Like football fans, coffee drinkers are tribal creatures. We know what they like, and we stick to their brand.
But how well do we know the story behind our ‘cup of Joe’? When we drink a coffee, do we know where it was produced or who farmed those beans? Do we know the difference between a mediocre cup of coffee and a great cup of coffee?
Two businesses in South-East Queensland are filling the knowledge gap about coffee sources. Both Willy’s Beans and Old Quarter Coffee source their beans directly from farmers in their country of origin (most coffee sold in Australia is from south and central America), importing the green beans, roasting them, then serving them to customers. It’s a sustainable business model that cuts out the ‘middle man’, connecting consumers with the farmers who grow the beans.
Jayson Mathiou, of Willy’s Beans, was born and raised on the Gold Coast. He specialised in physiotherapy, progressing in his career to treating elite athletes, including the Colombian Olympians. For several years, he travelled the world, visiting over 75 countries. But it wasn’t until he spent time back in Colombia visiting coffee farmers that Jayson’s passion flared as he understood the sacrifice that it took to produce great coffee. He realised how much work went into one great cup of coffee and was determined to return home to tell the story.
Coffee is a huge industry in Australia, worth close to $20 billion annually. Most of it is commercial coffee, sold through wholesalers and supermarkets. Only .5% of the industry is specialty coffee, and this is the sector that Jayson is passionate about; the point where meaning is made.
Jayson says: “There always needs to be commercial coffee, but we need to educate consumers about the difference between commercial and specialty coffee. Everything must have meaning, otherwise it’s simply transactional,” he adds.
Jayson’s love for speciality Colombian coffee, and the farmers who grow it, fuelled his passion to bring us the finest cup of coffee we can drink. The hardworking Colombian coffee farmers inspired him to start Willy’s Beans in Burleigh Heads, where he grew up.
Talking coffee like sommeliers talk wine, Jayson wants to educate us about the difference between a ‘house red’ and a fine cabernet (in this case, single origin specialty coffee). He’s also talking ‘terroir’ and sustainable farming methods, opening avenues to improve the quality of specialty coffee while educating consumers to help them make better choices.
“We need to understand what happens on a farm level to understand the differences in our coffee cup,” he adds. “We take care to select farmers with the best sustainable practices to work with and invest in. For example, one of the farms has 40% of the farm preserved for conservation, harvesting beans from only about 25% of the land to maintain minerals in the soil and to regenerate it for the future. Then, at harvest, the farmer only picks out the best beans from his crop, perhaps a 1 in 30 ratio.”
“By choosing beans from a farm like this, we get coffee that tastes more like how the farmer intended it. The Australian market is geared towards drinking coffee with milk, so mostly we are drinking blends, but Colombian coffee is great in its own right,” Jayson adds.
Jayson has named his company after the famous Willys Jeep, an iconic vehicle used by Colombian farmers. The Willys Jeep embodies the qualities of reliability, strength and longevity that Jayson emulates in his company.
You can see the jeep parked in the Willy’s Beans warehouse, a tasting room experience that immerses the consumer in the life of a Colombian coffee farmer, showcasing what coffee is.
“We deliver a unique and delicious coffee experience at our Coffee Warehouse in Burleigh Heads that highlights the hard work and expertise of coffee farmers,” Jayson tells me. “I want to push past the boundaries to inspire us to want better coffee,” he says. “The push needs to come from this end. Most farmers are too small to have a voice. They need us to advocate for them through our choices.”
For Jayson, this means developing the market on one end of the journey, while paying for coffee at the start of the harvest on the other, even though he must wait four months to receive it.
“Coffee builds relationships,” he says.
Relationships were also the key to how partners Yose Le Cerf and Amy Hicks started Old Quarter Coffee. Having visited Vietnam since their teens, working and living there for periods of time. With the open-mindedness of youth, in the back of their minds was the thought of starting a business that had a social impact; something different to the models of how most businesses were run. It took travel experience to show them the gap in the market that they could fill.
Yose and Amy have always been interested in coffee. Yose had visited coffee growers in the southern part of Vietnam, a country where most growers concentrate on Robusta coffee. Robusta is well-suited to Vietnam’s humid climate, cheap to grow, with a high yield of beans per plant. Robusta is predominantly used in the production of instant coffee and to bring depth to espresso blends. However, most of Australia’s café culture coffee drinkers prefer the lighter, brighter Arabica coffee which is sweeter than Robusta, and contains only half the caffeine of Robusta.
A turning point for Yose and Amy came when a mutual friend introduced them to Pat and Tam, who owned a small Arabica coffee plantation in northern Vietnam. The couple were so impressed with the coffee that Pat and Tam grew that they decided to import their green beans to Australia, roast them and sell coffee in a vertically integrated business model – from farm to cup. They took the leap of faith in 2016, when nobody else was importing and selling Asian coffee, by importing 700kg of green beans from Pat and Tam. In 2017, they opened Old Quarter Coffee in a shed in Ballina’s backstreets, the business name reflecting the atmospheric Old Quarter of Hanoi.
“Our customers love our vision: to pioneer top quality Asian coffees in the Australian market and to change lives through coffee,” she says. “They love to see a humble grassroots business expand; they love that people care.”
“There are morality issues with any product we consume, including coffee. Ingredients matter,” Amy tells me. “The coffee we drink should never be at the expense of other people’s livelihoods. Importing from Asian growers [the couple having expanded their sources to committed partners in other parts of Asia], the relationship with each partner is bespoke, the farmer sets the price, ensuring that they cover the cost of production plus a margin of profit.”
Bringing Asian coffee beans into a South-American-dominated market has been a challenging journey for the couple.
“It takes time to change narratives,” Amy tells me. When people taste our coffee they love it. It’s exciting because coffee professionals are only now starting to be open to Asian coffee,” she says.
“Also, the consumer market is developing rapidly. There is growth in the communication between coffee growers and consumers. Roasters in big cities in Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and China are now communicating directly with farmers, leading to domestic and global growth,” Amy tells me.
Now with four shops (Ballina, Murwillumbah, Southport and Coolangatta), their annual import has reached 11 tons of beans (2024).
So, what makes Old Quarter Coffee different?
“Every single coffee we import is exclusive to us,” Amy tells me, “Each one from a small holder farmer, most of whom are from ethnic minorities [who inherently carry a layer of disadvantage].”
Not only is Old Quarter Coffee experimenting with different ranges of coffees in their shop (think Floating Hanoi cold brew with fresh orange zest and a dusting of dark chocolate, or the dairy-free Strawberry Yuzu Matcha Tonic), but they also lead us to mindful consumerism. Each cup we drink can make a difference to someone else’s life, bringing advantage rather than disadvantage. And that’s a big call.
