This month, we speak with Jamie Isetts, Green Coffee Buyer at Square Mile Coffee. Jamie’s journey into coffee is one filled with passion, exploration, and a drive to make a difference. Originally from the States, Jamie’s unique academic background and life experiences laid the foundation for an exciting career path. Now, at Square Mile Coffee Roasters, Jamie applies her vast knowledge and network to ensure ethical, transparent, and traceable supply chains for high-quality coffee.
Hey Jamie!
Tell us a little about yourself and your journey in coffee
I studied an unlikely mix of things I was interested in during uni: Economics, Biology, and Portuguese. Meanwhile, I worked part-time at a few local cafés, mostly using Counter Culture Coffee. The controllable chaos of a busy café got me into a really awesome flow state, and the armchair travel of working with different origins gave me something new to learn all the time. To facilitate actual post-graduation travel, I did farm work exchange (doing a few hours a day of unskilled manual labour and receiving food and lodging in return) for about a year in southern Spain and Brazil. This was the first time I had interacted with smallholder farmers, or really the business of agriculture at all. I wanted to find a way to keep exploring this while living in a city, around other young people.
I read an article about a green coffee buyer and resolved that I would become one. When I got back to the US, I cold-emailed lots of green coffee importers until I got a few responses. Eventually, I became a Trading Assistant at InterAmerican Coffee, which at the time was based in Houston, TX. I quickly linked up with Houston’s excellent food and beverage scene and started working with local roasters. This encouraged me to dive headfirst into the complicated but rewarding supply chains they were involved in and build new purchasing programs in places like Burundi and Brazil that met their specific needs.
A view of the Strait of Gibraltar from a farm I worked on in Guadalmesi, Spain
What were you doing before you joined Square Mile?
I was the first green buyer for a Texas roaster-retailer called Merit Coffee for about six years. The company grew a lot in that time, which allowed me to cut my teeth as a buyer and build some sourcing relationships that set the tone for what Merit does today.
Does your background in importing coffee influence your role at Square Mile?
Without a doubt. Having a general understanding of my supply chain partners’ workflow helps me to be a better client to work with, or know when to ask for more. The ability to interpret crop reports and market data, and match them to the day-to-day of our partners, helps me anticipate challenges. We also import some of our larger purchases directly. My experience and network helps me to construct supply chains with producers who are accessing the UK market for the first time, which has the added bonus of bringing something completely new to our customers. My goal at Square Mile is not necessarily to “cut out middlemen,” but to have latticed communication between all parties so that everyone can be held accountable for the services they provide.
Can you share some aspects of your sourcing strategy at Square Mile?
The foundation of our offerings is our Red Brick espresso blend. A focal point of our strategy (not just for sourcing, but throughout Square Mile) is to never skimp on this core product. The most impactful, traceable, and detail-oriented buying I do is for our Red Brick supply chains, and we obsess over consistency. Because I know how labour intensive this can be on the supply side, we also rarely haggle on price.
To make the most of these Red Brick relationships, I try to buy other qualities and types in smaller volumes from the same supply chains if it makes sense. A great example of this is our purchasing with Telila Washing Station in Ethiopia. We buy full container volumes of their standard (but fabulous) washed lots for Red Brick, while also making smaller purchases of their honey process lots and washed lots from specific kebeles.
I’ve always got a plan, but flexibility is key. We book most of our coffee in forward contracts, but maintain about 15-20% of our volume as spot purchasing to allow us to try new things and flow with changing demand cycles.
What differentiates the UK specialty market from the US?
Most US roasters have two major “house blends” products, one for batch filter and one for house espresso. This gives roasters two larger SKUs to play with for building volume relationships. In the UK and EU, the dominance of the House Espresso blend shifts the focus to just one product, which has a huge effect on sourcing strategy.
From my perspective, it seems most medium and even large UK specialty companies have a “Head of Coffee” role which encompasses broad aspects of sourcing, roasting, brewed QC, and often many things in between. It’s more common in the US for these aspects to become specialised earlier in a company’s growth cycle, and for roasteries to have a Head of Sourcing, Head of Roasting, etc. I see advantages to both methods but as someone who specialises in Green Buying only, I benefit from being able to focus explicitly on our sourcing strategy with constructive feedback and discussion from my teammates.
Tell us about the future of Square Mile. Are you working on anything new or planning any exciting changes?
Right now, I’m focused on “growing the seeds I’ve already planted,” by which I mean cultivating depth and repeatability in supply chains we began working with in the last five years. I specifically enjoy working with smaller washing stations that purchase cherry from a community of growers as I believe that, with the right execution, they can provide the initial leverage for incredible positive change. A few examples I’m excited about are the Chacayá producer group and exporter Los Volcanes in Lake Atitlán, Guatemala; The Coffee Gardens washing station in Sironko, Uganda; and Karst Organics’ Rotutu washing station in East Timor.
I’ve also loved the Origin Roaster Collabs we’ve done over the last two years with Building Coffee in Vietnam and Tocaya Torradores in Brazil. I strongly feel that the future of demand-side growth for specialty coffee lies in producing countries, and look forward to ways that we can intelligently evolve with that as a roaster in an importing country.
Square Mile’s Origin Roaster Collab with Vietnam’s Building Coffee
Do you have a memorable moment from your trips to origin?
In Kaffa (western Ethiopia), I visited a washing station I had purchased from which was remote enough that it could only be accessed on horseback. Since the ride was long, I brought my tent and camped overnight in the coffee field around the station, which had big canopy trees full of monkeys and birds. Riding out on the horse, meeting the team at the station, and then waking up the next morning to see the misty coffee forest outside my tent was a stunning experience.
Our tents in the coffee trees, Kaffa, Ethiopia
Where did you grow up and where do you live now? If you had one day in your hometown, how would you spend it?
I come from a suburban town in North Carolina, near Charlotte. The most notable thing about it is the massive Lake Norman nearby, so I did all sorts of water sports and nature activities as a kid. My parents still live in the house where I grew up.
If I had one day there, I’d sync it up with the town’s annual Dachshund festival, featuring the much-anticipated Mooresville Weiner Race and costume contest. It’s absurd, there’s no reason why our town specifically should have this festival, and I love how fun that is.
Jamie (middle) with her sisters boating out to go for an inner tube ride
What would you be doing if you weren’t in coffee?
I’ve considered that I might enjoy doing logistics/project management for photo and video expeditions to remote places. Perhaps some kind of procurement, maybe of spices or vegetables or something completely different like antiques. Honestly, few things combine my mix of quantitative and qualitative interests like what I already do.
What are you interested in outside of coffee? Any passions or hobbies?
My greatest joy in life is learning new things, so I have a TON of hobbies. I’m an avid sport climber and wild swimmer, and find a lot of community around that. I marry those with more general outdoorsmanship like trekking, camping, and overlanding. In the past, I’ve also practised a variety of martial arts and done lots of other sporty things like lifting and running.
Learning languages is endlessly entertaining to me, so I’m usually improving my Spanish and Portuguese or picking up a few words from a place to which I recently travelled. Experimental music (and music and art history in general) is something I’m always exploring. Dancing is essential. Anything with a DIY sensibility, I probably dabble in it – gardening, guitar, crochet, visual art, cooking, whatever.
Getting ready for a multi-pitch sport climb in Arco, Italy
Are you reading or listening to anything interesting?
Novel: Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
Podcast: Fall of Civilizations – It seems that people have been preoccupied with much the same things for our entire existence. There’s a comfort in seeing that continuity over periods of intense upheaval and change.
Song: Mavis Staples “I Like The Things About Me” – an excellent cover of Wayne Davis’ more jazzy original by the queen of gospel-R&B herself
How do you take your coffee, and what is your favourite origin?
Being from the US originally, I love a big cup of filter coffee to start my day. My go-to home set up is a 2 cup V60 (I start with the Hoffmann recipe and play from there), Zero filter + Lotus Drops for water, and a Fellow Ode grinder with SSP burrs. My favourite, though, is when my partner makes it for me. There’s nothing like a cup of coffee that someone else made for you! In terms of origin, variety is the spice of life. If I had to choose, it would be Mexico as that’s the one closest to my heart.
