My Coffee story is one which probably shares a lot of moments as yours. Like most people, my story starts out as a coffee drinker, and like a lot of teenage coffee drinkers, sweetness was the order of the day. I would unashamedly order my Cappuccino with two sugars, or even a cheeky caramel latte, which is why I know to never judge a person by the coffee they order. We’re all just at different stages of our coffee journey.

I started working in coffee about seven years ago, and like most I went through the whole coffee chain upbringing. Again, these businesses always take a bashing in specialty coffee, but how often do you hear about people who want to get a job as a barista, only for them to be turned down by cafe after cafe, advertising for baristas with a minimum two years’ experience. How are you supposed to get this experience if no one will give you a shot?

It was somewhere in these first few years that I decided I really loved the industry, and although I was just working in a cafe job until I decided what I wanted to do with my life, I started to discover that this was who I wanted to be.

During this time, my thirst for coffee knowledge was immense, and coming from a small country town, the number of places for me to visit to learn about coffee were limited. I went to the internet to learn as much information as I could, but as anyone who’s spent time on the internet knows, there is a lot of conflicting information, so I decided to start Coffeefusion. At the time I was trying to learn about latte art, and I thought I’d document my development, thinking that posting videos would be a cool way to learn and at the same time teach others who were looking to learn as well.

I decided to move to the city, to find a place to work where I could take my coffee knowledge to the next level. The Perth coffee scene was growing rapidly, with exciting and fresh cafes and roasting companies starting up. I got a job at Yahava KoffeeWorks, which is where I’ve spent the last few years working and learning.

Yahava has been such an important place for me to foster my coffee passion. During my time there, I started as a barista, before being given the opportunity to learn to roast coffee. Being the passionate person I am, I took the bull by the horns, learning, and developing the coffee with the team of roasters. This has opened up a whole new side of coffee, chatting with farmers and suppliers, choosing farms for our seasonal programmes, all the while trying to juggle the Coffeefusion audience, a growing community of coffee lovers with a thirst for great coffee, and great coffee content.

Fast forward to about six weeks ago, where I made what is without a doubt the biggest decision of my coffee life, and basically my whole life as well. That decision was to leave the company I love working for so much, so that I can create something of my own. Coffeefusion has grown to a point where I can’t do it justice by devoting just one day a week to it. I have so many amazing ideas regarding what Coffeefusion can be, and what this community could do as we continue to learn about coffee together.

This online community has given me a voice, one which I don’t take for granted for one second. But Coffeefusion does more than that - it also gives you a voice. I have tried my hardest to answer questions of young baristas, sharing the content in videos. I have exciting plans to open up communication between farmer and coffee drinker, to share these coffees with you guys, and to share the stories of these farms in a way which no one else can. And as we grow, I want to give back to these communities, because the specialty industry isn’t sustainable if the farmers cannot earn a living growing the coffees we love.

This is where this post ends, but this is not the end of my coffee story. In some ways it is just the beginning. In the mean time, I would like to hear your coffee story. Whether you’re a drinker, a beginning barista, a grower, a roaster, a cafe owner, or have any other position in this amazing industry of ours. I’d like to share these stories as often as possible, because we are all part of the Coffeefusion Community, and as always, Coffeefusion is bringing coffee lovers together.

Gary Sawyer

Coffeefusion

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