Dear Gökhan,
Good afternoon on this Saturday.
We are here facing a potential societal lockdown and I have to make many arrangements to ensure we can have daily routines running with no stops. Therefore, I can unfortunately not be available on email as fast as I would wish.
About transparency, this is the backbone of our ideology. This is also something that we developed many, many years ago and it looks like it has started to become a “standard". However, as I stated in my previous email to the club members, you can see the transparency details with and the complete breakdown of pricing.
With this approach, also with the offerings to the club, the “financial” budget has been very compressed. I decided to have coffees ranging about 86, 89 and 92 quality. This is as mentioned before to have a selection where people can see potential difference in aromatics, flavor development, growing, production, processing and sorting.
I would again encourage to share your findings and as you say - and I put respect to you asking first - about sharing what I have written to you. It is safe to say that there is “nothing to hide” here.
Also, as you mentioned that you enjoyed the Uganda, if you by any chance feel discomfort, not being satisfied with the result, the openness, the “transparency”, … please let me know and you will have a replacement, return, reimbursement, etc.
Your finding of the little ‘stone’ is important because it also serves as an orientation for generating pressure on our ideology, operations, values and goals. People want high quality coffees with a dedicated story, high quality, … For this time, as mentioned above, a 40 EUR budget for 6 bags of coffee plus 20 EUR for shipping. It all resulted (as expected) in a financial deficit. I specifically mentioned this in my email to the club members that “not everything can and should be measured in money”. To be part of a celebration is more important to me than “earning money while selling coffee”.
Regarding “quality”, for example, I could have selected 3 Geisha/Gesha offerings - "clean and free from any foreign matter" - because that is what the price of that coffee also delivers. That class of coffee are getting more attention to growing, processing, sorting etc. However, with a “budget” or approximately 40 EUR as mentioned, this is what I could do this time and with the short amount of time at my hands (all alone). The pressure has been high to deliver 6 bags of coffees (x102 boxes) and also where the Uganda is a very small developed lot (2x 60kg bags) and approximately 400kg of harvested coffee cherries.
Wishing you a continued Saturday and please let me know how I can further help. Please feel free to keep me updated on your brewing experience.
All my best to you and your family,
Ivica