What is your coffee origin story? How did you get into specialty coffee?

I just love coffee a bit too much, especially Panamanian coffees, and that love led me to visiting Panama. I initially visited the town of Boquete, which is famous for their coffee as they have the right micro-climate and terroir to grow phenomenal Gesha. But, I eventually ended up in a totally different province that I had never even heard of! Someone had invited me to visit their farm in Coclé, and I ended up going and taking a 60-kilogram sack of coffee from their farm in my suitcase back to Canada. I tried to contact different roasters to see if anyone wanted to buy it, but they laughed at the quantity, because by the time they’d figure out what to do with it, the coffee would be gone. This is when I decided to get a home roaster and start roasting myself until I eventually launched Pirates of Coffee with this coffee from Coclé being our first offering.

What inspired you to start Pirates of Coffee, and how did you come up with the name?

In the first versions of our coffee bags, we included the farm gate prices amongst other numbers, and a lot of people were confused by it. While I agree that we may have included too much information, our attempt at trying to push price transparency and traceability reflects my goal of trying to change the coffee industry. We’re the Pirates of Coffee because we’re doing things differently! We’re also looking for the best of the best coffees; we’re searching for treasure, which is why Pirates of Coffee felt like a good fit. We’re a little edgy, and aren’t trying to be fancy and clean; coffee is rough around the edges and we wanted to capture that. “Pirates” is a little adversarial, but that’s okay. It kind of goes with what we’re trying to do.