ECWx | The Big Idea
Before joining the team at Intelligentsia in 2016, I spent 14 years working for an international development agency. A long-time collaborator in that work with […]
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ECWx in Pictures
Intelligentsia partnered with Root Capital last month to adapt our Extraordinary Coffee Workshop for a new context and format we call ECWx. We convened the first […]
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Farmworkers
I spotted this sign on a truck outside our Chicago Roasting Works shortly after I started at Intelligentsia in 2016. At the time, I felt it was […]
ECWx | The Big Idea
Before joining the team at Intelligentsia in 2016, I spent 14 years working for an international development agency. A long-time collaborator in that work with […]
ECWx in Pictures
Intelligentsia partnered with Root Capital last month to adapt our Extraordinary Coffee Workshop for a new context and format we call ECWx. We convened the first […]
Being there
The core principles and standard practices of our Direct Trade program contribute to the resilience of our supply chain partners by insulating them from risk. […]
ECW: What’s risk got to do with it?
Once a year, we convene all our Direct Trade partners from around the world — more than 50 growers and representatives of farmer associations, washing […]
Busting the microlot myth
The idea that Direct Trade is all about microlots is pervasive. And persistent. And, at least in our case, dead wrong. Michaele Weissman wrote the […]
Escaping the commodity trap
From the day we opened the doors at our original location on Broadway in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood back in 1995, our business has been built […]
The signal and the noise
Arguably the most important principle of our Direct Trade model is the one implied in the name: a commitment to direct engagement with the farmers […]
The Four Horsemen
Beginning about a decade ago, the term resilience began a steady climb to ascendancy in the field of international development. In that domain, resilience refers […]
Risk, resilience and Direct Trade
Last month, I was invited by old friends at the Sustainable Food Lab to join its annual Leadership Summit in Mexico. SFL is an extraordinary […]
Ad Lucem | A Journal of Coffee Illumination
I joined Intelligentsia just over 18 months ago because I thought it had the best sourcing program in the business, and still some room for […]
Introducing Flor de Março
Today we celebrate the inaugural releases of two single-origin coffees: our Port of Mokha Al-Jabal Yemen Special Selection and our Flor de Março Brazil Limited Release. […]