Customer Success Story: Unique Foods & Finca La Senda
The story of Unique Foods, a coffee importer in Switzerland, starts at the farm Finca La Senda in Acatenango, Guatemala. Maria Eugenia and her husband, Arnoldo Pérez, have grown coffee here for decades. Four years ago, Yancy, their daughter, and Pablo decided to improve the quality of their coffee and started the production of Specialty Coffee. They didn’t stop there. Their biggest challenge was delivering the same quality to the final customer.
The story of Unique Foods, a coffee importer in Switzerland, starts at the farm Finca La Senda in Acatenango, Guatemala. Maria Eugenia and her husband, Arnoldo Pérez, have grown coffee here for decades. Four years ago, Yancy, their daughter, and Pablo decided to improve the quality of their coffee and started the production of Specialty Coffee. They didn’t stop there. Their biggest challenge was delivering the same quality to the final customer.
Innovation, customer experience, and efficiency in the family business
Entering new markets, they realized they had little control over how the coffee was presented to their customers. After all, coffee roasting is essential when unlocking the flavors in the cup. “What can we do more for our customers?” Yancy wondered. And soon enough, with Pablo, they founded the coffee import company in Zurich, Switzerland - the Unique Foods.
The whole family at Finca La Senda.
What makes the Finca La Senda and Unique Foods stand out is the passion and dedication of its team to deliver the best cup of coffee to your table. When talking to Yancy, you might daydream about joining their family business.
The beautiful view from Finca la Senda.
A tailored and consistent roast is crucial both at the farm and in Switzerland.
At the farm, a consistent and coffee-specific roast is vital to compare the quality of every single lot and to understand the impact of changes to the processing protocol on the quality of the coffee. The result of their experiments can be cupped and assessed without the bias of an inconsistent roast. This drives and accelerates innovation at the farm.
At the same time, unlocking the full potential of coffee is vital for Unique Foods, as it helps clients better understand and assess the flavor profiles of different coffee varieties and processing methods. This greatly improves client experience and satisfaction.
The whole family at their farm Finca La Senda in Guatemala.
Finally, you have many daily tasks when running a family business with a worldwide reach. Being efficient is crucial. Yancy and Pablo found themselves struggling to achieve that in their lab. Roasting with the old customized roaster required a lot of their time spent during the roasting process. They needed a reliable automated roaster that is easy to use - that's when the ROEST sample roaster came into the picture.
Passion, dedication, and the ROEST Sample Roaster
Yancy and Pablo deeply care for their coffee and customers. They share that passion with the whole team and apply it to all their tasks, sample roasting included. They spend enough time finding the right roasting profile and looking for parameters to improve the cup. Their team makes the maximum effort to follow the quality standards they set for themselves. Yancy describes the ROEST sample roaster as the queen of the team. It’s the most valuable machine they have.
”ROEST does everything practically independently and allows us to do many things in parallel during each roasting session. Before, this was impossible - everything was a sequential process that lasted until late at night, but now with the ROEST, we save a lot of time."
- Yancy Eugenia Perez
Roasting with a view. Zurich, QC lab at Unique Foods.
Since they started using ROEST, life in the QC lab has changed radically. The sample roaster runs automatically without much of their time and effort. It allows them to focus on other tasks during each roasting session. They also travel with the sample roaster from Switzerland to Guatemala during the harvest season. In their lab at the farm, they roast up to 60 samples daily.
The continuous journey of delivering excellence
Have they succeeded in delivering the best quality of their coffee to the final customer? It’s a journey that has to be maintained daily, not the finish line to cross. With every message of gratitude they receive from customers worldwide, they know it is worth all the effort. Despite the challenges, the praise they receive gives them joy and the energy to keep going.
Yancy and Pablo's story is a testament to the power of passion and dedication. Their story highlights the importance of controlling the process to achieve the highest possible results. The sample roaster helps them achieve this, sample roasting in Switzerland and Guatemala while producing high-quality coffee.
Yancy and her mother, Maria, with their ROEST sample roaster at their farm in Guatemala.
Interested in a ROEST sample roaster?
Liked reading this? Check out our customer success story on Origin Coffee Lab.
Customer Success Story: Origin Coffee Lab
At Origin Coffee Lab (OCL), Jose Rivera and his team work tirelessly during the peak harvest season to ensure they offer the best quality coffee to their clients. However, with the vast number of coffee samples they need to analyze, sample roast, and cup - time is of the essence. That's where the ROEST sample roaster comes in to help.
At Origin Coffee Lab (OCL), Jose Rivera and his team work tirelessly during the peak harvest season to ensure they offer the best quality coffee to their clients. However, with the vast number of coffee samples, they need to analyze, sample roast, and cup - time is of the essence. That's where the ROEST sample roaster comes in to help.
The view of Origin Coffee Lab farm in Peru.
Costing expertise and quality control
Jose, who had acquired knowledge about the coffee industry while working as Director of Green Coffee in a small roastery in Chicago, knows that to break down the costs of each coffee, he needs to understand how the other side of the industry works. This understanding has helped him to calculate prices more precisely and be more competitive in the market.
To offer high-quality coffee, OCL has a rigorous and exhaustive quality control process in its lab. Jose believes that this sets them apart from other organizations. However, this process can be time-consuming, especially during peak harvest season when they need to analyze, sample roast, and taste many coffee samples during the cupping.
Jose and his team cupping coffee to ensure quality.
Revolutionizing sample roasting and tasting
ROEST sample roaster has made an enormous difference at OCL. A team of 5 tasters and 5 sample roasters can roast up to 9 samples every 15 minutes, significantly reducing the time it takes to roast and taste coffee samples. The sample roasters run non-stop from 8 am to 7 pm, and they can taste up to 1750 cups of coffee a day with its help.
“The workload was so intense that we decided to try ROEST, and the change was spectacular. We have reduced times: what we used to do with six drums of Probat, we now do with three ROESTs.”
Jose is impressed with the sample roaster's performance and says, "I don't think there is a company in the world that gives these roasters as much of a hard time as us." Yet, even with this high performance, the roasters are running smoothly, and the OCL team can rely on them. In addition to reducing time, ROEST has also enabled their team to roast in fully automatic mode, freeing up more time to learn how to taste and analyze coffee and manage the lab. This has helped them to develop professionally in a more efficient way.
A well-equipped coffee lab with ROEST sample roasters.
With the help of the ROEST sample roasters, Origin Coffee Lab can now offer high-quality coffee to its clients while significantly reducing operational time and costs. Their commitment to quality control and investment in modern equipment like ROEST is a testament to their dedication to the specialty coffee industry and their clients.
Interested in the ROEST sample roaster?
Jose Riviera and Origin Coffee Lab is an exclusive distributor of ROEST sample roasters in Peru - find their contact information here.
Liked reading about our customers? Check out our interview with Katja Klein - Founder of Kontext Coffee Company.
Introducing new: Public Profile Library
If you are new to roasting or want to explore other roasting profiles, we have now made it easy for you to download and upload profiles directly from our web portal. We want to create a space where everyone can roast coffee, develop their skill, and share their knowledge about coffee roasting.
Our main goal is to make roasting as fun and easy as possible. Until now, every profile created and shared with other ROEST users has been uploaded to the profile library inside our forum. We have now created another new feature inside the web portal: the public profile library. To make it easy to find and share profiles. All in one place.
ROEST’s new profile library inside the web portal.
Finding the right profile
Roasting coffee is a form of art. Setting the right profile for the right beans can be difficult. When sample roasting, you usually get one chance to roast an unfamiliar coffee, which can be challenging when evaluating the coffee or reaching its full potential.
When creating a new profile inside ROEST Web Portal, you can choose between the three most common:
Air temperature profile
Inlet temperature profile*
Power profile
Different types of profile you can create inside the web portal.
The advanced profiles you can create are:
Bean temperature profile
Bean temperature vs. power input **
Bean temperature vs. inlet temperature**
* for machines with an Inlet sensor
** available in BETA from March 2023
Which one to choose depends on what coffee you are roasting or batch size. Other parameters are also to consider when selecting a roasting profile for your sample roasts.
If you are roasting to evaluate a coffee’s quality, you might want to roast each batch in the same way to compare them fairly. If so, you must find the right profile for your beans and repeatedly repeat that.
If you are roasting for consumption, you might want to explore different profiles to find a style that consumers will enjoy. You can play around with other profiles, parameters, and roasting styles here.
Explore the world of ROESTing profiles
ROEST Web Portal is developed to make roasting easier and more educational and to give you a better understanding of the roasting process. Features inside the web portal are analyzing and comparing roasts, arranging cupping sessions, monitoring your roast in live view, and creating different types of profiles.
If you are new to roasting or want to explore other roasting profiles, we have now made it easy for you to download and upload profiles directly from our web portal. We want to create a space where everyone can roast coffee, develop their skill, and share their knowledge about coffee roasting.
Adding metdadata helps your profile to be searchable for others.
After creating a profile, one of the new things you can do is add metadata. Adding metadata such as description, origin, and the process will make your profile searchable through the filter. Let’s say you want to find a profile suitable for washed coffee from Central America. If metadata is added, a profile with these criteria will be shown. This will make it easier and more helpful to find the right profile you seek.
Share your profile
Within the ROEST community, many experienced roasters have made well-tested and verified profiles. And we know how educational and handy it can be to share different types of profiles with each other.
Every profile created by any ROEST user can now easily be uploaded to the public profile library. We encourage all our customers to upload their profiles to the public profile library so that we can share knowledge and passion between us.
Download as many profiles as you want from our profile library.
When a profile is uploaded and tested by us at ROEST, we can verify that profile, so it gets a badge next to it. All verified profiles have undergone a qualification process so that you know this is trustworthy.
You can also see how many times the profile was downloaded to help you see what is popular in our community. Did you enjoy the profile? Leave a star-rating.
Help us grow the community
Share your profile with other ROEST users to help us grow the community.
The public profile library is on its first version now, and as always, there will be improvements to the feature in the future. Right now, we need your help to fill it up with your favorite ROEST profiles.
How to publish your profile:
Go to the profile you want to share.
Add metadata to help others to search your profile.
Share your profile and add it to the profile library.
Now, let’s start exploring the different ways of roasting coffee together.
Enjoyed this? Check out our articles about our new cupping form inside the web portal or between batch protocol.