MILAN, Italy – Giorgio Grasso explains the role of the green coffee importers that supply roasters with coffee that’s usually already custom cleared in an extract from the book CoffeExperts, the encyclopedia book focused on coffee we talked about here. Soon in these pages, there will be other insights from the various coffee expert authors who contributed to the writing of CoffeExperts.
The green coffee importers according to Giorgio Grasso
MILAN, Italy – “In Italy there are two types of roasting companies. The industrial ones (large and medium-sized companies), who go directly to the place of origin or through international Traders, holding a behaviour towards the product which is entirely driven by the industrial mindset based on large-scale production.
Then we have hundreds and hundreds of small and medium-sized roasters (and I believe Italy holds the quantitative record), that need to engage with the market differently with respect to the large corporations. In Italy there are what’s known as “crudisti”, green coffee importers that supply roasters with coffee that’s usually already custom cleared, thus saving them from having to deal with a series of customs procedures.
Selling coffee to a large industrial company is not the same thing than to sell it cleared through customs to small and medium-sized businesses; they are two worlds very distant from each other. I’m old enough to have witnessed the First Wave, the Second one.
I don’t know if this is the Third and if there will be a Fourth, but I hope to be there for the next ones, with awareness that those who will experience it will do so thanks to what happened before, also thanks to us.
Our role is fundamental because the small and medium-sized companies almost never have the structural or organisational capacity to be able to deal directly with those that prepare their lots for them, and for these companies the quality of the coffee is much more important. These days the larger organisations grow their brand image through marketing and advertising investing large resources.”
The quality of the product
“All that remains for small and medium-sized businesses is to take care of the quality of their own product. They must focus their activity on how to market and disseminate it following the logic of quality, product and service.
The blend of a company must be pure expression of the soul and history of the company and the function of Crudista is essential to support it in moving in a market that it has evolved and will continue to do so.
It’s a function that does not consist only in selling coffee at the right price and deliver it on schedule, but in going to the origin, in choosing the lots intended for customers, chosen on the basis of their often complex needs.
We know very well that Italy is a country with very heterogeneous characteristics, perhaps the only case in the world, where walking along it from north to south you can drink very different coffees, prepared differently, to satisfy expectations of taste by the final consumer very different.
The concept of quality is a very vague concept and difficult to focus on. There are no better or worse coffees, but simply coffees more suited to a certain type of roasting, blend and final extraction. Quality lies above all in knowledge of the product.”
The culture of coffee according to Giorgio Grasso
“Furthermore, if it is true that the philosophy of the product since the First Wave has evolved, it is also true that today there is more specialized research of quality. I am not a fanatic of the Specialty for its own sake, but rather of the culture of coffee, of knowledge of the product that is used, of the competence of those who prepare and transform the product.
Great skills are needed, from the choice of the product onwards, in all the steps, up to the final presentation to the consumer. A supply chain that must be carried out in a workmanlike manner in all its step.
Of course, if we consider a sort of value scale there are very high quality coffees and very low quality coffees, but there’s no point in looking to use very high quality coffee if there’s no awareness and understanding of the product purchased or how it should be processed.
I believe our job is important, precisely because it’s a sort of partnership with our clients. My grey hair is evidence of the extent to which I have followed this sector’s evolution, and I fully understand the importance of our role, not just from a selling coffee standpoint but also to help our clients grow. And this is where the network concept becomes fundamental.”
A training vehicle
“We also act as a training vehicle through which we help our clients to achieve the best roasting curve for each specific coffee type, blend, combinations of coffee types, and to improve awareness of the difficulties posed by one coffee or another.
And we must also support the whole supply chain, from plantation to cup. In Italy we’re lagging behind concerning the Fourth Wave, but we have to consider how much the concepts of coffee and espresso are representative of our culture, very different from other countries, where they’ve started from zero with more fertile ground for development, thus enabling them to find new ways to drink coffee.
It’s difficult for Italians to change a certain habit, a particular flavor, but it also needs to happen through the roaster, and in turn they need to be helped by the green coffee importer, in order to get to know the product better and to transfer this knowledge to their clientele.”
A conscious presence
“We want to have a conscious presence in the market, to have a deep understanding of our clients’ needs right now. The future? There’s no doubt that the future is oriented towards not just the idea of evolving the process of transferring coffee from the plantation to the cup, which is important, but also towards the consumer’s awareness.
Nowadays, especially in Western countries, there’s a cultural necessity to be part of a project which favors the coffee producing farmers and that enables them to drink a product which guarantees transparency of both the trading mechanism and the quality.
I believe that today’s green coffee importer in Italy must possess certain characteristics: culture, knowledge and, above all, an awareness of how the coffee world, and not only that, is moving.”
