Matt’s coffee career-path has been varied: he’s the founder of Espresso Ninja Ltd (coffee machinery technician company in NZ), co-founder of four different cafes across New Zealand, Flight Coffee (roastery in NZ), Raw Material (green coffee trading world wide), and El Fénix (experimental coffee farm in Colombia). These days he spends his time in Raw Material and El Fénix, cupping, developing coffee quality and trading systems, and managing strategy. He’s cupped, lived, worked, and travelled in many countries in order to better understand the coffee value chain.
His work on Raw Material’s Colombia farm is aimed primarily at processing and agronomic experiments, and leveraging their findings so that the community benefits and specialty coffee production is sustained at origin.
Matt’s especially passionate about helping improve a diversity of smaller businesses, and emphasizing more holistic value sets. He’d like to help facilitate the reality of de-commoditizing specialty coffee, and ensuring coffee is a sustainable and logical choice for farmers to invest in.
