Derek Zavislake, co-founder of Merchants of Green Coffee with his brother Brad, is obsessed with delivering the freshest cup of coffee possible. The 16-year-old Toronto company imports and markets premium unroasted coffee beans from farmers around the world for consumers and some of the city's top restaurants and cafés.
How's the year shaping up for you?
This will be a very good year. It's not so much tied specifically to economic events around us, but the timing of where our company sits with respect to the consumer in the marketplace. There's a lot of excitement out there. You see more coffee shops opening up, more independent coffee shops, so there are all kinds of things connecting.
The growth of organic and fair trade coffee have created more awareness – that's great for us – plus the Canadian dollar allows us to buy almost at par with the U.S. dollar – and coffee is based on the U.S. dollar. That's fantastic from a coffee buyer's perspective. So I'm very excited and optimistic about next year.
What makes you angry?
Our job is to educate the consumer. One of the things that pisses us off is how hard it is to get to the consumer with the right information because there's so much noise out there.
Coffee has a shelf life [a maximum of five days after roasting, regardless of packaging]that's just not recognized because it's tackled in a way that's all about creating packaging to conserve freshness. It isn't about packaging. It's actually about drinking it fresh, as opposed to just saying it's fresh.
Consumers need to know two things about coffee: where it's from and when was it roasted. If you know when coffee was roasted, then you're going to associate coffee with being more like freshly baked bread. And sure, there might be bakers in other regions and countries, but you don't buy your bread from there. You buy your bread from local bakers. It's the same for coffee. By supporting local coffee roasters, you're buying a better product.
What's your advice to entrepreneurs in your industry?
In our case, we see that our coffee is tied to a very important issue – making sure it's grown in an appropriate way and that farmers are awarded a fair price for it. You don't want to compromise your values, but as a small business, you have to get there quickly. To do that, you have to pay attention. There are a lot of variables you just don't see coming. What I mean by that is that coffee is a fluctuating market.
You get a lot of advice coming at you. You may not want to pay attention to some basics because you think you can do it a bit differently, but those basics are key if you want to get there faster. You don't get too much time to stumble around.
Do the basics. Sell, sell, sell.