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Tim Wendelboe @ Market Lane (part 1)

I recently had the opportunity to go to Melbourne to attend a talk by Norwegian roaster and coffee guru Tim Wendelboe. If you’d like some details on the contents of the talk, check out either Espresso Melbourne’s excellent photo blog or the great summary on the 5 Senses blog – needless to say that it was thought-provoking beyond belief!

This will be more of a “what am I going to do about it?” response.

But first, a quick summary.

Tim Wendelboe has been in the coffee world for about 12 years. He won the World Barista Championship in 2004 (controversially using Australian-grown coffee! But that’s another story…) and opened his own roastery in Oslo in 2007. He has gained a reputation for running amongst the best roasteries in the world, and I think this is for three reasons:

  1. They’re clear about what they want – high-quality, small lots of freshly harvested coffee that are turned over quickly and replaced as the next fresh lot arrives.
  2. They roast with skill and vision – again, they know the result they want and they work to achieve it.
  3. They pay A LOT in order to access great coffees – pretty much all their coffee is sourced directly from farmers, with whom they have fruitful, ongoing relationships.  TW explains that the premiums they pay are investing in quality for their future, as well as the farmers’.

The talk itself covered three main areas: sourcing coffee (ie. organising direct trade), roasting coffee, and selling coffee.

I was challenged and inspired in equal measure by what TW shared. A few examples:

  • TW’s roastery output is only 40-50% larger than Ritual Coffee’s, making their involvement in direct trade quite incredible (eg. they spent $20,000 on travel in 2010).
  • In terms of roasting, they know exactly what they want to achieve and their quality control is relentless.
  • In terms of cupping, they have far more experience than our “cupping team” (me) and they utilise it to find great coffees.

So, what am I going to do about it?

For now I’m going to keep thinking! My next blog post will outline some of the ideas I’ve had about how we at Ritual achieve some great results into the future.

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