I've been working in coffee for eight years, but I grew up on a coffee farm. My father-in-law is a coffee farmer. He was one of the producers involved in setting up the first export company founded by coffee growers in Guatemala.

When I moved to Germany in 2013, I started working as a barista at Starbucks. It was funny because in the cellar of the coffee shop you could find a few bags of coffee from my father-in-law's farm. I was destined to work in the coffee industry!

When I was working at Starbucks, a friend gave me Standart magazine. I loved the way they presented producers. It got me thinking about how we should look at producers. So I wanted to do something similar: present producers as if they were rock stars.

At that time, I was also studying permaculture and returned to Guatemala for a while. I started to familiarize myself with coffee, working on the plantation, at the washing station and in the tasting lab. I realized that coffee wasn't just a product. It is also linked to issues like migration, poverty and neocolonialism. All this had a big impact on me.

Back in Germany, I wanted to do something with this experience, with one idea in mind: coffee is more than just a cup. We founded Meet Los Amigos with Christina, who now also works at Belco, and imported coffee from Guatemala to Germany. That was in 2015, and 7 years later I started working for Belco!

First of all, I'd like to say one thing. Since I joined Belco, I still work with most of the suppliers from the Los Amigos era. Personally, that's been a great success. To answer your question, I'd say that the only constant in life is change, isn't it? Things started to change for Meet Los Amigos, the way we were running the company was risky. It was getting bigger than us. That's when we decided to contact Alexandre Bellangé.

When we arrived at Belco, we had the impression that Belco was Meet Los Amigos big sister. All our values were aligned, and that's how Christina and I joined Belco in 2022.

I'm the director of the Belco agency in Central America. The aim is to get more involved at local level in Central America. It really is a team work. We have to find coffee producers and cooperatives that match our values and our vision of the future.

The role of the agency is not just to buy coffee, but also to understand and create a lasting relationship with the producers. Here's how I see it: we're not coffee traders, we're coffee developers! We have no intention of imposing practices and methods on coffee producers. Our role is to advise them and give them the tools to develop.

We can see more clearly how we can get involved in the local community, how we can provide a better service for our customers, a tailor-made approach. Being on the field also allows us to create a coffee offer that nobody else has to date. This gives us a huge opportunity: to offer coffees that are different from others, differently.

Our method is to get closer to the product, not to make it our own, but to work with the producers, supporting the transition from conventional farming to agroforestry, bridging the gap between production and consumption. Basically, by believing in the product and its quality throughout the value chain.

The human context is very important to us. We can't be on every farm 24 hours a day, so we have to trust the people we work with. We want to see whether their farms have biodiversity, whether they are organic, certified or not. And then, of course, we have to check the quality.

We want to grow together, with the producers. That's why we work with someone like Felipe, from Finca Gascon, in Guatemala. Everything there is organic, right down to the fertilizer. Every year, he pushes his limits to improve the quality of his coffees. It's very inspiring!

Leaving a legacy. Even though Felipe is the first generation of coffee growers in his family, what he wants is to leave a legacy. As for the others, who belong to the fourth or fifth generation of producers, they also produce coffee with the romantic idea of preserving a legacy. This is the case, for example, of Alex Keller, from the Santa Isabel farm. Another producer we like to work with.