Today, I’m chatting with Jose Uechi, co-founder of Compadre, a coffee brand based in Peru. Jose—or Pepe, as he goes by—is an industrial designer by trade, and got into coffee because of his friend, Juan Pablo. Juan Pablo invented a solar roaster, a machine that could roast coffee without electricity. Initially, Compadre’s founders worked to get these roasters into the hands of farmers.

A few years later, and Compadre is still working on raising wages for farmers—albeit in a slightly different way. In this episode, we talk about the shifts and pivots that Pepe and his team have made as they got deeper into the economics of coffee-buying and -selling.

The broad goal of Compadre is still the same—to shift value down to farmers—but it does so now by removing barriers that farmers face (like unpredictable weather conditions) and building a brand that connects farmers to consumers.

This episode is brought to you by Urnex.