought of, but that have been put on hold,” she says. “We’re trying to figure out all the sustainability metrics we want to track internally and figure out procedures to measure those.”
For example, under Ionescu’s leadership, CCC has measured seed-to-cup greenhouse gas emissions for several years, but it has not yet tracked internal water usage. The idea is to develop a sustainability approach that reaches every part of the company, from origin to roastery to board room to wholesale delivery.
“We’re also figuring out good ways to report all this stuff,” says Taylor. “We want to be increasingly transparent, and part of that involves getting that raw data and transforming it into something usable, interesting and digestible.”
That digestible data, she says will improve both internal and external communications regarding the company’s sustainability plan. Says Taylor, “I’ve been talking a lot with marketing about how to better communicate the sustainability of our coffees, not necessarily to consumers, but to our employees and our partners.”
This goes back to the problematic question of defining sustainable coffee.
“How do we communicate that sustainability is a spectrum?” Taylor asks. “A lot of times, sustainability is presented as a dichotomy — ‘Is this coffee organic or is it not?’ Well, there are farms that are organic but not socially or environmentally sustainable. There is no clear definition of sustainable coffee, and we need to evolve our collective understanding of the spectrum.”
Taylor is spending some of here existing time simply brushing up on buzzwords and other corporate-speak — the unfortunate result of sustainability increasingly making good business sense. “There is a lot of that corporate-speak and jargon,” she says. “I think it’s important for us to understand how other companies talk about sustainability, even if we don’t want to use that language.”
CCC has launched a new sustainability section on its site, including several new blog posts from Taylor on the company’s sustainability program, as well as coffee sustainability issues, at large.
Author: Nick Brown Nick Brown is the editorial director of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine. Feedback and story ideas of welcome at publisher@dailycoffeenews.com.
View the original article here

Inside Insight Coffee’s Newest Bar in Downtown Sacramento

Insight Coffee Roasters at 16 Powerhouse, across from Fremont Park in Sacramento. Photo courtesy of Insight Coffee Roasters.
While still young, Sacramento’s Insight Coffee Roasters is in the middle of a growth spurt, opening its fourth coffee shop, with another planned for likely some time in 2016.
The new shop is on the ground floor of 16 Powerhouse, an in-progress development across from Fremont Park at 16th Street and Powerhouse Alley, with 50 upscale residential units and a handful of retail spaces. The Insight space is being shared with local Sun & Soil Juice Company, and two additional highly anticipated restaurant tenants will soon be neighbors: Orchid Thai and Magpie Cafe.
Founded by roaster Lucky Rodrigues Chris Ryan in 2011, Insight roasts at its flagship facility in downtown Sacramento’s Southside, and each of its cafes are outfitted with manual lever espresso machines and manual brew bars. Insight’s Brittany Hansen recently told Daily Coffee News that the company is planning a fifth retail outpost downtown, on the 700 block of K Street.
Insight Coffee Roasters at 16 Powerhouse, across from Fremont Park in Sacramento. Photo courtesy of Insight Coffee Roasters.
In addition to its coffee program, Insight is planning to roll out some harder stuff, pending city approval for alcohol licenses. “Southside will have it first, then Fremont will have it, too,” Hansen said. “We’re going to probably start with some craft beer. Obviously, our mission is insight into craft coffee, so we’ll be sure we’re not straying from that. We’re definitely always going to be coffee-focused, but we think it will be fun to have that additional aspect in our cafes. We’re also working on our music program.”
Outside of the 2011 Southside location, all of Insight’s locations have opened since March of last year, a testament both to the brand and the advancement of coffee in Sacramento, at large.
“I feel like as long as we have this good quality product that is always the basis of what we’re doing, then we can’t lose,” says Hansen. “Lucky goes to the farms and he’s our green buyer. We have a really good relationship with the farmers, and we’re trying to keep that quality really high all the way through to the end.”

Author: Nick Brown Nick Brown is the editorial director of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine. Feedback and story ideas of welcome at publisher@dailycoffeenews.com.
View the original article here

Inside Insight Coffee’s Newest Bar in Downtown Sacramento

Insight Coffee Roasters at 16 Powerhouse, across from Fremont Park in Sacramento. Photo courtesy of Insight Coffee Roasters.
While still young, Sacramento’s Insight Coffee Roasters is in the middle of a growth spurt, opening its fourth coffee shop, with another planned for likely some time in 2016.
The new shop is on the ground floor of 16 Powerhouse, an in-progress development across from Fremont Park at 16th Street and Powerhouse Alley, with 50 upscale residential units and a handful of retail spaces. The Insight space is being shared with local Sun & Soil Juice Company, and two additional highly anticipated restaurant tenants will soon be neighbors: Orchid Thai and Magpie Cafe.
Founded by roaster Lucky Rodrigues Chris Ryan in 2011, Insight roasts at its flagship facility in downtown Sacramento’s Southside, and each of its cafes are outfitted with manual lever espresso machines and manual brew bars. Insight’s Brittany Hansen recently told Daily Coffee News that the company is planning a fifth retail outpost downtown, on the 700 block of K Street.
Insight Coffee Roasters at 16 Powerhouse, across from Fremont Park in Sacramento. Photo courtesy of Insight Coffee Roasters.
In addition to its coffee program, Insight is planning to roll out some harder stuff, pending city approval for alcohol licenses. “Southside will have it first, then Fremont will have it, too,” Hansen said. “We’re going to probably start with some craft beer. Obviously, our mission is insight into craft coffee, so we’ll be sure we’re not straying from that. We’re definitely always going to be coffee-focused, but we think it will be fun to have that additional aspect in our cafes. We’re also working on our music program.”
Outside of the 2011 Southside location, all of Insight’s locations have opened since March of last year, a testament both to the brand and the advancement of coffee in Sacramento, at large.
“I feel like as long as we have this good quality product that is always the basis of what we’re doing, then we can’t lose,” says Hansen. “Lucky goes to the farms and he’s our green buyer. We have a really good relationship with the farmers, and we’re trying to keep that quality really high all the way through to the end.”

Author: Nick Brown Nick Brown is the editorial director of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine. Feedback and story ideas of welcome at publisher@dailycoffeenews.com.
View the original article here

Inside Insight Coffee’s Newest Bar in Downtown Sacramento

Insight Coffee Roasters at 16 Powerhouse, across from Fremont Park in Sacramento. Photo courtesy of Insight Coffee Roasters.

While still young, Sacramento’s Insight Coffee Roasters is in the middle of a growth spurt, opening its fourth coffee shop, with another planned for likely some time in 2016.
The new shop is on the ground floor of 16 Powerhouse, an in-progress development across from Fremont Park at 16th Street and Powerhouse Alley, with 50 upscale residential units and a handful of retail spaces. The Insight space is being shared with local Sun & Soil Juice Company, and two additional highly anticipated restaurant tenants will soon be neighbors: Orchid Thai and Magpie Cafe.
Founded by roaster Lucky Rodrigues Chris Ryan in 2011, Insight roasts at its flagship facility in downtown Sacramento’s Southside, and each of its cafes are outfitted with manual lever espresso machines and manual brew bars. Insight’s Brittany Hansen recently told Daily Coffee News that the company is planning a fifth retail outpost downtown, on the 700 block of K Street.

Insight Coffee Roasters at 16 Powerhouse, across from Fremont Park in Sacramento. Photo courtesy of Insight Coffee Roasters.

In addition to its coffee program, Insight is planning to roll out some harder stuff, pending city approval for alcohol licenses. “Southside will have it first, then Fremont will have it, too,” Hansen said. “We’re going to probably start with some craft beer. Obviously, our mission is insight into craft coffee, so we’ll be sure we’re not straying from that. We’re definitely always going to be coffee-focused, but we think it will be fun to have that additional aspect in our cafes. We’re also working on our music program.”
Outside of the 2011 Southside location, all of Insight’s locations have opened since March of last year, a testament both to the brand and the advancement of coffee in Sacramento, at large.
“I feel like as long as we have this good quality product that is always the basis of what we’re doing, then we can’t lose,” says Hansen. “Lucky goes to the farms and he’s our green buyer. We have a really good relationship with the farmers, and we’re trying to keep that quality really high all the way through to the end.”

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Inside Insight Coffee’s Newest Bar in Downtown Sacramento

Insight Coffee Roasters at 16 Powerhouse, across from Fremont Park in Sacramento. Photo courtesy of Insight Coffee Roasters.
While still young, Sacramento’s Insight Coffee Roasters is in the middle of a growth spurt, opening its fourth coffee shop, with another planned for likely some time in 2016.
The new shop is on the ground floor of 16 Powerhouse, an in-progress development across from Fremont Park at 16th Street and Powerhouse Alley, with 50 upscale residential units and a handful of retail spaces. The Insight space is being shared with local Sun & Soil Juice Company, and two additional highly anticipated restaurant tenants will soon be neighbors: Orchid Thai and Magpie Cafe.
Founded by roaster Lucky Rodrigues Chris Ryan in 2011, Insight roasts at its flagship facility in downtown Sacramento’s Southside, and each of its cafes are outfitted with manual lever espresso machines and manual brew bars. Insight’s Brittany Hansen recently told Daily Coffee News that the company is planning a fifth retail outpost downtown, on the 700 block of K Street.
Insight Coffee Roasters at 16 Powerhouse, across from Fremont Park in Sacramento. Photo courtesy of Insight Coffee Roasters.
In addition to its coffee program, Insight is planning to roll out some harder stuff, pending city approval for alcohol licenses. “Southside will have it first, then Fremont will have it, too,” Hansen said. “We’re going to probably start with some craft beer. Obviously, our mission is insight into craft coffee, so we’ll be sure we’re not straying from that. We’re definitely always going to be coffee-focused, but we think it will be fun to have that additional aspect in our cafes. We’re also working on our music program.”
Outside of the 2011 Southside location, all of Insight’s locations have opened since March of last year, a testament both to the brand and the advancement of coffee in Sacramento, at large.
“I feel like as long as we have this good quality product that is always the basis of what we’re doing, then we can’t lose,” says Hansen. “Lucky goes to the farms and he’s our green buyer. We have a really good relationship with the farmers, and we’re trying to keep that quality really high all the way through to the end.”

Author: Nick Brown Nick Brown is the editorial director of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine. Feedback and story ideas of welcome at publisher@dailycoffeenews.com.
View the original article here