Updated Links! Coffee People: Matthew Torres, Familiar Coffee

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Guest: Matthew Torres
Company: Familiar Coffee
Role: Founder • Based: Long Beach, CA
Online: https://familiarcoffee.com/ • @familiarcoffeeco
What they drink: Filter coffee and an espresso.

“Everything starts with dreaming as big as you can, even if it sounds like it’s not possible, and then doing it with care.”
• Matthew Torres

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE PODCAST

Familiar Coffee is a Direct-to-consumer (DTC) specialty decaf coffee brand.
Matthew is stays busy as a full-time marketer for a corporate tech company, as a father, and now running Familiar Coffee. The core Familiar Coffee values are quality, design, and customer service.
The welcome he received at specialty coffee shops in Long Beach inspired him to launch the Long Beach Coffee Club (LBCC) to further his exploration of coffee and create a network of coffee friends who could learn from each other and the industry professionals who found value in engaging with passionate coffee drinkers.
As LBCC evolved Matthew had to be honest with himself about whether it could be a business or a hobby.
He started his decaf exploration by trying decaf versions from roasters carrying caffeinated coffees he already enjoyed, but the quality didn’t seem to be translated over on any consistent basis leading to the idea of Familiar.
The first offering was from Black & White Coffee Roasters (NC). It took four more months of cupping samples to find a second decaf that met the standard he is trying to set with Familiar Coffee.
Time Blocking is a productivity technique that focuses on prioritizing your future time.
Matthew mentioned performance and intent marketing strategies. I had to look them up.
- “Performance marketing is a marketing strategy that is driven entirely by the measurable aspects of a campaign, such as clicks or conversions.” Shopify
- “Intent marketing refers to marketing specifically aimed at consumers demonstrating purchase intent through their online actions.” Expert Beacon
Entrepreneurship can be lonely. Reach out.

SOURCING SPECIALTY DECAF

We reached out to Emily Smith at Hacea Coffee Source to ask how challenging it was to find specialty decaf coffee as a green coffee importer.

How challenging is it to source decaf that meets the standard of specialty coffee?

Actually, not hard at all. We select our own green coffee lots to process through decaffeination, either in Colombia for EA or in Vancouver for Swiss Water. In these situations, we have full control of the quality and both decaffeination centers do a great job preserving that quality to the final product.

Selecting a quality lot to put through the decaffeination process, however, is not as common as one would think. Many times companies will take an aged lot and then send it to decaffeination, or they may use a less expensive (and lower quality) lot to help offset the added cost of the decaffeination process. Because of this, there are a lot of lower quality decaffeinated lots on the market, which makes the job of finding a quality lot much harder for the roaster.

Have there been any noticeable shifts in demand for decaf recently?

I can't say that I've seen an increase in decaf demand from the end consumer, but I have definitely noticed that many roasters have shifted to using EA decaf from Colombia. Previously the standard process was that coffee had to be shipped to decafeination locations in Canada (Swiss Water) or Germany (for MC).

Over the last two decades we've seen decaffeination facilities open in origin countries, such as Mexico and Colombia. This has provided significant savings in that coffee doesn't have to be shipped across an ocean for decaffeination. It also means that there is incentive for companies to decaffeinate lots that are fresh and of higher quality, since they will be saving in overall logistics costs.