Tim Wendelboe Podcast

In this episode, I speak with Anja Bakken Riise, who is the president of Norwegian environmental and solidarity organisation Framtiden i våre hender (The future in our hands). The organisation, which now has over 45,000 members, has been instrumental in promoting sustainability in Norway. Recent achievements include helping the Transparency Act come into effect; a law giving consumers the right to know how over 9,000 Norwegian companies safeguard human rights and ensure decent working conditions within their supply chains. Anja and I have a wide-ranging conversation about coffee and sustainability, a subject that I believe is such an important topic in our industry and one that touches everybody, from farmer to consumer. You can learn more about Anja by connecting with her on Instagram and about Fremtiden i våre hender on their website here. Music by my uncle Jens Wendelboe.

In this episode I’m joined by our wholesale manager Ben Symes. For our final episode of the year, we’re reviewing the highlights of the past 12 months, in both our business and the wider coffee industry.  We discuss how our company has grown and evolved in the past year, my farm Finca el Suelo’s recent second harvest and plans for the project in 2023 and take a look back at this year's coffees. We also cover changing coffee prices, organic farming and our 15th anniversary which we celebrated earlier this year. Brew yourself a coffee and enjoy our reflections as we approach the end of 2022. Music by my uncle Jens Wendelboe.

In this special episode, Tim swaps seats and becomes a guest on the show, handing over hosting duties to our customer service consultant, Sebastian Dyrdal. To celebrate the launch of its second harvest, Sebastian and Tim talk about Tim's coffee farm project, Finca el Suelo. Finca el Suelo is a 7 hectare farm located in El Vegon, in the municipality of El Pital in Huila, Colombia. Tim's goal with the project is to figure out how to raise coffee quality and increase production with regenerative biological farming practices, and hopefully inspire other farmers to do the same. Listen to the full episode to learn about the work being done at the farm, gain an understanding of the project's background and why Tim is working there, along with what the future holds at Finca el Suelo. Music by my uncle Jens Wendelboe.

Morten Wennersgaard, co-founder of Nordic Approach, shares his extensive experience in the coffee industry, emphasizing the critical role of coffee importers. He discusses how Nordic Approach ensures quality and transparency in green coffee sourcing, particularly for small roasteries facing unique challenges. Morten delves into the complexities of coffee pricing and the importance of building strong relationships with producers. The conversation also touches on sustainability issues in the coffee sector and the evolving strategies to maintain high-quality products without sacrificing values.

In this episode, I speak with the legendary first World Aeropress Champion Mr. Anders Valde, who has been a customer in our espresso bar since the day we opened. Anders is one of the few people who has tasted all the coffees we have ever roasted and has seen our espresso bar evolve over the past 15 years from a customers point of view. Listen in while we walk down memory lane and talk about the 15 years of history of our company and espresso bar. Music by my uncle Jens Wendelboe.

In this episode our guest is Malin Borgås, our subscription manager that also works with wholesale customer support. By wholesale we mean other businesses that buy and serve our coffee, so B2B sales if you want. Whether it is in an office, a restaurant, coffee shop or a café, Malin works together with our wholesale manager Ben Symes to help our customers succeed with brewing and serving great coffee. Learn about how we work and also the common brewing mistakes our customers make that are really easy to fix.    If you are interested in serving our coffee in your business, then please get in touch via our website www.timwendelboe.no.

In this episode I am joined by Maren Myhre Gullvik and Daniel Vareide. Maren and Daniel are members of our team that work as roasters and baristas. The episode can best be summed up as a team training session. In this wide ranging conversation, you get to join us at the roastery and learn about how small roasters like us buy coffee and work with producers, and how we operate our roastery. If you would like to learn more about the farms we work with, you can visit here: https://timwendelboe.no/farms-we-buy-from/ To learn more about my farm Finca el Suelo, visit here: https://timwendelboe.no/finca-el-suelo/ Music by my uncle Jens Wendelboe.

In this episode I speak once again with one of my favourite researchers and educators in coffee, Mr. Morten Munchow and his colleague and sensory scientist Ida Steen. They are the people behind the Coffee Mind academy and are doing some fascinating research in coffee. I have had the privilege to be involved with some of their research in various forms and have personally learned a lot from them both over the years. You might have heard the episodes I recorded last year with Morten on roasting and organic acids in coffee already, but if not please make sure you listen to those episodes as they are highly educational. Join our conversation about their newly updated coffee tasting flavour wheel and listen to Ida and Morten explain how to utilise the flavour wheel and why it is now updated with both time, temperature, mouthfeel and taste.   The Flavour wheel can be purchased and downloaded here: https://coffee-mind.com/product/coffeemind-flavour-wheel/  Check out the Coffee Mind podcast here: https://coffee-mind.com/podcast/ Coffee Mind website: https://coffee-mind.com Music by my uncle Jens Wendelboe.

In Episode 15 of our podcast I speak with Peter Dupont and Klaus Thomsen who together with Casper Engel founded the Coffee Collective in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2007. The Coffee Collective is by many, including myself, considered to be one of the few coffee companies in the wold that really walk the talk. They are one of the highest regarded companies in the world when it comes to  sourcing and roasting coffees of the best quality and they have from the start of their company been buying coffee focusing on transparency in the value chain and buying coffees as directly as possible from the farmers. Not only is their company B Corp certified, but they have also been part of developing the idea behind the Pledge and donating data to the Specialty coffee transaction Guide. It is a privilege to be able to call them my friends as The Coffee Collective have been one of my big inspirations for many years. In this episode we talk about transparency in coffee, why transparency is important and  what transparency really means. It is no secret that the commodity coffee price is disconnected from the producers needs to make a decent living. The fact that it has been more or less the same price for over 50 years means that most farmers are not able to make a profit. Looking at inflation alone the price for green coffee should be at least 3-4 times higher than what it is today. You may also have noticed that the «specialty coffee»  companies around the world often say that they pay more for their coffees because it is of high quality. But is it enough, and is the money going back to the farmers? And are we comparing what we pay against the wrong price benchmark?   Tune in to learn more about coffee prices, how we buy coffees and why we believe being transparent is important for the future of coffee. Links we mentioned in this episode: https://www.transparency.coffee https://coffeecollective.dk https://www.transactionguide.coffee Music by my uncle Jens Wendelboe

Join Ben Symes, our whole sale manager, and Tim Wendelboe as they informally sum up and talk about the year 2021 from a coffee roasters perspective. 2021 was an ever changing year, where Covid was dominating the first and last months of the year, there was a frost in Brazil making commodity prices on coffee rise and a lot of people talking about how Kenyan coffees are not what they used to be. Tune in to find out our thoughts about the "coffee year 2021."