How did it all begin? Please take us through your journey so far.
Été Coffee is the first coffee roasting company in Nagaland, established in the year 2016. Our tagline speaks what we stand for and that is “Justice a cup”! We are a group of first-generation coffee roasters who chose to move out of the mainstream and conventional professions into the coffee industry. The word “Ete” comes from the Naga word that means “us” or “ours”; Nagaland being a multi-tribal community we want to advocate unity and so it simply implies cutting across clans and tribes.
Our love story with coffee began a decade ago, back in college, when I happened to randomly pick a motel on the roadside serving Italian Espresso. Just out of curiosity’s sake I ordered one, only to find out that it was just 30ml of some dark bitter fluid. But it was something about this coffee that always gets this story told; a story of an art coupled with the precision of science. That day, I thought to myself “what a way to start a day…?” Soon after I graduated, I worked for the government for little over half a decade of drinking black coffee through it all (if there was one black coffee on the tray, that was always mine). Little did I know that I was slowly getting myself drawn into this beautiful artwork of black beverage.
If you ask me how the company came into being, it’s a long story. Besides the drive in terms of passion and love for coffee, the vision was based on the burden we saw around us that really pushed us into starting this company. The entire philosophy of the company is based on one simple truth, that is, every single person should stand on their own. In our state, 90-95% of the population depends on the government economy- directly or indirectly. Which means that if you are not a part of the government system, you are nowhere. The number of graduates we are churning out every year is staggering. And because of the unemployment problem, these graduates become a liability to the society. Therefore, we moved out of our mainstream professions to start something on our own. So, our first goal is to provide employment opportunities to as many as we can through our company. And secondly, employability: since our mainstream conventional education system doesn’t make us employable, especially in a state like Nagaland where industries and corporate sectors haven’t taken off. Therefore, we save up 10% of the company’s proceeds called EYF (Employability of Youth Fund) to sponsor local youths who are willing to undergo skills training in order to become employable at all sectors.
One of the main motivations behind Été Coffee was that the Nagas have been consumers of coffee for a long time now, and so we aim to produce and manufacture in our very own land, thereby making optimum use of the state’s potential in Agro-based farming.
I can’t help but also mention my colleagues at work and a couple of friends who always pushed me into making it a business. I started off with six grand investment on packaging material and with an existing kitchen oven (It was a one-man show back then).
In two and a half years of this company’s existence, we have sold over 12,000 coffee packets all across India and a few even abroad, through direct sale, retailers, cafes and via our official online shopping sitewww.etecoffee.com. Today we are a team of 18, out of which few of them are full-time workers, most work part-time and we also have a few volunteers ( and this is excluding the growers). Today the company owns its own farm, Roastery, and Coffee bar (we stand proud as the first ones to introduce the concept “Roastery & Coffee bar” in the whole of Northeast India) and even a mobile coffee bar.
Where do you get the beans from? Can you briefly share the process of coffee roasting with us?
We source our beans from Mokokchung, Tuensang, Wokha, Mon, and Kohima. We are on a constant lookout for partners (farmers), where we get an opportunity to share our knowledge and learn from each other’s experiences and grow together as a community. We are in the process of mechanizing a platform where we build a network of growers’ community. The idea is to educate, motivate and lead to make sure the marginal farmers are not exploited.
As simple as it might sound, a good cup of coffee undergo tons of processes- right from planting to harvesting, from curing works to roasting and eventually grinding to brewing. Each step is as important as the other. Once the raw coffee beans reach our roastery from the farm, we assess each of them in terms of their species, sizes, colors, moisture content, grades and few other parameters and proceed to roasting batch by batch giving special attention to the entire roasting profile from drying to caramelization and from acid extraction to oil and so on. A sample roasting is done for each batch of raw coffee beans followed by repeated cupping to identify and distinguish myriads of characters in terms of flavor, aroma, body/texture, etc. Simply put- it is just a beautiful art made up of some percent of machine precision and a major part of it is the human judgment which makes the whole process fun-filled.
How would you describe your growth in the last 2 years
It is interesting how the kind of growth we were looking at when we first started is so different from now. How we thought initially, of making it a company that is into large scale production and rapid sales and huge revenue, to now where we focus on investing more into research and studies and quality control. And so the major growth we witnessed over the years is in terms of our maturity in the way we are pushing ourselves to the education side of the coffee industry. We have come far in the sense of how we are driven more by giving what people need to know and not what people want to know. And therefore we set a milestone into the world of specialty coffee, and that, to us, is a huge step forward in the overall growth of Été Coffee.
What have been some of your favorite memories of being the owner of Ete Coffee?
The freedom to innovate and create.
Connecting with people.
A when the people are inspired by the work.
How was your time with Paul at your roastery?
Paul, to me, is not only a Coffee Legend, but he is a Coffee visionary (Paul’s thought about this: I do think of myself as a coffee visionary! lol.. Off the record!). Being a first generation coffee roaster, our knowledge and experience are limited. Although the team has been through various training programmes offered lessons by various coffee institutions and experts, the company as a whole and even as the owner, in particular, has countless challenges to go through in terms of technical know-how, networking, knowledge sharing, and a support system. And to be able to share our ideas and approaches and have someone knowledgeable assess and review and hear feedback from is priceless. The outcome of the visit at the end is pretty amazing how through countless conversations, Paul helped us see things from his perspective and encouraged the team with fresh new perspectives and ideas. We have always had a vision and believed that we can push ourselves to this and having him here has come as an affirmation to it. We are excited and looking forward to more and more such meet in the coming days too.
What makes Ete Coffee different from other coffee brands?
Justice!
Été Coffee is a profit organization like any other serious business out there. What makes us different is the fact that for the most part we stick to finding justice in every sector of the process chain: that the growers are not exploited, that the employees are sustainably employed and that we put ethical values over all aspects of our business, and lastly but not the least, we want to do it with all the responsibility of imparting the right knowledge and share it religiously to all and grow as community.
How did it all begin? Please take us through your journey so far.
Été Coffee is the first coffee roasting company in Nagaland, established in the year 2016. Our tagline speaks what we stand for and that is “Justice a cup”! We are a group of first-generation coffee roasters who chose to move out of the mainstream and conventional professions into the coffee industry. The word “Ete” comes from the Naga word that means “us” or “ours”; Nagaland being a multi-tribal community we want to advocate unity and so it simply implies cutting across clans and tribes.
Our love story with coffee began a decade ago, back in college, when I happened to randomly pick a motel on the roadside serving Italian Espresso. Just out of curiosity’s sake I ordered one, only to find out that it was just 30ml of some dark bitter fluid. But it was something about this coffee that always gets this story told; a story of an art coupled with the precision of science. That day, I thought to myself “what a way to start a day…?” Soon after I graduated, I worked for the government for little over half a decade of drinking black coffee through it all (if there was one black coffee on the tray, that was always mine). Little did I know that I was slowly getting myself drawn into this beautiful artwork of black beverage.
If you ask me how the company came into being, it’s a long story. Besides the drive in terms of passion and love for coffee, the vision was based on the burden we saw around us that really pushed us into starting this company. The entire philosophy of the company is based on one simple truth, that is, every single person should stand on their own. In our state, 90-95% of the population depends on the government economy- directly or indirectly. Which means that if you are not a part of the government system, you are nowhere. The number of graduates we are churning out every year is staggering. And because of the unemployment problem, these graduates become a liability to the society. Therefore, we moved out of our mainstream professions to start something on our own. So, our first goal is to provide employment opportunities to as many as we can through our company. And secondly, employability: since our mainstream conventional education system doesn’t make us employable, especially in a state like Nagaland where industries and corporate sectors haven’t taken off. Therefore, we save up 10% of the company’s proceeds called EYF (Employability of Youth Fund) to sponsor local youths who are willing to undergo skills training in order to become employable at all sectors.
One of the main motivations behind Été Coffee was that the Nagas have been consumers of coffee for a long time now, and so we aim to produce and manufacture in our very own land, thereby making optimum use of the state’s potential in Agro-based farming.
I can’t help but also mention my colleagues at work and a couple of friends who always pushed me into making it a business. I started off with six grand investment on packaging material and with an existing kitchen oven (It was a one-man show back then).
In two and a half years of this company’s existence, we have sold over 12,000 coffee packets all across India and a few even abroad, through direct sale, retailers, cafes and via our official online shopping sitewww.etecoffee.com. Today we are a team of 18, out of which few of them are full-time workers, most work part-time and we also have a few volunteers ( and this is excluding the growers). Today the company owns its own farm, Roastery, and Coffee bar (we stand proud as the first ones to introduce the concept “Roastery & Coffee bar” in the whole of Northeast India) and even a mobile coffee bar.
Where do you get the beans from? Can you briefly share the process of coffee roasting with us?
We source our beans from Mokokchung, Tuensang, Wokha, Mon, and Kohima. We are on a constant lookout for partners (farmers), where we get an opportunity to share our knowledge and learn from each other’s experiences and grow together as a community. We are in the process of mechanizing a platform where we build a network of growers’ community. The idea is to educate, motivate and lead to make sure the marginal farmers are not exploited.
As simple as it might sound, a good cup of coffee undergo tons of processes- right from planting to harvesting, from curing works to roasting and eventually grinding to brewing. Each step is as important as the other. Once the raw coffee beans reach our roastery from the farm, we assess each of them in terms of their species, sizes, colors, moisture content, grades and few other parameters and proceed to roasting batch by batch giving special attention to the entire roasting profile from drying to caramelization and from acid extraction to oil and so on. A sample roasting is done for each batch of raw coffee beans followed by repeated cupping to identify and distinguish myriads of characters in terms of flavor, aroma, body/texture, etc. Simply put- it is just a beautiful art made up of some percent of machine precision and a major part of it is the human judgment which makes the whole process fun-filled.
How would you describe your growth in the last 2 years
It is interesting how the kind of growth we were looking at when we first started is so different from now. How we thought initially, of making it a company that is into large scale production and rapid sales and huge revenue, to now where we focus on investing more into research and studies and quality control. And so the major growth we witnessed over the years is in terms of our maturity in the way we are pushing ourselves to the education side of the coffee industry. We have come far in the sense of how we are driven more by giving what people need to know and not what people want to know. And therefore we set a milestone into the world of specialty coffee, and that, to us, is a huge step forward in the overall growth of Été Coffee.
What have been some of your favorite memories of being the owner of Ete Coffee?
The freedom to innovate and create.
Connecting with people.
A when the people are inspired by the work.
How was your time with Paul at your roastery?
Paul, to me, is not only a Coffee Legend, but he is a Coffee visionary (Paul’s thought about this: I do think of myself as a coffee visionary! lol.. Off the record!). Being a first generation coffee roaster, our knowledge and experience are limited. Although the team has been through various training programmes offered lessons by various coffee institutions and experts, the company as a whole and even as the owner, in particular, has countless challenges to go through in terms of technical know-how, networking, knowledge sharing, and a support system. And to be able to share our ideas and approaches and have someone knowledgeable assess and review and hear feedback from is priceless. The outcome of the visit at the end is pretty amazing how through countless conversations, Paul helped us see things from his perspective and encouraged the team with fresh new perspectives and ideas. We have always had a vision and believed that we can push ourselves to this and having him here has come as an affirmation to it. We are excited and looking forward to more and more such meet in the coming days too.
What makes Ete Coffee different from other coffee brands?
Justice!
Été Coffee is a profit organization like any other serious business out there. What makes us different is the fact that for the most part we stick to finding justice in every sector of the process chain: that the growers are not exploited, that the employees are sustainably employed and that we put ethical values over all aspects of our business, and lastly but not the least, we want to do it with all the responsibility of imparting the right knowledge and share it religiously to all and grow as community.