What are the responsibilities and job description for the Jr Coffee Buyer position at Counter Culture Coffee Inc1?
Counter Culture Coffee was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in Durham, NC, with regional offices in 12 major cities across the country. Counter Culture Coffee has been continuously innovating in the coffee industry and we’re looking for passionate, dynamic, diverse team members to help us expand our efforts.
Counter Culture Coffee is:
- A relentless pursuit of coffee perfection
- A dedication to real environmental, social, and fiscal sustainability
- A commitment to creating cutting edge coffee people
Our Core Values are:
- Quality Coffee | We continue to cultivate relationships with growers and organizations around the world in order to build trust, improve quality, and foster transparency.
- Education | We believe the pursuit of coffee perfection includes educating ourselves, our partners, and our customers about the coffee supply chain and the best methods of preparation.
- Sustainability | Our commitment to affecting positive change in every community to which we are connected is driven by our belief that we can–and should–always strive to improve upon the present.
- Transparency | We are committed to sustainability and holding ourselves and our peers accountable for creating a more sustainable future of coffee.
Junior Coffee Buyer Job Overview:
The ideal candidate will have a deep passion for coffee and knowledge about the specialty coffee industry. They should possess a basic understanding of quality control protocols used in professional cupping settings, strong communication and organizational skills, and the ability to work collaboratively within a team while coordinating cross-departmental efforts. Curiosity and initiative to explore values-aligned opportunities are essential. This position reports to the Western Coffee Manager.
Job Duties:
Evaluate coffee in a professional setting and calibrate with team members.
- Perform sample roasting and maintain roasting equipment.
- Set up daily cuppings and ensure lab cleanliness.
- Perform quality analysis, maintain and manage the cupping database, and communicate feedback.
Organize green coffee samples, ensuring proper labeling and storage.
Communicate Counter Culture’s purchasing principles, quality requirements, and sales trends with coffee producers and suppliers.
- Travel domestically and internationally, sometimes on weekends and holidays, for periods of a week or more to remote regions of the world.
- Build relationships, assess risks, and collaborate to improve supply chains.
Purchasing Coffee:
Support Coffee Buyers in managing contracts.
- Assist in initiating contracts with suppliers based on Coffee Managers’ forecasts.
- Communicate with suppliers regarding samples and approvals/rejections.
Assist in logistics management.
Manage coffee logistics.
- Proactively look for ways to reduce costs.
Assist in managing coffee inventory position and databases.
Create marketing materials such as product bios, harvest updates, and supplier stories.
- Organize information for product rollouts.
- Provide marketing updates on our supply chain as necessary.
Organize and verify transparency information and contribute to the Transparency Report.
Overall Requirements:
- 5 years of specialty coffee industry experience
- Ability and willingness to travel, up to 10%, domestically and internationally, possibly on weekends and holidays
- Valid passport
Overall Preferred Knowledge, Skills & Abilities:
- Language skills in Spanish, French, Amharic, or Swahili
- Coffee roasting experience
- Cupping skills
- Understanding contracts and purchasing terminology including farmgate, FOB, FOT, NANS, SAS, PSS, Offer, Ex-Whse
- Experience or familiarity with Counter Culture’s purchasing principles
Overall 90-Day Goals:
- Attend New Employee Orientation, where applicable.
- Strong understanding of LEAN, GGOB, B-CORP
- Strong understanding of Counter Culture’s vision, mission, values, and plan
- Demonstrate consistent sample roasting technique
- Become familiar with all CCC coffee sourcing projects: duration, volume, price, customer appeal, unique conditions
- Become familiar with the company structure, policies, personnel, etc.
- Understand the CCC buying philosophy and strategy
- Demonstrate proficiency in Netsuite and Cropster for data management
- Evaluate any coffee using the CCC cupping form and scoring system
- Become calibrated with the cuppers in the CCC laboratories
- Support in managing value streams within assigned origins or partnerships
- Identify key flavor characteristics of each of Counter Culture’s coffee offerings
- Demonstrate proficiency with the basics of coffee purchasing contract terms: FOB and FOT, fixed and differential, SAS, NA/NS, Ex-warehouse, hedging, futures, volume/cup quality/price relationships
Physical Aspects of this Job:
- Balancing: maintaining body equilibrium to prevent falling and walking, standing or crouching on narrow, slippery, or erratically moving surfaces.
- Stooping: bending body downward and forward by bending spine at the waist.
- Crouching: bending the body downward and forward by bending leg and spine.
- Reaching: extending hand(s) and arm(s) in any direction.
- Standing: particularly for sustained periods of time.
- Walking: moving about on foot to accomplish tasks, particularly for long distances or moving from one work site to another.
- Pushing: using upper extremities to press against something with steady force in order to thrust forward, downward or outward.
- Pulling: using upper extremities to exert force in order to draw, haul, or tug objects in a sustained motion.
- Lifting: raising objects from a lower to a higher position or moving objects horizontally from position-to-position.
- Fingering: picking, pinching, typing or otherwise working, primarily with fingers rather than with the whole hand as in handling.
- Grasping: applying pressure to an object with the fingers and palm.
- Feeling: perceiving attributes of objects, such as size, shape, temperature or texture by touching with skin, particularly that of fingertips.
- Talking: expressing or exchanging ideas by means of the spoken word, those activities in which they must convey detailed or important spoken instructions to other workers accurately, loudly, or quickly.
- Hearing: perceiving the nature of sounds at normal speaking levels with or without correction; ability to receive detailed information through oral communication, and to make discriminations in sound.
- Repetitive motion: substantial movements (motions) of the wrists, hands, and/or fingers.
The physical requirements of this position:
Visual acuity requirements including color, depth perception, and field vision:
Employee is required to have visual acuity to determine the accuracy, neatness, and thoroughness of the work assigned or to make general observations of facilities or structures.
The conditions the worker will be subject to in this position:
Benefits: Currently, the offered benefits include: group health (medical, dental and vision), available the first of the month after 30 days of employment; Flexible Spending Accounts for Healthcare and for Dependent Care; short- and long-term disability; life insurance; Wellness Benefits; 401(k) program; paid time off; eight company holidays; Stock Option Plan; A Stake in the Outcome.
Counter Culture Coffee a growth-oriented company, team of coffee driven individuals working together on continuous improvements.
Counter Culture Coffee is an Equal Opportunity Employer in both policy and practice.
Counter Culture Coffee assesses candidates for employment based on their knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform the job for which they are applying and without regard to any non-job-related category as protected by federal, state or local law.
Finalist candidates for employment will be required to demonstrate USA employment eligibility - per federal and state law, Counter Culture Coffee participates in the federal E-Verify program.