Umeko speaks on Power
Favorite coffee drink: Lately I have been pouring a little cold water into all of the coffee that I drink. I don’t like boiling hot drinks - really, I like lukewarm coffee, and I like it not so fucking strong! So adding cold water gets me there.
Favorite music for work: Spotify playlists are a big one for me or Spotify radios. I don’t work bar anymore, but when I pack orders for my webshop I’ve been listening to the Lizzo album, obviously, or Boss Barista Podcast.
Umeko started in coffee at 19 and has been working in the industry for 13 years. Over the course of that time, they have focused a lot of attention on learning the craft of making coffee. “When I was 19, I started working at a tea shop in my hometown - a rural island near Seattle. The tea shop got an espresso machine, which was essentially a home espresso machine, and they served Espresso Vivace, which had to be brought over on a ferry boat.
I learned how to make espresso by watching David Schomer’s training DVD. I haven’t seen it in 13 years, so I may be totally editorializing, but when I envision it, I see him illuminated in the middle of a dark room, wearing his bolo tie and a handmade apron with a celestial star and moon pattern. I remember I couldn’t understand what the difference was between a latte and a cappuccino, and as a result of being trained by watching a DVD, I didn’t give a shit about coffee until I got a café job six months later. Then all of a sudden I went from making one espresso drink per week to working in high volume on a four-group Linea, 5 days a week, and I was into it! I liked keeping track of 8 million things at once and because I get bored really easily working as a barista held my attention. As I got more and more into it and started doing my own learning outside of work I just got sucked in deeper and deeper.
When I started working as a barista, the idea of a cafe caring about their employees’ professional development was not even a thing that anyone had considered. So the majority of my coffee education was self-directed. Eventually I moved to Seattle, started managing that café, and getting to a point where I was like - ‘oh, we need to have a manual to get everyone on the same page about how we are doing espresso, and drip coffee and pour overs. I have to write this manual, because I’m the manager, so I guess I have to figure out how to make coffee.’ And that was the impetus behind me doing research and learning about coffee outside of just the mechanics and operational procedures.
That manual then was incorporated into my team’s experience, and at each store meeting the team would go through a different part of the manual. We also did routine bar check-ins where we would talk about ‘how is this going for you? How are you making mochas? How are you dialing in?’ Previous to that we didn’t really have clear, consistent standards across all our stores and each barista. In retrospect, I think I was overly strict about adhering to protocol, and a lot of that was because I didn’t understand coffee well enough to know how to make adjustments outside of the guidelines passed down by our roaster. But I tried really hard. Whenever I hired someone, I went with them to their training at Caffe Vita, who supplied our coffee. That was how I met my friend Ross Beamish, who was a trainer there - we’re still friends 10 years later. He was a really great trainer because he was really approachable and kind to people.”
In taking on the work of creating systems for their employees, Umeko continued to push forward, invest time, and grow within their career. “There wasn’t necessarily a lot of recognition of the work that I had done to create this manual and to implement quality standards across our 3 cafes and 25-30 baristas - but honestly that was 100% just the culture at that time. The place where I worked wasn’t an outlier. It was more like I personally, as a manager, felt really invested in wanting to make sure my staff was comfortable and drinks were tasting good, so I just did what I thought would help with that. I wasn’t supported in knowing how to do that, and I was only 21 or 22, so sometimes I did a great job and other times my judgement was very bad. I worked really hard and I cared a lot, but a lot of the time I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing; I hadn’t received any management training.
I answered to my boss and I tried to model how I managed others based on how I was managed. I think that my boss was very demanding of themselves, and of their own time and energy - they worked all time and lived in the back of one of the cafes - and I looked up to them. I wanted to be like them. I also had only had a handful of different jobs before. So I ended up aspiring to certain things that maybe I shouldn’t have been aspiring to, and I regret that I was in a position of power when I, personally, didn’t know what I was doing. Age means different things to different people, but for me when I was in that phase of my life I was still a kid in a lot of ways. There are a lot of things that I look back on now and think ‘I would never do that as an adult, as someone who cares about people!’ There was a manager manual that I wrote, and someone from that store reached out to me a few years ago and asked if I had the Word document for it so that they could update it. I somehow found it and was like ‘holy shit this is awful, don’t do anything in this manual - I can’t believe I fucking wrote this and I am so sorry.’ It was just so unforgiving. I mean, I am Japanese - I was raised believing that yeah, you’re obviously supposed to just work until you die - so that combined with me absorbing this really intense ethos around work - I was a hot mess in a lot of regards.
I was so young, and I was given the power to hire and fire people? That’s wild. Which is not to say that a 21-year-old can’t do those things, but if you are 21 AND you don’t have any experience, or support, or outline of best practices- how much can you really do?
When I was about 26, I moved down to Oakland to work at a new Four Barrel café. Later I co-organized a multi-complainant lawsuit against them for sexual assault and harassment. So you know, needless to say I’m not there anymore. I moved on to Blue Bottle for a short while, and then I worked for Sudden Coffee. That was when I stopped working behind the bar. It’s been about three years since I’ve actually worked bar - which is a really wild thing to me since my entire adult life was defined by making coffee for a living.”
Since moving from behind the counter, Umeko has focused their attention on education regarding power imbalances, the coffee value chain, and sustainable work futures for coffee professionals.
“Currently I am self-employed. Not gainfully, but self-employed nonetheless. I sell roasted coffee and rainbow cupping spoons on the internet, and I do a lot of community-building and educational work, focused on making coffee information free and accessible. I spend about 40 hours a week creating and curating educational content and doing interviews with people - particularly around issues of power imbalance throughout the coffee value chain. I also write a fair amount on this topic, and I create many projects focused on power and how it impacts various facets of the coffee industry.
Investigating power imbalance is something I have engaged with my whole life. My dad was born in a concentration camp during WWII and I grew up knowing that. I think there are a lot of people who will have an awakening at some point in their lives like ‘Oh power imbalance is a thing!’- you know, for people who are white, or they don’t hold any identities that would impact their experience in a way that they would be aware of imbalance. Personally, I definitely benefit from a lot of privileges that really change how I experience the world. And I also have this other component of always knowing that the US government put my family was put in concentration camps because of their race. They made my family - I think it was 6 people - live in a horse stall for months while the government built the camp in Heart Mountain, WY. Then they put them in this barracks surrounded by barbed wire and gun towers. So knowing that will impact a person’s experience.”
One word that Umeko would use to describe their coffee career: “Conflicted. As I started diving more into learning about coffee, I began to pick up hints here and there about the conditions experienced by small holder farmers. People who grow coffee, and don’t have big estates - they are just small business owners. And I started realizing that they were getting really fucked by the low prices for coffee and dealing with unsafe work environments. I started talking to green coffee buyers and got some more insight and perspective - but at that time, there was kind of a hush around it. One green buyer I spoke with mentioned something about a farmer he knew being shot in an act of cartel violence. I was like, “Holy shit, WHAT?” but he got nervous and it almost seemed like he had said something he wasn’t supposed to. I was really disconcerted and concerned, but I couldn’t find out any more information, anywhere. And I tried really hard. From that point on until a couple years ago, really, I was constantly on the fence about even working in coffee. How do I engage with this industry when I know that it is built on violence and colonialism?
When I worked at as the Head Trainer for Four Barrel, I taught a lot of people about coffee and the basics of the value chain and how coffee is grown. The company was all about paying lip service to transparency, like - literally just saying the word a lot, but I knew that ultimately, they didn’t practice actual transparency. So when I taught those classes, I felt like I was lying to people. For instance, I was never told any specific information about pricing on any of the coffees, even when I directly asked. I was just waved away, and the few people that seemed to have information were usually cis dudes. So as a trainer, as someone working with clients and with the public, I felt like I had to sell something to people that wasn’t true, or that I didn’t have all the information on, and that was misleading.
Additionally, my boss, Jeremy Tooker, got uncomfortable if I even mentioned issues of race or gender imbalance around him, and I would be called oversensitive and kind of get in trouble. When I first became a trainer, he called a meeting with me but instead of congratulating me on being promoted he told me that he hadn’t wanted me to get the job - because I was too ‘sensitive’. He had this whole imagined scenario where I’d be working with a customer, and the customer would say something offensive, and then I’d set a boundary around it - and like, to him that was unacceptable on my part, in this scenario. Having boundaries, or really having beliefs, was defined as being oversensitive, and some kind of proof that I was not fit for my job.
When I taught classes, I would try to sneak little things in, hoping that I wouldn’t get caught or get in trouble. When I taught my Seed to Cup class, I would usually start out by saying ‘coffee as a beverage was invented by black and brown women.’ And then talk through the process until the coffee reaches the consumer market, and then I would ask the class ‘This beverage was invented by black and brown women, but when we think about who makes coffee - what is the image that comes to mind? What is the face that we see?’ And sometimes that would be meaningful for people and they would want to talk more about it, but I felt be too afraid to pursue it further. It wasn’t enough - I didn’t feel like I was making enough of an impact.
After leaving that company, I felt like I had enough information to begin to understand where needs may be and how they could be addressed - and I now had much more freedom to talk about it without being afraid for my job. That’s when I truly started on this journey. Over time, it became a bigger and bigger priority for me to talk with people about the issues in coffee that keep me up at night. Unlearning that fear was a process, and I still worry sometimes. Sometimes I’ll say something on the internet and think, “I wonder if this is it, I wonder if this is the thing I say where people tell me I’m just being oversensitive.”
But I have strong beliefs and I care a lot about making coffee better, and the world better, in whatever way I can. Now that I can’t get fired by anyone, I am more and more direct about what I’m thinking, because I know that other people are thinking it too but can’t say it because their employers would be pissed.
Co-organizing a lawsuit against Four Barrel was the final thing that, for me, crystallized this understanding: that I want to focus on education and calling awareness to issues around power, all across our industry. There is a lot that feels uncomfortable about being the first to talk about something and I happen to be someone who - when they’re not in an abusive company - is willing to be the first one to bring something up. And I think it’s important for me to use that quality.
Some of my favorite tools for education and awareness are pins and stickers. I think certain concepts seem radical or scary to express when you don’t know for sure if others agree with you. I like to make pins and stickers because it’s a way of normalizing certain concepts so people feel like they can say what they’re thinking. Like the ‘Coffee Isn’t Just for White People’ stickers - the phrase was originated by Oodie Taliaferro and I made a sticker with their permission, benefitting Cherry Roast Denver. The stickers caused a small amount of controversy when I put them out, but now I see them everywhere and it’s almost like this humdrum thing, which I mean in the most positive way.
Pins and stickers also help people focus their values. I like to share ideas that are actionable and concrete. And I like to provide relevant information to support statements. Information is just a really big thing for me. The internet has changed how people consume information, so I utilize a format that people are already used to, and that they think of as a way to access really digestible information - Instagram stories. An Instagram story seems, by definition, more digestible, even if it’s fairly complex material. The information I am sharing is really accessible by virtue of being on Instagram and part of someone’s existing daily routine, rather than in a long print article.
A few weeks ago I published an interview with Dean Kallivrousis about futures markets, and it was about 10 stories long, and 800 people read it the whole way through. Which was an 80% read-through rate. That’s wild and I think it has to do with coffee people just being really, really curious by nature, generally. It’s a big part of why my educational content has such high engagement.”
Looking forward at the future of the coffee industry, Umeko wants to see more of a push towards equitable and sustainable futures for coffee professionals, especially those who hold marginalized identities. “When we hire so many people who hold identities that have only ever really received privilege, and then we make so many pathways available to them, we are simultaneously reducing the number of pathways available for black and brown people, for women, for nonbinary people, for people who holds marginalized identities. I see this a lot in who coffee companies choose, over and over again, to become green coffee buyers.
We are at a point in our industry now where folks are comfortable talking about the need to diversify management, diversify who is represented behind the bar - but no one seems to want to address this huge glaring issue: the majority of coffee buyers in the US are cis white dudes, and people from other groups are having that pathway denied to them.
This issue is about much more than like - just being diverse. Over and over and over again, we keep choosing people who belong to a demographic that has only ever benefited from colonialism and white supremacy, and then we’re sending them to participate in buying systems built on colonialism and white supremacy. We’re sending them to countries where coffee is grown, where they hold power as buyers, and as Americans, and as white dudes, and as people who can come and go as they please, to whatever country they want. We are putting them in a position where they are holding much more power than anyone should.
Then, on top of that, we are expecting them to somehow know how to respond appropriately to the coffee pricing crisis. We are expecting them to innovate outside the framework of colonialism and white supremacy, and that is not realistic. This isn’t about how good of a person an individual coffee buyer might be. I know plenty of white dudes that are coffee buyers and are really nice people who really want to do the right thing. It just that, as a demographic, cis straight American white men are incredibly privileged along so many axes, domestically and globally, and when someone has never experienced structural marginalization, no matter how good of a person they are, no matter how hard they try, they should not be the go-to for understanding what marginalized people are dealing with. And for many, the structural issues they’re being tasked with responding to are ones that have been made invisible to them for most of their lives.
We need to create pathways for black and brown people to do this work, period. We need to question why we’re defaulting to hiring so many white people, and especially white dudes, to becoming green buyers - especially when that role, in light of our current price crisis, demands an ability to empathize with marginalized experiences, collaborate with marginalized people, be aware of power imbalance, and innovate outside of the framework that created this problem.
The person who brought this to mind for me specifically is a friend of mine, Kristina Jackson, who recently tweeted her perspective on the need for diversity behind the bar. One of her points was that baristas need to be ambassadors of coffee who help consumers understand what is happening in our value chain. Consumer education and awareness is really important. And baristas are the ones who are face to face with customers every day. So we need people who can advocate for the needs of the marginalized on every point of the current value chain structure. I thought this was such an important point, and it extends to green buying too, and green buyers understanding how to learn from farmers they’re working with, learn about whatever needs they might have, and advocate for those needs.”
Umeko’s advice for people who hold marginalized identities looking to get into the coffee industry: “Do whatever you can to find people in the community who share your values - the internet is a great place for this - and build relationships with them. Connection and mutual support are incredibly powerful. There can be this feeling that there is only room for ‘one.’ Like everyone has to be a cis white guy, and there’s only room for one person who is not, so a feeling of competitiveness can develop around that. When I was at Four Barrel, women were obviously treated like shit, and part of that was that we were pitted against each other in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. There was this idea that if you were a ‘cool enough’ or ‘chill enough’ woman, then maybe you can be a part of the club. I think it’s really empowering and important to be able to network and connect and support other people who are in the industry with marginalized identities, who are aligned on values. And just support and boost the fuck out of each other. That creates a future for all of us. If we are playing along with this game that ‘I need to get ahead, and just me’ it doesn’t create a future for any of us.
I think we are in a really interesting part of our industry’s history. The coffee industry as a whole, obviously, has a ton of problems. But we are the only industry that is founded on the principle of paying more for our raw materials and - as much as we clearly have not done enough yet - that is really meaningful. Coffee tends to draw people who are a lot more open to learning about what needs to change. A lot more open to supporting that change. Much of that push for change is coming from people who are baristas; It’s not coming from leadership necessarily, or the people who hold power. Most of the people at the forefront of this agitation are people who are not, themselves, making a living wage.
None of this is surprising, given that people in charge want to protect their interests and most are too short-sighted to understand that our industry’s survival is at stake when people are being marginalized along so many axes all throughout our value chain. What is really interesting is that, in coffee, the people who are in roles that higher ups would think of as being an entry level job, are actually being taken more seriously than they might be in other industries. Part of it could be that a lot of our higher-ups used to be baristas, and even if they turned into lizard people somewhere along the way they still might have a barista in there somewhere. But I think honestly what baristas do is so crucial that it’s really hard to truly deny how important it is, and how important baristas’ voices are. I mean, one of our major trade publications is literally called Barista Magazine. And I also really want to bring up that baristas have everyone outnumbered here. There is a lot of collective power, so much more than I think most people realize, and I want baristas to really know that. That is a lot of power that can be collectively leveraged.
If a coffee company is not releasing specific transparency info to even their staff, or if they’re refusing to shift their coffee buying practices, baristas have a lot of power to change that. And baristas from all over get together for throwdowns, and are networked and connected across multiple cafes. Looking outside of just the cafe that you work out, there is even more collective power that can be leveraged. Coffee companies cannot operate without baristas, and I really want baristas to know how absolutely crucial they are.
There is huge potential within our industry, and we need to keep pushing on it and keep going. Start to really have each other’s backs more and more every day so that we feel supported and safe speaking on things that are more difficult to bring up. Having connection within your community goes a long way towards making that feel more possible. And being vocal about injustice creates an environment where it’s not so easy for café management and ownership to just fire people for speaking up. It is now out in the open that people are speaking up, and you can’t just stay in the shadows intimidating employees forever.
I think this is the only way for marginalized people to have a future. And at the end of the day, I just want to have a future, and I want my friends to have a future. Trish Rothgeb has talked about this, and Ashley Rodriguez has talked about this. We don’t see futures for ourselves or for people in this industry who are not cis white dudes. That’s why I focus on connection, relationship, and support, and why I will continue to boost the fuck out of marginalized people. Because I want to be able to feed myself when I’m George Howell’s age. I want to be allowed that level of dignity and respect, and I want that for Everyone, period, end of sentence.