Sustainable Harvest has announced Al Liu will join the team as Director of its Let’s Talk Coffee platform.
Liu will begin in January 2024 with a mandate to expand the platform into a farm-to-roaster information exchange, which will continue to be complemented by in-person origin events.
“Al is the perfect person to lead an equitable information exchange. He is humble, with an inexhaustible ability to listen. He is an industry expert with over 20 years of wide-ranging experience,” says Kat Nolte, Managing Director of Sustainable Harvest, a Certified B Corporation coffee trader.
Let’s Talk Coffee says the move will allow it to reach more users and participants with a unique and reliable source of coffee knowledge for the industry.
Liu served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia from 1998 to 2000 and has worked in the specialty industry for 23 years in both the roasting and importing sectors.
He served two terms on the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) Board of Directors and was an active member of the SCAA Sustainability Council for almost 10 years.
Let’s Talk Coffee is backed by a critical mass of processing, trade, and market information from Sustainable Harvest, independent suppliers, and Sucafina’s origin and research teams.
“In the past, green coffee sales have thrived on informational asymmetries but, at this point, that is what’s holding us back from a more efficient, more equitable, more profitable business model for those who are actually adding value to coffee,” says Jordan Hooper, Head of Green Coffee at Sucafina.
“We’re not producing a thinly veiled infomercial for our trading business. Let’s Talk Coffee will thrive on inclusion and engage in rigorous inquiry to provide relevant green coffee information.”
