Today we’d like to introduce you to Jacob Ibarra.
Hi Jacob, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Although I had a barista job in College Station (while attending Texas A&M), it wasn’t until I moved to Costa Rica after college that I began to feel like coffee would be a major part of my life. Never before had I experienced or been around a culture or country so entwined with an agricultural product. Everyone in Costa Rica seemed to have ties to coffee. While I was not working specifically in coffee at the time, all my friends would go back and help their families during harvest. I went with them a few times and was hooked. It was the first time in my life that a product’s entire supply chain became super evident.
After Costa Rica, I moved to Seattle. I knew I wanted to immerse myself in coffee culture and was already dreaming about my own coffee organization but felt young, like I wasn’t quite ready to lead. So, I went to graduate school for a masters in Counseling/Theology. However, after pursuing both of these endeavors simultaneously for a couple years, I decided I needed to make the deep dive and fully commit to coffee. Fortuitously, the coffee company I was working for, Caffe Vita, gave me an opportunity to roast for them, and because of the size of the company, I was exposed to so much more. Anything they needed help with I tried to dive in. I did training for wholesale accounts, sample roasting for the green buyer, developed quality control systems for our coffee program and got to visit local importers to help develop leads for our coffee offering. Also, Seattle’s coffee culture is world class so I gleaned a lot about how coffee companies position themselves and strategize in a competitive market.
I had been in Seattle for nearly five years when I took a trip to Colombia with a Seattle based coffee importer. I traveled with several Australians from 5 Senses Coffee. We visited a number of different regions that trip so a lot of time was spent in trucks or planes chatting with the 5 Senses crew. Turns out, they were lovely people and at the end of the trip we started the conversation about an opportunity in Australia.
Although I was employed initially to do sales, I quickly found myself doing work for the green buyer because of my previous experience. She was running ragged trying to keep up with the needs of a growing company, so we began to divide the map between the two of us. I took over sourcing coffees from Central America, then South America and then our high end micro-lots. Then, a couple years in, she shared that she would be exiting the company so I took over the procurement team and then lead the restructuring of the organization to position sourcing, roasting and coffee related marketing activities under a singular coffee department. I became the first Director of Coffee for 5 Senses and could not have been more thankful. I learned a lot from this time. I managed two roasteries, one on each side of the country, brought nearly 700 tonnes of coffee per year into the Australian market, bought and consulted for our Singaporean venture, and did quality control for our Sumatran mill. It was a growing time and afforded me an immense exposure into the world of coffee, importing and global logistics for which I am so grateful.
Being on the road for three or four months out of the year is not easy for a young family, so with the onset of my wife and I’s first child, some of those early Costa Rican dreams began to surface and I started to explore what a business in Texas, near our family, might look like.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Well, we were birthed in the pandemic. So, not exactly… Cash was already tight from long and unforeseen challenges in the permitting and construction phases, so by the time we were ready to go, the pandemic was in full swing. We changed our whole strategy around trying to be as conservative as possible. The idea was to keep costs minimal so that we could survive and get to the other side.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
My passion and expertise lies in the coffee supply chain. I am a coffee buyer with years of experience in partnering with growers, small and big, and creatively bringing their coffee and highlighting it in roast and marketing that appeals to a different culture. I love and feel a responsibility to better connect the producing and consuming worlds.
When I moved back to the United States, I also opened up a small consultancy business. My first work was with the amazing Long Miles Coffee Group based out of Burundi. In this role, my roles reversed a bit, I did quality control for our two washing stations and handled global sales for the business. I was in Burundi five times over those 18 months, which is two harvests there. Doing business in America can be challenging, but doing business in a developing country all the while trying to maintain a ‘specialty’ or quality stance gave me a new respect for those leaders and all who endeavor to work in coffee at a producing level.
I have also held my Q-Grading license for over 10 years and have judged national competitions as part of an international juries for Cup of Excellence.
What are your plans for the future?
While we are excited about the future, January marks only a year and half of Tenfold Coffee. We have a few items to consider and benchmarks to hit before we can move forward with our plans for the future. That being said, we are always dreaming and what we do in the city will always aim to elevate coffee in Houston and help people see coffee in a different light, particularly with a focus on the supply chain.
Contact Info:
- Email: hello@tenfoldcoffee.com
- Website: tenfoldcoffee.com
- Instagram: @tenfoldcoffee
