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Following our coffee back to Peru
On our latest trip to the Mayni Indigenous Community in Peru, Easy Jose's Barny Hatch made his first ever visit, as he followed our signature coffee back to the cloud forest of Peru. His journey revealed the physical work behind every harvest, the skill that shapes the coffee and the honest conversations our relationship depends on.
From the small plane out of Lima, the Andes look almost close enough to touch. Snow lies along the high ridges before the mountains drop towards the greener, warmer landscape around Satipo, where coffee and cacao shape much of the local economy.
The Mayni have been part of Easy Jose's story from the start, and their coffee has long been our signature. Barny knew the story and the tasting notes, and he'd heard plenty from colleagues who had been before him. What he didn't know yet was how any of that would feel on the ground.
Into the cloud forest
The journey to the Mayni begins in Satipo, before dawn. Tarmac gives way to dirt tracks, narrow enough to make the drops at the roadside feel uncomfortably visible. As the road climbs and the vehicle enters the clouds, mountains appear and disappear through the mist, while dense forest stretches in every direction.
"It was pretty stunning," Barny told us afterwards. "You've got these mountains as far as the eye can see, but it's a dirt track and, when it rains, it gets pretty skiddy. Then you see some of the drops at the side, which are terrifying."
The Mayni's remote location can sound romantic from a distance. In practice, it shapes everything about producing and selling this coffee. Each sack must eventually travel back down the same road. During the busiest part of the harvest, those journeys are repeated several times a week.
After a long and bumpy journey, Barny finally reached the community. On arrival, one of the Mayni put his hands together and made a bird call that carried across the village. Soon, people began to gather.
Children came from school to perform songs, dances and a short play. Breakfast was wood-smoked chicken with soft roasted cassava, accompanied by bowls of masato, a traditional fermented cassava drink. Barny, eager to embrace the experience, accepted rather more masato than he had planned.
"I was probably a bit too polite," he admitted. "Every time I was offered another bowl, I said, 'Yes, please.' I think I got through about 20."
Barny felt the warmth of the welcome, but he was also conscious that this was not a community pausing to become a backdrop for visitors. The Mayni were receiving people who buy their coffee, with whom they have an established commercial relationship.
That distinction mattered more and more as the visit went on. The Mayni produce excellent coffee, and we are there to buy it on terms that recognise its quality and the work behind it.
Coffee under the canopy
After the warm welcome, some of the community took Barny out to the coffee plots, where coffee grows among the existing forest rather than in place of it. On the slopes, he quickly discovered how physically demanding the work can be.
The ground was steep enough that Barny spent much of the afternoon trying not to slide downhill. In comparison, the Mayni pickers moved with practised balance, selecting ripe cherries before carrying loads that can reach 40 or 50 kilos back up the slope.
Barny also had one particular disadvantage when it came to picking the ripest cherries.
"I'm colour blind, which isn't ideal when you're trying to choose between red and green," he said. "They helped me out a bit, but I don't think I'd make a very good picker."
This experience gave Barny a new respect for the judgement required at every stage. At the height of the harvest, the work is relentless. Cherries are selectively picked on steep slopes and carried to the processing area, where they are pulped, fermented, washed and carefully dried. The coffee is checked and turned regularly until it reaches the correct moisture level: too wet and it cannot travel safely; too dry and its quality and flavour can suffer. Once ready, it begins its journey down the steep mountain road, which is often blocked or damaged by rain.
"This is not easy coffee to move," Barny said. "It's so remote. Even getting it from the community to Satipo is a serious job, before you even start thinking about everything else that has to happen."
Before the visit, Barny understood that remoteness affected the supply chain. Afterwards, he saw it as part of the value of the coffee. The difficulty of the journey isn't a romantic detail. It's time, labour, risk and cost.
Tasting their own coffee
One moment from the visit brought the distance between producer and customer into focus for Barny. The Mayni grow coffee, but they do not have roasting equipment within the community, so the people who pick and process the crop rarely get to drink it.
Barny brought bags of roasted Mayni coffee from the UK, which he brewed in the village and passed around.
"They seemed to approve," Barny said. "That was encouraging."
The moment made Barny think about how easily the two ends of a coffee supply chain can become separated. Customers rarely meet the people who produce their coffee, while producers often have little opportunity to see how their crop is roasted, described and sold.
We believe that one of our roles is to reduce that distance. That means making sure the Mayni's story is told and explaining the meticulous work involved. It also means making sure the Mayni know how their coffee is received and valued here.
Recognising the work and value behind the coffee
One of the most important parts of the visit took place away from the slopes.
At the end of the day, we sat down with the Mayni to discuss the price for the new season. Ricardo, a former head of coffee within the community, was direct. What does Easy Jose sell the coffee for? What do wholesale customers pay? How much does a bag cost at retail? They were entirely reasonable questions.
If we talk about transparency, the person at the beginning of the chain should know what happens to the price at the end of it.
It's easy to talk about fairness through labels and broad promises. It means something when producers can question buyers directly, when quality is recognised in the price and when both sides expect the relationship to continue beyond one harvest.
Easy Jose buys from the Mayni season after season. Our responsibility is to create a dependable market, value the coffee properly and keep the community behind it visible, without reducing people's lives to decoration for a coffee bag.
We want our customers to understand that the quality in their cup began with the community's land, labour, knowledge and decisions.
"Before I went, I probably thought more about preserving the forest," Barny said. "When I was there, I realised it was also about people and preserving a way of life. This is a whole community. Within a generation, they could stop producing coffee and people might have to move elsewhere to find work."
What Barny brought back
After the serious discussions were over, the group played a game that Barny described as somewhere between basketball and rugby. At altitude, against people accustomed to moving up and down mountain slopes, he was seriously outmatched.
It was a relaxed end to a serious trip. Barny was not leaving an anonymous source of green coffee. He was saying goodbye to people he had eaten with, picked coffee beside and lost a game to.
He came home knowing a lot more about harvesting and processing. More than that, he knew where the value in our Mayni coffee actually comes from.
It isn't altitude alone. It's a community whose knowledge of the forest can't be separated from the coffee growing within it.
The journey from the Mayni to our roastery is long. It crosses mountain tracks, warehouses, quality checks, a dry mill, a port and an ocean before the green coffee reaches us. Seeing that process first-hand made one point particularly clear to Barny.
"When you understand how difficult it is to produce and move this coffee, you understand its value differently," he said.
This isn't about charity. It's about coffee done better, and the relationships that make it possible.
