Interview with Matt Hampton of Rumble Coffee

so matt, you’ve been with rumble since the very beginning, How long have you been roasting coffee for? Is there anything about it that still surprise you?

I've been roasting coffee for about 10 years. I guess the thing that still surprises me is when a producer that we've been working with has worked on their processing and their coffee just keeps increasing in quality year after year.

What is the longest relationships you have with your farmers, the suppliers of your beans?

I think probably five years. We've got one guy in Guatemala that I've been working with for quite a while. this year will be our fifth year buying from him. We have great conversations on WhatsApp. He doesn't speak any English and I speak very little Spanish. So that's highly entertaining. He sends lots of photos of his family and stuff like that. It's really cool!

Do you think that good coffee has the power to attract good people?

Totally! It's funny, most coffee people that you meet are really nice. I don't know if it's the caffeine. For example, the famous La Marzocco parties after MICE are always a good time with good people. Not just in Melbourne either! all of the coffee festivals that I've been to in other countries, La Marzocco is always there bringing people together. when roasting, There can be a fair amount of competition, and to have a company like La Marzocco there in a way where they're not really competing with anyone is so good.

Have you held any events yourselves?

We have held some events down in Brewtech actually! It was probably about three years ago, where we talked about transparency and coffee. We had a couple of speakers and then we were able to have some beers afterwards. Coffee really does bring people together.

totally! How long have you been here at Rumble?

Rumble will be eight years old this year. We got this warehouse in 2013 and we kicked off in 2014.

So it all began here at Rumble with you and your partner, Joe?

Initially it was three of us; Joe, Stan and myself. I was roasting coffee for another company, kind of managing their wholesale coffee business. Joe and Stan had both been working as baristas for a long time. Joe had owned multiple cafes over the years and it just seemed like a logical progression.

Were you good mates from within the industry, or did you know each other from childhood?

We were all Kiwis who moved over, staggered over the years. I think I moved here in 2002, and Joe moved around the same time, and we had mutual friends and met each other through that, which was totally not to do with coffee. I was a chef back then, so I came out of kitchens and into roasteries.

Do you find that there any similarities between working in a commercial kitchen and working in a space like this?

Yeah, there's lots. The organisational factor is definitely very similar to running a kitchen. Even roasting coffee is similar to preparing food… trying to do things consistently. If you go to you go to a restaurant and they're known for a signature dish, you want that signature dish to be as close to what you know. it's the same with coffee. We try and provide wholesale customers with the same coffee consistently, week in week out. Their customers are happy and they're happy and That's what makes us happy. Everybody needs to be happy.

In terms of your relationship with Brewtech, do you remember how you first met Craig?

Yeah, I mean, I knew Craig before Brewtech even started, probably close to 10 years now! We always got on well and could sit down and have a chat and talk about the industry and what was going on. When we came to Kensington, I joked that he followed us here because he wanted to be around us. back when we were both a bit quieter and things weren't so busy, we used to spend a fair bit of time just hanging out, you know. the Brewtech team have always been really great. I think craig has an infectious attitude which informs the people he hires and the team he’s built. I think he's just got a good judge of character. When you have people going out to cafes, it's important that they’re willing to listen and aren't carrying a massive ego or throwing their weight around. Brewtech’s technicians have got experience in the industry so they know what to expect and they know how to work around a busy service. they make everybody feel at ease about what they're doing.

What do you love about La Marzocco machines?

I feel like they're so aesthetically pleasing, almost design pieces. In a high-volume cafes situation, you want a machine this is going to turn on and work every day and just make consistently good coffee. And they do that, they just do the job. We have a brand new GB5 in the bar here at Rumble and it's great.

So, from a roasters perspective, how important is it for you to ensure that your wholesale customers have well maintained equipment?

For my wholesale customers, maintaining their equipment is one of the most important things apart from actually making the coffee. If your grinder isn't clean, you could end up with it not working at all, and then you can't make coffee. A cafe is no good if it can't make coffee. So yeah, maintaining equipment and knowing how to do it, it just kind of saves everyone time. People in any industry need to understand and maintain their equipment that they're using and realise that that's part of the job. I think for baristas, this also adds some skill to their repertoire. Having Brewtech come and talk to the barista about what they’re doing gives the barista opportunities to ask questions. We communicate with our baristas to ensure that the tech will be coming in at a time that works for them. That way everybody's kind of across it. That's been working really well.

How many cafes do you supply to?

That’s a good question. Maybe 25 or so!

I’ve read that something that you value as a business is transparency between you and the customer and the farmers, across the entire coffee sourcing and roasting process? Would you care to elaborate on that?

Yeah! So, when I started roasting coffee, everyone would talk a lot about ethical and sustainable coffee. When I started buying coffee as a green bean buyer I came to realise a lot of those words and terms are thrown around but there was nothing to back them up. No real meaning. There are programs out there which make it easier for buyers and producers to have some kind of sustainable and ethical arrangement. With specialty coffee, you can buy great coffee and the price is generally so much higher than what these other certifications were paying. I was trying to find a way to communicate what we were doing in a way that didn't allow us to hide behind a little sticker. So it was actually a chance meeting with Peter, who's one of the owners at Coffee Collective in Europe, and they had been disclosing their FOB price for years. FOB is the amount of money that's staying in origin when the coffee's ready to export. once you know the fob you can work backwards from there and get farm gate prices, learning what the actual farmers are receiving. That’s what we're always striving towards but sometimes we can't get it. I think maybe when we're a bit bigger and we're buying a lot more direct, it'll be a lot easier.

Yeah, and when you learn some more Spanish!

That would be great! The coffee industry can be a murky business. There's a long history of exploitation. We're taking it one step at a time and trying to make these changes. We've been working with Emory University in Atlanta and in the States, donating data to them for any of the contract information that we have. so the data will include information on What we've been paying, lot size, the cupping score, the price, the region, and then they they're collating all this information, and creating a database. The aim is to give a better guide price to what you should be paying. So instead of going to a producer and them proposing a price, and then you cutting them down in price, (which is what always kind of happens) it will give the coffee producer a better idea of how much they should be selling their coffee for, Not just what the commodity market is saying plus a few cents here and there or whatever. Being able to say ‘no, coffees from my area that a cupping at this score are starting at this price’. We want to help facilitate negotiations based on actual data and then pay accordingly. because of this, hopefully we can start to have a bit more of an understanding of what really is specialty coffee. I think last year's data totalled 18,000 contracts or something like maybe 100 roasters and importers and exporters.

That's so fascinating! Do you know how long this study will be going on until the data is collated and released?

Well, hopefully it’s ongoing. So, the data collected this year is released in September or October I think. It’s a worthwhile investment of time, money and data. It’s a great partnership. And then hopefully we can all make money through the chain and don't have one party that is taking out a massive chunk of that money.

I think that what you have just described to me is pretty special. In what other ways do you think that Rumble is special?

We’re just trying to roast really good coffee for good people and be honest about what we're doing. I think that's probably the most refreshing thing... we're not all about trying to do the newest weird and wonderful thing but rather do the best of what we want to do and offer the most consistent product. We want to take some of the pretentiousness out of coffee drinking and try and make it accessible for everybody.

Fabulous, thanks so much for chatting with me today!

No problems.