We love learning, and we tend to attract staff and customers who also love to learn, improve and grow.  We view each drink as an opportunity to improve upon the skill and attention we poured into the previous drink. There’s endless learning in perfecting the craft of coffee preparation, and there’s endless learning about the origin of the coffee beans themselves.

The political, economic, sociological, cultural and ecological forces that play out long before the coffee beans reach American shores are huge and complex! Coffee, the second most traded commodity (close behind petroleum), affects the lives of countless people around the globe, from grower to consumer.

October 8 at Leftbank Café in Portland, Stumptown Coffee Roasters will help fuel our desire to learn by facilitating a panel discussion with four of their coffee producers from the countries of Kenya, Colombia, Costa Rica and El Salvador (the producers of thump’s October featured cup, El Salvador Kilimanjaro). We plan to be there and report back to you next month with what we learned.

Here’s the event description:
Stumptown is proud to be hosting some of its finest producers and supply chain partners from four different countries right here in the Northwest as part of a unique Producers Panel. Designed to cover some of the industry’s most pressing issues and to showcase farmers who are defining progress in the broader coffee world, the panel will touch on topics such as:
– Breaking traditional/cultural processing molds
– Organic and sustainable farming vs. conventional production
– Innovations in trade channels
– The coffee world from an on-the-ground perspective
Read more….