By Nick Sohr, Managing Editor, MDBIZNews
Samuel Demisse left Ethiopia for the United States in 2004. It was supposed to be a long vacation, but a business plan derailed his travel plans and Demisse decided to stay.
Back home, Demisse's family has decades of experience growing, harvesting and exporting coffee. Here, he found the other side of that equation an import market full of thirsty, would-be customers willing to shell out a little more for a cup of something a little different.
Eight years after that vacation, Demisse's company, Keffa Coffee, imports coffee from his home country, ships it across the United States and Canada, and even sends some along to Taiwan.
Demisse said his business weathered the recession well, doubled last year and is growing this year, too.
"People drink coffee whether they're happy or not," he said during a recent interview.
Keffa Coffee takes its name from the region in Ethiopia from which the word "coffee" was derived and, as the legend goes, where a goat herder discovered the energizing effect of coffee more than a millennium ago.
Demisse buys coffee beans from friends, family and other farmers in the region. Shipments go through Djibouti on the Horn of Africa to the Port of Baltimore. Demisse said chose to locate here Keffa is now headquartered in the TowsonGlobal Business Incubator to be close to the port, warehouse space and a transportation network that allows for convenient shipments up and down the East Coast and into the Midwest.
Access to transportation networks is of great concern for a business like Keffa. The company imports a 20-foot shipping container full of coffee about once a month. That's 300 bags of coffee weighing in at 132 lbs. each, or 20 tons of coffee 12 times a year.
Those shipments get parceled out and distributed to wholesalers across the country that roast the beans and sell them to restaurants, grocery stores and coffee shops.
Ethiopian coffee "is very unique," said Demisse. "Each coffee tastes different. We have coffees that taste exactly like blueberry. We have coffees that taste lemony, a lot of floral notes."
Demisse said he plans to expand his business to import from other East African nations such as Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania. He traveled to Colombia last year and said that country, too, holds promise.
Connections to coffee-growing kith and kin serve Demisse well, but he also has his award-winning palate to thank.
Last year, Demisse placed second in the Specialty Coffee Association of America's U.S. Cup Tasters Championship. Eighteen competitors were given eight sets of three cups of coffee. In each set, two cups were of the same brew while the third was subtly different. The tasters had to identify the unique cup in each set. Demisse said he identified all eight correctly, but finished 15 seconds behind the winner.
Keffa doesn't import and sell beans until Demisse roasts, grinds, brews and tastes them. Beans grown nearby in the same region can have slight differences in taste, differences that Demisse can identify and evaluate as he searches for new coffees to introduce to the U.S. market.
"The coffee market in the U.S. is huge," he said. "People, they love specialty coffee and Ethiopia is producing some of the best coffee."
