Confessions Of A Barista

For this week’s blog post, I wanted to bring things a bit more local to Seattle. Pre-pandemic, I frequented many of the coffee stands that there were on Seattle University’s campus and often I saw, propped up next to the register, a bag of MotMot Coffee, with a colorful bird displayed right front and center.  When we purchase from large coffee companies, often the consumer doesn’t think about the labor that goes into the production process. Where does it all come from? For companies like Starbucks and Dunkin , a majority of their coffee beans come from Latin American farms. But profits from these companies do not go back to the labor workers fully, resulting in low wages and inequality.  Alongside a university professor, Seattle U alumni Braden Wild wanted to create a company that would return all of its profits back to its coffee farmers. Founded in 2015 , MotMot partnered with coffee farms and co-ops in Nicaragua. Their mission explains that they “pay premiums higher than F...

This week I decided to keep on theme with influencer successes in the coffee industry. At the peak of its era, Vine was the place for comedic content and my most frequented app during the years of 2014-2016. Zane and Heath, a friend duo living in Florida at the time, made the top spot on the comedy page on the daily with their six-second sketches. A Vine of theirs that went viral and sticks with me even years later, is this short sketch that will make you question why you chuckled. The Vine is considered one of the best, and would later become the inspiration for Kramoda Coffee.  After Vine shut down in 2016, Zane and Heath made the move to YouTube, where they created long-form vlog content. Similar to Emma Chamberlain from last week's post , Zane and Heath had a segment in their vlogs called “Coffee Talk”. They would stop in the middle of their errands and visit a small Vietnamese coffee shop, where over time they were able to befriend the owners and they became characters in th...

WHO IS EMMA CHAMBERLAIN? If you were around comedy-vlog YouTube in 2017-2018, you will recognize the name, Emma Chamberlain . Chamberlain quickly gained popularity on her YouTube because of her friendly personality and quick wit. Each video of Chamberlain’s felt like I was on errands with a friend - a very funny one at that. Included in those daily activities of Chamberlain’s vlogs were her coffee runs. One of Chamberlain’s main characteristics that she frequently mentioned was her addiction to caffeine, often sharing with her viewers her favorite recipes in her videos. My point is that Emma Chamberlain may be the reason I have become addicted to coffee and I’m not mad about it.  ABOUT CHAMBERLAIN COFFEE In December 2019, Chamberlain, very fitting to her brand, announced the launch of her very own coffee company: Chamberlain Coffee . In an interview , Chamberlain said, “My love for coffee started when I was maybe 10. I used to go to coffee shops with my mom and get, literally, a la...