So, on January 22nd, 2010 MadCap officially turned one year old.
I have to say that the last year has been an amazing adventure and the thought of trying to recap everything that’s happened is somewhat overwhelming. With that being said I will attempt to share with you all the great joys of this last year and those that we look forward to experiencing in the next.
First of all, Grand Rapids has been great to us! We love being downtown and we’re excited to be seeing all the efforts of those passionate for making this a great city. The acceptance we’ve received in how we are presenting coffee has been a great blessing and encouragement to us and has definitely made our first year an unforgettable one. So thank you Grand Rapids for your support and hopefully in the coming years we will continue to provide you with a great and ever changing coffee experience.
Secondly, we love our coffee community! Not just locally but globally. The relationships and camaraderie we’ve developed over the last year and half have been amazing. We definitely owe a lot of our education and success to the greater coffee community. Those that are constantly pushing the envelope both in how coffee is prepared and presented have impacted us greatly. We are especially thankful to those that have shown us it is as much about relationships as it is about the quality. In October we had the opportunity to host a Great Lakes Barista Jam and got to spend the weekend interacting with coffee professionals from five states. We entitled the jam “Coffee Talk” with the idea that more than just offering educational opportunities we could spend time discussing as a community how we could better make an impact in our industry. Hopefully those that attended were able to take away as much from it as we were. We are especially thankful to all those that contributed as instructors Jesse Crouse – Intelligentsia Coffee, Chris Demarse – The Coffee Institute, Edwin Martinez – Finca Vista Hermosa, Scott Lucey – Alterra Coffee, Chris Defario – The Coffee Institute, Ryan Knapp – MadCap Coffee, Talya Stader – Intelligentsia Coffee, and Colin Whitcomb – Alterra Coffee. We hope the coming year can be as rewarding.
Lastly, the thing that impacted us most as a company was the incorporation of our own Direct Trade program. Thanks to the hiring of Chad Morton half way through the year we were able to see the dream of doing Direct Trade as a small company become a reality. Chad’s experience in developing relationships with coffee farmers and his creativity in finding ways to get that coffee from origin has offered us an some amazing opportunities. Not only that but we have been able to purchase some amazing coffees! From Edwin in Finca Vista Hermosa to Ricardo in Helsar de Zarcero we have developed some great relationships. We are really excited about a recent coffee we purchased from Ellen Prentice and her farm Finca de Dios in Guatemala. Chad and Ben (our roaster apprentice extraordinaire) just returned from a week and a half trip of visiting our Guatemalan farms and had an opportunity to see some of the great things Ellen and our other producers are doing. With all that being said we are really excited about what the future holds for our Direct Trade program. Over the next few months we are sending our staff to farms in Costa Rica, Honduras and Kenya. We can’t wait for the new relationships and coffees we will get to experience in the coming year and hope to share them all with you.
Well that’s about as short of a one year recap as I can manage. In all reality that was just a tip off the iceberg of all the great things that have happened at MadCap in the last year. Thank you so much to all that have joined and supported us on this journey. We hope that you will continue to experience coffee with us in the years to come.
photo was taken by Terry Johnston
