By talking to producers and the Algrano team, some roasters were aware of what was happening and managed to be one step ahead. One of them was Quarter House Coffee Roastery in Birmingham, UK. Founded in 2012 by Ameeta and Nathan Retzer, Quarter Horse moved from Oxford to Ameeta’s hometown of Birmingham in 2015 to open their own roastery and “showcase what’s new, what’s exciting, and what’s tasting great,” explains Nathan. “We believe the way to do that is to work more directly with smaller producers.”

 

Quarter Horse has been working with Algrano for around a year and a half, and now purchases almost 80% of their coffee through the platform. When Algrano launched the pre-contracting service in 2021, the roastery didn’t waste time. They first ordered coffees from Brazil ahead of the season. Then, they secured their orders from Ethiopia and Central America before the samples were ready - and the coffees, sold out. 

 

Quarter Horse’s positive experience with securing beans from Brazil led them to move fast and pre-contract beans from Coopeagri, a cooperative in Costa Rica, later on. The coffee had been a key building block in the roastery’s signature espresso blend, Dark Horse, and Nathan wanted to secure the same beans again at the best price possible. “As we would be building our espresso around those beans for the next six months, I wanted to be sure we didn’t miss out because there’s a finite number of bags available,” he explains.  

 

For both the Brazilian and Costa Rica pre-contracts, the process was smooth and easy. Nathan had the option of arranging the pre-contract order through Algrano or by contacting the farmer directly. As the service is based on SAS Replace terms (Subject to Approval of Sample, Replace: if a sample is not approved, the coffee will be replaced with another lot) he received a couple of pre-shipment samples during the middle of the harvest and as the coffee was being milled and graded. “The pre-shipment samples were tasting great,” remembers Nathan. “We’ll get a landed sample too when the coffee arrives, so I’ll be able to check the quality, but I’m confident it’ll be fantastic.” 

Quarter Horse was one of a few roasters who managed to secure coffee directly from Costa Rica on Algrano in 2022. Supply was so low and competition so high that only those 

who were tuned in to the country’s situation - informed by Algrano on Harvest Reports and newsletters - were successful. Nathan didn’t have to act that fast, though. In 2021, he contracted the coffee in late March. In 2022, he did it in early January. And, considering that the coffee in question was already marketed at considerably higher prices than those of the c-market, he managed to secure the same FOB price.

 

For Nathan, one of the biggest benefits of pre-contracting is the ability to accurately plan financial forecasts. By pre-contracting, Quarter Horse was able to adjust its prices and inform its customers ahead of time in order to absorb the fact that most green coffee across the globe is more expensive this year, protecting the roastery’s margins. And there’s also the flexibility of being able to use it in different ways, to secure large amounts of a building block for a signature blend, or a small amount of a rare single-origin. “We’re also pre-contracting a couple of bags of Rwandan coffee that is more expensive and will be sold as a single-origin roast,” he says. “That one is really delicious and I don’t want to miss out on it.”

 

“Pre-contracting helps me plan, and it helps the farmer plan too,” he concludes. “It’s working really well for us, and we plan to keep buying more and more coffee that way.”