Today we’d like to introduce you to Sergio Boppel.
Sergio, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
We are originally from Guatemala, and come from a coffee growing family. My great-grandfather was the first in our family to work in coffee, so my generation is the 4th that continues to work in this beautiful industry. It had been a dream to start a coffee roasting company to help support specialty coffee worldwide for many years.
My wife and I were living in Boston at the time and had just had our first son, Sebastian. We saw how quickly the industry was changing, and decided the time was right. We’ve always had deep ties and a lot of love for Miami, so we moved south to start the project in mid-2015.
After a lot of planning and hard work, we started roasting coffee in mid-2016 in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood, and have been having a blast doing so since!
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I doubt its ever easy to start a new business in a new city, and we definitely had our challenges along the way.
Finding the right location was certainly challenging–and navigating the entire process to open a business was quite lengthy.
Our vision is to make positive contributions along the entire coffee supply chain, from the farm to the barista and end consumer. The fact that we’re now actually able to contribute, and put a lot of smiles on people’s faces keeps us super excited and motivated to push forward!
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Great Circle was started as a dream to positively influence the coffee industry across the globe.
The cost of producing high quality coffee far exceeds commodity market prices for coffee, so in a way it has become unsustainable to produce it. Farmers work really hard throughout the year to find out at the end of the year that they produced at a loss, and start producing for the following year hoping it will be better-kind of a vicious cycle.
At Great Circle we feel that the best way to make positive contributions across the coffee world is by playing a key role in creating a virtuous cycle: incentivizing and rewarding the best quality coffee at origin (which is priced based on taste and is largely de-coupled from commodity pricing), giving it the respect it deserves by preparing it with care, and providing a fantastic offering to delight our customers and their clients—allowing us to repeat the cycle. That’s where the name Great Circle came from.
We really have a blast spending our time finding, tasting and selecting coffees that we feel excited about and are grown by amazing people. We carefully roast each in a distinct way, in order to highlight unique characteristics and deliver a consistent experience in the cup. We love sharing our coffee with awesome friends/clients that are as excited as us to try new and different things and we help them provide a great experience for their friends along the way.
Great Circle also has a commitment to sustainability, and our coffees are roasted on roasting machines that use innovative technology, consume significantly less energy and produce less CO2 emissions than traditional machines.
What were you like growing up?
I grew up around coffee, spending time at the farm with my family. It was a ton of fun and we had a lot of freedom to explore and learn.
I’ve always been passionate about process and analysis. My dad was a Chemical Engineer, which is why I followed in his footsteps and studied that as well. I worked as an engineer for quite some time and then focused on my MBA and finance for some time as well.
It was all an effort to be well-rounded and prepare to take the plunge into entrepreneurship. It finally all came together with Great Circle here in Miami!
Contact Info:
- Address: 382 NE 56 St.,
Miami, FL 33137 - Website: www.greatcirclecoffee.com
- Phone: (305) 603-8189
- Email: info@greatcirclecoffee.com
- Instagram: @greatcirclecoffee
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