Meet Our Coffee Partner: Osito

Producers are the people who grow, process and mill coffee cherries in order to produce the green coffee. The green coffee is then moved to the hands of exporters who buy the coffee from producers and work with different government agencies to export the coffee from its country of origin to its final destination. 

From there, importers buy the green coffee from exporters, receive it at designated port, store it in green coffee warehouses and then sell it to coffee roasters. Roasters buy the raw material that is green coffee, roast it in order to change the cellular structure of the coffee and then package the roasted coffee. The retail side of the industry then sells the roasted coffee to cafes, grocery stores or directly to coffee consumers for that delicious cup we all know and love!

What prompted you to start Osito? 

Osito was founded in 2018 and was birthed naturally out of a partnership between myself (Kyle) and my co-founder, Jose Jadir Losada. We met in 2014 and bought three coffee farms together between 2015 and 2017. Our desire was simply to create short, strong and transparent supply chains on behalf of coffee producers and roasters and help facilitate relationships on their behalf in perpetuity.

We love the name, for obvious reasons, how did the name “Osito” come about?

Osito actually started as a roasted coffee brand with the hope that someday it would encompass the whole supply chain from farm to cup.  While we ended up abandoning the roasted product, we did build the green coffee business from the ground up. The name, though, is actually quite personal. My grandmother was born on the Onondaga Nation reservation in central New York. In that culture, newborns are given both English names as well as traditional names. While I don't speak the language, my grandmother and father gave me the name "Owela Ohgwaih," which translates to "Baby Bear." With a bit of a stretch, this loosely translates to "Osito" (the diminutive of "bear") in Spanish. Apart from being so personal, it is also simply a word that is very easy to say for people who speak a variety of languages and, at least for Spanish speakers, it is quite memorable.   

How would you describe your buying practices and your producer relationships?

First, we do not even engage with producers with whom we don't feel there is at least the potential to work with for many years on end. Being a reliable buyer of producers' coffee is core to what we do but also being a reliable seller of those coffees as a service to our clients is vitally important. Second, with the exception of Brazil, our goal is to work almost exclusively on a fixed-price model wherein we are not using the futures market as a reference point for prices paid to producers. As farming communities deal with more uncontrollable risk than the rest of the supply chain, we hope to reduce their exposure through long term commitments and fair, predictable prices.

Photos of the drying station at Telila, courtesy of Osito 

How would you say these things differ from other importers?

While many exporters/importers talk about the importance of relationships and paying producers "well," few have the wherewithal to see that vision through on a year-over-year basis with ALL the producers from whom they buy.  What they shine a spotlight on in blog posts and on social media is perhaps genuinely representative of PART of their business. For Osito though, we want this to be the default...the bare minimum...for each and every producer with whom we work and then work hard to identify opportunities to make it better. 

Absolutely. As the specialty coffee industry evolves, there is greater demand for traceability, transparency and for relationally-sourced coffees and Osito is uniquely well-positioned to handle even the most demanding needs.

Money! haha.. Importing coffee is a cash intensive business. We need LOTS of money to only bear LOTS of risk and earn VERY small percentage margins. That's not to complain. I wouldn't want to occupy any other place in the supply chain than where we currently sit. It is a pleasure and an honor. However, it is quite a challenging position to be in when producers, on one hand, NEED to earn more money in order to continue producing and roasters (on the other hand) want their green coffee costs to go down as their labor costs and other COGS increase.

That's a really difficult question to answer. It might sound very basic but I think I would encourage more people to simply ask more questions.  

• "WHERE does this or that coffee come from?"
• "WHO produced it?"
• "HOW were they compensated?"
• "WHAT are the perennial challenges?"

I think the more curious exporters/importers/brokers/roasters are about the coffees they source, a lot of necessary change would be naturally born out of that hunger for information and the actionable items that might come out of the answers they receive.

What started and has helped maintain that relationship? 

Mike and I had a lot of mutual friends, and I had known of him for quite some time. I had heard nothing but wonderful things about Mike. This was during a time when a lot of unscrupulous things were happening in Ethiopia to get traceable coffee out of the country. Mike had a reputation for being honest and kind. After hoping for opportunities to bump into Mike in Addis Ababa, I finally reached out via email. He responded fairly quickly, and it just so happened that he was in Maryland at the time. I live in Pennsylvania, so we picked a place to meet up (a Starbucks in Silver Spring, Maryland, ha!), and I drove down to finally meet Mike. We hung out at a strip mall Starbucks and ate lunch at a strip mall Chinese restaurant. It was the start of what has become one of my closest friendships.

What has maintained the relationship is the fact that the rumors were true: Mike Mamo is one solid human being. He's quirky as all heck, and I couldn't love the guy more. He's also a very interesting person. Born in Ethiopia, his parents sent him to the States when he was young to live with family here during a turbulent time in Ethiopian politics. They thought it best and safest for the kids to be out of the country. After grad school, Mike went back to Ethiopia to run the family business, Addis Exporter. He has taken over his father's legacy and done an admirable job in a very challenging industry. Mike is simultaneously American and Ethiopian, which makes him not only fascinating but also invaluable as a business partner and agent in Ethiopia.

What would you say the most challenging thing about working in Ethiopia has been? 

The answer to this question is different every year. This past year, the big headaches have been, firstly, our partners in Ethiopia getting access to money to purchase cherry, and secondly, just as the shipping season kicked off, all hell broke loose in logistics. Suddenly, there were no containers available in Addis. We had to pivot and ship coffees in 40ft containers (coffee is typically shipped in 20ft containers). This meant added costs for our exporting partners and ourselves. Since contracts were already written and much of the coffee sold, this meant losing margin on every pound of coffee. The issues in the Red Sea further compounded everyone's logistical challenges (and increased costs). Things got so bad that eventually, several shipping lines stopped making port calls into Djibouti (Ethiopia is landlocked, so coffees ship out of Djibouti). There was a brief moment when it appeared no one was able to ship out of Djibouti—some shipping lines had no equipment (containers) available, and many weren't shipping at all. Eventually, service resumed, but not without its hiccups. There is nothing more humbling than having absolutely no control whatsoever over multiple containers of coffee, each valued well over $125,000, sitting in a port city halfway around the world.

Last year, the challenge was insanely high cherry prices. For reasons not entirely clear to me, banks were eager to lend money to producers and exporters, leading to an abundance of cash—and cash is king in coffee production. Washing stations were essentially in a bidding war with each other to buy coffee from farmers. On one hand, this is excellent: more money to farmers! On the other hand, it was too much too fast. The market couldn't handle the prices that producers and exporters needed to sell the coffee at to break even. Beyond that, it was, at best, a very average-quality year. More than a few Ethiopian businesses went the way of the dinosaur in last year's volatile market.

None of this even touches on the tragic and deadly civil war that has ravaged Ethiopia over the past couple of years. Surprisingly, this has impacted coffee production less than I initially anticipated. I suppose it’s not entirely surprising, given that coffee production and the armed conflict have largely occurred in different regions of the country. Moreover, Ethiopia relies heavily on coffee income to sustain its economy and operations, which has likely contributed to the resilience of the coffee sector amidst such turmoil.

In Ethiopia, relational elements can be very challenging. Thankfully, that has mostly been a breeze, thanks to Mike. It goes without saying that our relationship with Mike and the Telila/Atoma coffees has been excellent, but Mike is also our agent and direct liaison for single producers we work with in the west of Ethiopia and producers elsewhere.

What would you say the most rewarding thing about working in Ethiopia has been? 

I have such a special place in my heart for all of our producing partners in Ethiopia. We’ve chosen to go deeper, not wider, and continue to focus on growing with the same handful of producers in that enigmatic and wonderful country. We work with Telila/Atoma stations, Sookoo Coffee in Guji, and a number of single producers in the west (not far from Telila/Atoma) operating under the name the Tokuma Group. Mike is our agent for the work we do with the Tokuma Group. The group is comprised of several medium-sized coffee producers who, thanks to relatively new laws, are now able to export their coffee directly. Watching this group grow—both as coffee producers and businesspeople—has been some of, if not the most, meaningful work I do in Ethiopia. Our relationships with the members of the group are incredibly strong, and I feel privileged to be part of what they are building.

Photo courtesy of Osito 

If you could only impart one thing on our customers about Ethiopian coffees what would it be and why?

Oh wow, so many things came to mind right when you asked this, but you clearly said "one." Ha! I guess I’d share something that’s true elsewhere as well but feels particularly poignant for Ethiopia: the coffee industry won’t be able to stay the way it has been for much longer. Ethiopian coffee is a gift to the world. As the birthplace of coffee, it’s where coffee thrives, historically producing some of the highest-quality coffee anywhere. But things are changing. While still stunning, the quality isn’t quite what it used to be.

I’m not sure why exactly, and if someone claims they know definitively, I’d take that with a grain of salt. There are definitely factors that could be and likely are contributing: shifting climate affecting temperatures and rain patterns, increasing deforestation for eucalyptus, khat, and coffee production, aging plants, and undernourished soil. And these are just a few potential reasons. Economic realities are also impacting people. Living in Ethiopia is surprisingly expensive. If we are to speak honestly, and I believe we should, much of the coffee bought and sold in this world, including from Ethiopia, is moved through neo-colonial structures. While direct tyranny perpetrated by monarchies and governments may not be as prevalent, exploitative systems are. Systems are even scarier because they lack hearts and minds, driven solely by their ends. When the end is a bottom line, systems can lead to significant exploitation of people and land.

However, I don’t want to end on a down note. I’ll treat everything up to this point as a preamble to my actual answer, which is: despite all the challenges, the culture, people, and land that make up Ethiopia are incredibly lovely, resilient, and wonderful. As the birthplace of both humans and coffee, I often jokingly refer to Ethiopia as Eden. There are moments while traveling there when the place truly feels deserving of that moniker.

Through our “Coffee Partners" blog series we hope to highlight the intentionality that we, and so many others in our industry, have made to conduct our businesses as transparently and ethically as possible. Without people like Kyle and David at Osito and Mike in Ethiopia, we wouldn’t be able to do our part in bringing these special coffees to our community! 

Thank you for taking the time to read this post, we hope this insight gives you a deeper appreciation for this coffee we are so proud to have on our menu and webstore. Be sure to try our Telila, Atoma and let us know what you think!