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Miguel Flores Burgos, List+Beisler Coffee · Coffee People Podcast

• 0:25
  Smithsonian does a bird friendly coffee program, so they've been
• 0:28
  on the show, right? Yeah, that's very.
• 0:31
  Cool. Thank you.
• 0:32
  Speaking of the show, welcome to the Coffee People podcast.
• 0:36
  Thank you for having me. You're.
• 0:37
  Living it Could you tell everyone who you are and why
• 0:40
  you're here at Coffee Fest and. What you work for so.
• 0:44
  We'll try that again. Thank you for having me.
• 0:47
  So my, my name is Miguel Flores. I'm a green coffee trader.
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  I work with one of the companies who has very old and rich
• 0:57
  history and coffee company's name is Liszt Weisler.
• 1:02
  It's two German last names. We've been around for 125 years.
• 1:07
  We sold Peet's their first bag of coffee.
• 1:09
  We sold Starbucks their first bag of coffee.
• 1:12
  You know, we invented cupping as a mechanism to identify high
• 1:16
  quality coffee. You invented cupping.
• 1:19
  Yeah, yeah. In the 1940s, so.
• 1:22
  I'm assuming that wasn't you. You're not like immortal or
• 1:25
  anything. Yeah, not me, not me.
• 1:26
  OK, but lots of history. Why?
• 1:32
  Why was it? Why?
• 1:33
  Why was I interested in this role in particular?
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  You know, you don't grow up as a little kid, too.
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  I want to be a coffee trader. That's not something anybody
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  says. But my dad, you know, I was born
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  and raised in Honduras, and my dad owns a coffee farm there.
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  And his goal was to try and sell coffee to importers for a very
• 1:55
  long time. So I know I would spend some
• 1:58
  time some summers, you know, doing some farm work, helping
• 2:02
  around. It was always in the family.
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  And there's always, there was always this missed of, you know,
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  the shroud of mystery around importers.
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  And I was always curious, why is it so difficult?
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  You know, my dad has this wonderful coffee on the farm,
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  but it's very hard to get to an importer to sell coffee to them
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  directly. So being on this side of this
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  desk, I, I now understand the risk that importers take when
• 2:28
  they bring coffee in, how trust and their partners and their
• 2:32
  suppliers needs to be there. This business, you know, it
• 2:35
  works on trust, right? There needs to be trust between
• 2:38
  everybody for it to work. So here the the thing that came
• 2:42
  into my head. What is the coffee farm still?
• 2:44
  In your family? Yeah, it still is.
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  Amazing. If you're on the farm side of
• 2:49
  things, what are things that people can do to make you
• 2:52
  attracted to an importer? You know, what is what?
• 2:54
  How do you get that relationship started?
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  You know, say I want to import from Honduras into the US or
• 3:01
  Canada or wherever, but I'm here, you know, on the farm.
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  I mean, I grew up in a farming family.
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  Like, it's hard work. You're busy.
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  It is hard work and it's the farmer holds the majority of the
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  risk. I think now we're transitioning
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  into a seller's market where there's limited supply of coffee
• 3:22
  to be had. So there's an opportunity to
• 3:26
  connect more. But it truly is you have to
• 3:31
  build relationships. This is truly what the industry
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  needs from every side. You have to build relationships
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  with importers, with roasters, and you have to do things
• 3:41
  properly one year after the next.
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  What does doing things properly mean?
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  If you you know, if you contract coffee and then the market moves
• 3:51
  up a dollar, but you already have a contracted price, you
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  honor that. You deliver that coffee, you
• 3:56
  deliver on the quality and you build your reputation for
• 4:00
  yourself. But it's a it's a hard thing to
• 4:02
  do, yeah. Well, the even the relationship
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  part. I mean, as a kid I always
• 4:08
  imagined that an NBA scout was going to drive past my house
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  while I was shooting baskets and discover me.
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  But that's not how the real world works.
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  Also, I never hit 510 and I stopped.
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  But as a coffee farmer too, how often is like an importer going
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  to be driving down the road and see a farm and stop in?
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  There has to be a give and take to that relationship.
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  I have the product, I need to let you know I have it.
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  And, and This is why trade shows like these are so important, OK?
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  Because you're able to at least connect, shake hands, start a
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  conversation. And it's a, it's a good
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  opportunity to put a face, you know, to the e-mail, to the
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  phone number. And this is where you, you
• 4:51
  initiate, you start building connections.
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  As silly as it sounds, these exist for a reason.
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  And it's people sick that do business with each other.
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  They want to connect, right? I find.
• 5:03
  So I do a lot of these shows now and I meet the similar people in
• 5:07
  the same thing, but you hear a lot of the same stories.
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  But for somebody, it's going to be their first trade show and
• 5:13
  the first time they're making those connections and it just
• 5:15
  extrapolates out. Do you have an extra minute?
• 5:17
  I know we're just doing an espresso round here.
• 5:20
  You have a unique perspective of being from a farming background,
• 5:24
  but also on the trading side. Now, is we talk, the word
• 5:31
  sustainable gets way overused. Is that a reality?
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  Is sustainable coffee something that you believe to be a real
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  thing, or is it only sustainable from a perspective?
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  I, and this is as a having grown up in a, in a farmer family, I
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  think sustainability comes from how well you run the business
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  and the farm needs to be treated as a business because it is a
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  business, right? So it's the, the, the, the
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  comments around the price of the market.
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  It's always been, you know, a point of friction.
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  How much should it be? Should it be, you know, how high
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  should it go? And we're coming off of a year
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  where the markets were at a historical high, highest ever in
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  history. And you know, that year, year
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  and a half did not eradicate poverty.
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  Why do you think that is right? So is it truly just higher
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  prices? That's that, that's the
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  solution. You know, at the end of the day,
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  it's not about that. It's about is your farm
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  efficient? Is your farm, you know, are you
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  able to make a living growing what you're growing on your
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  farm? Is coffee the right crop to grow
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  in your farm? Should you be growing something
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  else? Should you be doing something
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  else with your time? And this is, these are all very
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  personal questions. It's like talking to a small
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  business owner, right? They need to treat it as a
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  business. So I think education is an
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  important aspect. I think teaching cooperatives
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  how to, you know, how to manage their, their hedge book, for
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  example, given them the, the training that they need to be
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  able to, you know, lock in a better price of the market.
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  So it's, it's a tricky thing, right?
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  There's always a tug and pull when it comes to negotiating
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  price and sustainability is also sometimes viewing an
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  agricultural activity and evaluating if it's feasible.
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  Is it really the best practice? That's a challenging question,
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  not just from a business standpoint, but an identity
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  standpoint. You know, deciding if the thing
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  I've chosen to do or I grew up into is the thing I'm supposed
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  to be doing. Or will.
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  Support me. It's a challenging question.
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  Right. And and this is, again, not
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  trying to paint the pretty picture, but the reality of
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  because that's a question that we've had to ask ourselves, you
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  know, as, as we've looked into our own farm.
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  Yeah, yeah. Is it feasible?
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  When you are at an event like this, there's going to be a
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  morning where you get away from the convention and I bet you
• 8:39
  stop into a coffee shop. If you were to do that, what do
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  you order? I always like to try their black
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  coffee, whatever they have as their house groomed or on drip
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  because I think that's the purest expression of what they
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  do, right? So.
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  I always think of it as like if their drip is good then I'll go.
• 9:02
  Everywhere. Everything else is going to be
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  good too, right? The same way if I go into a
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  restaurant bathroom and they have one ply toilet paper, I'm
• 9:09
  not eating that food because they don't care about their
• 9:11
  employees. That's just how I feel about it.
• 9:15
  Yeah, I really appreciate you stopping by.
• 9:18
  Miguel. Can you tell me again how can we
• 9:19
  find your company or if there's anything you'd like to share so
• 9:23
  people can find you guys? And what?
• 9:24
  To do listen Beisler is is has been operating in continental
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  America, you know for eight years.
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  So we store coffee in New Jersey, Oakland, CA, Dupuy,
• 9:35
  Florida. You can find us online.
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  Listen Beisler dot coffee so great.
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  We'll make sure we get people connected.
• 9:43
  Thank you so much for. Being here.
• 9:44
  Thanks for the conversation. It was.
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  It was a comfy chair. We always need a break.
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  I was so excited to see these chairs when I came in.
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  I did it and nobody was doing this.
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  The. Normally I'm standing the whole.
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  Time and but this is nice so you know you're able to sit down and
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  have a it's inviting, it looks yeah.
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  It's been lovely. Normally it's hard to pull
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  people in, but I think they see the chair and they're.
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  Like, yeah, it looks, it looks inviting.
• 11:00
  Really. The, that's what caught my
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  attention. It's like, that's an inviting
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  booth. And then I was like, I like the,
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  you know, the. I'm gonna hit that little thing
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  so we can just chat.