Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to GERARDO RAMOS VIVAS. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
GERARDO, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea?
The process of going from the idea to the execution was one of the scariest things in my journey. It all started in December of 2020, one random Saturday night while having dinner with my family in Cincinnati. We all started talking about the family’s old coffee plantation. My connection to coffee goes back to 1986 when my dad and my grandfather bought a coffee plantation near Lake Yojoa, in Western Honduras. I remember going to the farm on the weekends to help pick coffee during harvest. I remember my dad talking about the challenges and problems with the farm: fluctuation of coffee prices, crime and security problems, poor relationships with traders and brokers, many, many challenges. My family eventually gave up. But coffee was always in our hearts. It helped build our family. It helped build our community, and it is the foundation of my home country.
That Saturday evening, while driving back to my place, I kept asking myself: “what if I import green coffee beans from Honduras and roast them in the USA? What if I can partner up with local small farmers and have true direct and fair-trade relationships? What if I don’t undercut their prices? What if I donate some of my revenue for local projects? What if I can help my country by letting the world know about Honduras and its great coffee?” I didn’t know where to start but being an engineer, I knew that it was about time and effort to figure it out. What happened after is so memorable to me. That same night I went online, and I ordered a “coffee roasting” book. The book arrived two days later, and it took me one day to finish reading and studying it. The next day I said, “well, there’s only one way to find out if I can make this work, I need to buy a coffee roaster and green beans”. And that’s what I did! That same night I ordered a small 250g roaster and a small batch of green coffee beans. I didn’t want to “throw away money” so I allocated a budget of $500 to buy the roaster and the beans.
The next step was to learn how to roast. I studied so much. Being an engineer, I knew that I had to use the theory and come up with a first recipe or trial. I setup the roaster in my kitchen and did my best to estimate the roasting curve. The very first roast was a complete disaster. Some beans were roasted, some were very raw or underdeveloped, there was smoke everywhere, and I just laughed. I said “alright, that didn’t go well, let’s try it again. But I had to keep going. When I got to my 4th run, I almost gave up. It seemed daunting. It seemed that I just couldn’t figure it out. I remember feeling desperate and almost giving up. But I told myself “keep going”. I stopped that night and re-assessed for the following day. The next day, I re-established the plan, applied the lessons learned from the first few runs, and I kept going. I remember getting to my 9th trial, which I coined T9 and I finally got it!!! The roasting curve was perfect and the coffee tasted really good. That was the breakthrough I needed to continue developing the recipes, mastering my technique and learning how to evaluate roasted coffee..
From there the next step was to find good coffee beans, not the ones I bought online. In April 2021, I embarked on a journey and drove more than 1,000 kms through the Western Sierras of Honduras searching for outstanding coffee. From an all-women operated Cooperative in Marcala, to a 4th generation producer family in Copán, I met some of the most passionate and hardworking farmers. They love what they do, they are extremely proud of the coffee that they grow, and they want a better future for their families and the communities that they are part of. The rest is history. During the journey I was able to learn about the quality of coffee beans, about the different processing methods, and how to import coffee beans into the USA. I established direct relationships with 3 co-ops and 3 independent farmers and traveled back to the USA with 70 lbs of coffee in my checked luggage.
These two were perhaps the biggest moments from the idea to the execution. Of course there were many steps in between like learning how to assess coffee profiles and flavors, develop branding, packaging, and labeling for my products, and also the legal side of things. But it has been an amazing journey, each step of the way.
GERARDO, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My name is Gerardo Ramos Vivas and I was born and raised in Honduras. Shortly after finishing college in Honduras, I immigrated to upstate NY with the purpose of completing my master’s in engineering. Fast forward to 2009, I relocated to Cincinnati, OH to start my career as an industrial engineer in the automotive industry. When I arrived to Cincinnati, I immediately fell in love with the city. Cincinnati is a very diverse and up-and-coming city with deep passion for great coffee, great food, and a vibrant soccer scene… it reminded me of my home country. But over the years I noticed that Honduran coffee was not very well known in Ohio, particularly in Cincinnati. After living in multiple states and countries -including New York, California, Texas, and Mexico-, I didn’t really understand why Honduran coffee was not being shared with the world, despite its unique flavor and quality.
While I was establishing a new life in Cincinnati, Honduras was going through major political, social, and economic unrest. This unrest, compounded with a severe decline in the world market price of coffee, prevented farmers to have acceptable living standards. Farmers could not meet their family’s needs. The decline in the global prices of coffee resulted in many farms shutting down, unemployment skyrocketed, and ultimately migration became the only option for many people. I watched how farmers, growers, and harvesters were not be able to provide for their families. During this period, my family had to immigrate to the USA to pursue a new beginning, a fresh start. Coffee had been in my family since the mid ’80s and one Saturday evening after having dinner with my family and reminiscing over the old times at the farm, I came up with the idea to roast 100% Honduran coffee beans in Cincinnati, OH. Today I am the founder and owner of Viva Coffee Roasters.
Our mission is to develop and roast high-quality coffee while improving the lives of our growers, partners, and customers through meaningful and honest relationships one cup at a time. There are quite a few things that makes us unique in what we do.
First, 100% of our coffee is grown in Honduras, Central America. In the last few years, Honduras has become one of the key players in the production of high-quality coffees in the world. As of 2021, Honduras is recognized as: 6th largest producer of coffee in the world, 3rd largest producer in Latin America after Brazil and Colombia, and Top 1 producer of coffee in Central America with a total annual production larger than the combined volumes of Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Costa Rica. Honduras has some of the best coffee beans in the world and our mission is to share this gem with every coffee lover. Since we specialize in Honduran coffee beans, we are able to truly understand the country and the products. We are able to fine tune our recipes to the beans coming from all the different regions in the country
Second, our vision is to contribute to a better world, one where everyone can live with dignity, love, and respect. To achieve our vision, we only partner with small farmers or cooperatives and we trade directly with them. This means that we are able to pay a fair price for coffee, in some cases up to 50% above market price. By paying a fair price for high-quality coffee, we provide farmers with the resources they need to invest in their farms and be able to meet the needs of their families. We achieve this through true direct trade. We travel to Honduras every year, drive around the country to meet with our farmers, and we shake their hands in exchange for their high-quality beans. We manage the supply chain ourselves which allows us to decouple the price paid for the coffee vs the cost to transport the beans to Cincinnati for roasting.We are committed to fair and direct trade with small and medium-size farmers in Honduras. Our goal is to improve the lives of those related to the coffee industry so that we can all live with dignity, love, and meaningful relationships.
Lastly, our roasted coffees have been masterfully crafted resulting in very high-quality beans. All of our green beans are Specialty Grade beans and they are characterized by intense citric, floral, and chocolate notes with high acidity and outstanding sweetness. Upon arrival from Honduras, the green beans are meticulously inspected for any defects or quality characteristics intrinsic to coffee beans. Once inspected, the beans are run through our Roasting process following the highest quality standards and process controls to ensure consistency in our final product. The beans will be roasted to the specific level indicated by our customers. From a City Blonde to an Espresso Dark, we will roast them to order.
After roasting, the batch is sampled by our master roaster that has been trained on internationally recognized cupping standards. Once approved, the roasted beans are stored to “rest” so the flavor, notes, and aromas can sink in. Depending on the customer order, the coffee is then packaged as a whole or ground bean. Our inventory levels are kept at a minimum to ensure having only fresh coffee available for shipment. We only roast coffee based on actual orders. Our manufacturing process has been designed in such a way that we can ensure the highest level of quality control and minimizing the timeline between order and delivery to our customers.
Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?
My approach has been very particular. I was raised in an environment where debt was seen as “unhealthy”. Although I do think that financing makes sense in many instances, I knew that the only way for me to be able to survive as a new startup was to limit financing as much as possible. I had been in the automotive industry for over 13 years and since my first paycheck I had a clear goal of saving money as much as I could while also enjoying my professional life. Now, at that time I didn’t know that I was going to be a business owner, but I knew that I wanted to be well positioned financially while in my 30s. So over 13 years I was able to reduce pretty much all of my debt, make investments, and save money which is what I used to finance at least 80% of the investment for the roastery. It has not been easy but I have much more flexibility on my decision making.
We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.
I didn’t know anything about coffee roasting when I started. Everything started with 1 book that I found online about coffee roasting. I bought it and immediately studied every page of it. I had to understand the science and engineering behind it. I then bought more books, to at least grasp the theoretical concepts. But at the same time, I am an industrial engineer with more than 15 years of experience in manufacturing, supply chain, and production systems. Although coffee roasting is an art, from a manufacturing point of view it is no different than producing vehicle parts or consumer goods. Yes, the chemistry and the physics of the product are different, but the principles of manufacturing and quality control are the same, just applied to a different product that happens to be coffee beans.
One key concept in manufacturing and process development are small scale trials. This is the stage than moves from theoretical books and concepts into physical practice or trials. I bought a very small coffee roaster and green coffee beans to limit my investment and be able to put into practice all the theory. It took many many trials. At this point I have roasted more than 1,000 batches of coffee and I have been able to fine tune my process, my recipes, and the product. But it came at the cost of multiple trials. I developed very standardized recipces with strict controls on temperature, time, weight loss, and cupping results.
I also took trainings and workshops. But I only took professional training and workshops after I had tried it out myself first. Why I did this was because I didn’t want to go to a training to learn the basic concepts. I wanted to ask clarification questions, I wanted to be able to problem solve while discussing with experts in the field to make my process better. It worked out.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.vivacoffeeroasters.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vivacoffeerstrs/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vivacoffeerstrs/
Image Credits
Erre y Erre Honduras