Our next series is going to challenge a lot of people for all the right reasons.
Next week on The Daily Coffee Pro Podcast, we’re releasing a 5-part series with @isabela.raposeiras from @coffeelab_br
This is not a series that's designed to be provocative for the sake of it, but because Isabela is willing to say out loud what many people in coffee quietly know but are too uncomfortable to discuss publicly.
We talk about:
• Why “specialty coffee” may be failing as a value proposition
• Who gets to define quality
• Why coffee businesses are still stuck in outdated leadership models
• How café culture has become alienating for consumers
• and why producing countries are beginning to challenge the way the global coffee industry operates
What I appreciated most about this conversation is that Isabela isn’t just criticizing the industry from the sidelines. She has spent decades building businesses, leading teams, teaching café owners, and creating alternatives through Coffee Lab, an industry leader in Brazil.
Recently, Isabela made headlines in Brazil and was invited to address Congress about her pioneering move to give her cafe staff a 4-day work week, despite the country following a 6-day work week!
Coffee consumption in coffee origin countries is becoming the new normal, and people like Isabela are leading the conversation on what that should look like.
This conversation is for everyone in the industry, no matter where you are in the supply chain.
The full series is already available for our Patreon community and YouTube subscribers.
For everyone else, a new episode will drop each day next week on podcast apps and YouTube.
One of the reasons Jan-Cort Hoban from @mr.hobans Hoban’s Coffee Roastery and I connected so quickly in this conversation on The Daily Coffee Pro Podcast is that we’ve approached building our businesses in very similar ways.
Lean, intentional, and sustainable.
Not every growth opportunity is worth taking.
In this clip, Jan-Cort talks about something I think a lot of small business owners quietly wrestle with: The cycle that starts when growth creates more hiring… which creates more pressure… which then requires even more growth to sustain it all.
More staff, more overhead, more stress, more pressure to constantly increase revenue just to maintain the structure you’ve built.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, many people end up disconnected from the reason they started the business in the first place.
Jan-Cort has made conscious decisions to grow carefully and avoid building businesses that trap him in endless expansion for the sake of ego, scale, or external validation.
That doesn’t mean staying small forever.
It means growing intentionally, in ways that preserve quality of life, connection to the work, and the ability to actually enjoy the business you’ve built.
Something tells me that this business model is going to become the new flex, and overbuilding businesses for the sake of getting to a top that no longer exists will become less appealing.
This clip is from our new 5-part series: “The Myth of Being Big in the Coffee Business.”
The full series is available now for our Patreon community and YouTube subscribers, with public episodes dropping daily this week.
We’ll be focusing on more of these kinds of conversations (business model-focused) moving forward.
Is the youngest generation of cafe employees in Australia shying away from learning the hard soft skills that hospitality jobs teach when dealing with people and learning to communicate in the workplace? @fridadeguise Frida Deguise from @l.adonuts Donuts in Sydney, Australia share insights from her experience. Do you agree with Frida?
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オーストラリアの若い世代のカフェスタッフたちは、
接客業を通して身につく「人と向き合う力」や「職場でのコミュニケーション能力」といった、“難しいソフトスキル”を学ぶことから離れつつあるのでしょうか？
シドニーのL.A Donutsを経営するフリーダ・デギーズが、自身の経験から感じていることを語ってくれました。
あなたはフリーダの意見に共感しますか？
There’s a question that I have received this year more than any and it’s time that I address it.
Over the last day or so, quite a few people sent me a great article written by @coffeegirlstravels from @onebiggislandinspace about WOC San Diego.
The article is great and you should go read it.
People wanted to know what I thought about it because it raises really important questions about the SCA, their agenda, what role we’re playing by enabling the circus (my words not Michelle’s) and how the cognitive dissonance of it all sits with those of us who see the cringe worthy irony that this wealth is being celebrated will most smallholder farmers are getting ready to leave their farms forever.
This cognitive dissonance is why I do not go to SCA trade shows. I know me being there or not means nothing to the @specialtycoffeeassociation , nor does it do anything to solve the problems that so many of us so desperately know need fixing.
My protest only serves to make sure I can maintain my integrity, not be a hypocrite, and maintain my dignity in the face of coffee producers, who I care so much for.
This position that I have taken has raised one question I have been constantly been asked the past 2 years, and more so from people who have shared Michelle’s article with me.
I thought it was time to answer it publicly. Details in the video.
Happy to answer any questions or clarify things further in the comments if there’s something you’re not clear on.
✌️
@fridadeguise - standup comedian, entrepreneur, and the founder of world famous @l.adonuts and @fridas.pies is one of kind!
She’s saying all the parts out loud about owning a small business!
This series on the Daily Coffee Pro podcast, Frida joins me for a refreshing 5 episodes of not holding back about the challenges of building a business when you don’t have any experience but all the talent.
If you have sensitive ears or don’t like real talk, this series is not for you. For everyone else, this series is pure joy!
We laughter and talked shit about everything business related for hours.
She’s the queen of donuts! I’m super proud of what she’s achieved and to have her on the podcast!
Enjoy! They don’t make them like Frida anymore!
Are you waiting for coffee to get cheap again?
If so id love you to reconsider!
We should all be hoping that coffee never goes “Cheap” again. Particularly if we want to give coffee farmers a reason to keep farming coffee.
The future is going to get complicated in coffee. I hope you’re ready for it!
What are your thoughts?
Did the q evolving into the CVA make things better or worse for the quality professionals in the coffee industry?
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
There’s something about the way we validate expertise in coffee that hasn’t sat right with me for a long time.
In this conversation with Bruno Souza @grandebruno from @academiadocafe , we get into the reality of certification systems (i.e the Q vs the “evolved Q”), and what they actually mean.
When someone can spend years developing their skills, investing thousands into maintaining a qualification, and someone else can arrive at the same place in a matter of days, you have to ask: “What exactly are we measuring?”
This isn’t about dismissing education. It’s about being honest with ourselves about the difference between learning something and being able to do it effectively, with confidence, and experience in the real world.
This series with Bruno looks at coffee quality from the perspective of origin, and it challenges a lot of the structures we’ve come to rely on in the industry.
The full 5-part series is available for our YouTube Premium and paid Patreon members immediately. For everyone else, a new episode drops each day this week on podcast apps and our YouTube channel.
p.s. If you’re sensitive to cursing, real talk, and hearing opinions about some of the associations in our industry (e.g., SCA and CQI)...this series is not at all for you! If you are down with those things...run to this series. You will have a blast! Bruno is old school and making no apologies for it!
Conventions are not the place to find new sales!
That was one of the take aways from the first of our monthly Patreon community discussion groups for April.
Through a rich conversation it became clear that trade shows aren’t the place to convert on sales for coffee. They’re a place to build relationships and socialize.
Given the large cost to attend trade shows, the cost to convert on sales is significantly increased when you’re using trade shows as a part of your acquisition strategy.
The luxury to attend will be impacted by the coffee crisis and the war on Iran, further increasing the cost to convert into sales.
Rich conversations had all round in the 2 hour session.
If you’d like to join our next session next week, sign up at /mapitforward as a paid or free member and you can try it for one meeting for free. Then you can join the top tier to join more sessions.
Comment or DM if you’d like a clickable link!
In March 2026, Centurium Capital, the investment firm behind Luckin Coffee, acquired Blue Bottle’s global café business from Nestlé.
This isn’t just another acquisition. It’s a very clear signal about where the coffee industry is going.
What’s happening here is not about scale alone. It’s about owning two fundamentally different business models at the same time.
Luckin has built its dominance through speed, price, and digital convenience. Blue Bottle represents the opposite end of the spectrum: specialty credibility, premium positioning, and a brand built on craft and experience.
Centurium didn’t buy Blue Bottle to turn it into Luckin. They bought it because it gives them something they don’t already have, and would struggle to build from scratch: trust at the premium end of the market.
At the same time, Nestlé holding onto the consumer products side of Blue Bottle makes the strategy even clearer. Different parts of the value chain require different operators, different capabilities, and different long-term plays.
This is what the next phase of the coffee industry looks like. Not businesses choosing between specialty or scale, but learning how to operate both, without diluting either.
Blue Bottle isn’t a profitable business, so what, if anything, do you think that Luckin will do to make it profitable?
I’d love to hear your perspective in the comments!
Peace ✌️
Does regenerative farming actually improve coffee quality?
Here’s one of the most interesting findings from our latest podcast series with agroecologist Lucia Reid @reidsramblesnroasts
When looking at coffees from farms across a regenerative spectrum, one thing stood out:
Sweetness! “We could see that sweetness level was positively correlated with regenerative management.”
These weren’t subjective tastings.
The coffees were blind cupped by three Q graders, by @fafcoffees across multiple days no one knew what they were tasting.
And yet, a pattern emerged. Coffees from more regenerative systems tended to show higher sweetness intensity.
But here’s where it gets important, not all of them did.
Checkout the whole series to find out what’s Lucia tells us next and the details she does into about her findings.
This clip is from our new 5-part series exploring how regenerative management influences coffee quality.
The full series is available now for paid members on Patreon and YouTube.
For everyone else, a new episode from the series drops each day this week on YouTube and podcast apps (search The Daily Coffee Pro Podcast by Map It Forward).
If you care about quality, this is a conversation worth paying attention to.
We need to talk more about the coffee consumer.
This time about the impact household debt will have on them and subsequently their buying habits.
When an increasing number of households in western countries that consume large amounts of coffee are are using buy-now-pay-later schemes to pay for groceries, this is an important signal that our industry should play close attention to.
What this signal says exactly is a much longer discussion. If you’d like to join our monthly discussion group for free to explore this more (free this month only to new members) become a free member of our Patreon community at /mapitforward.
This is a time to prepare for all scenarios. When the shifting comes, it will come quickly.
