Episode #001: The Travelling Roaster; Around Europe

We’re launching our Experience Good Coffee Podcast series with an interview with The Travelling Roaster – Sarah who was formerly a Coffee Roaster at CLO coffee in Leeds, and has spent much of the past year travelling around Europe to try and connect with Coffee Roasteries and volunteer for anti-child trafficking organisations.

“I'm currently residing in Eastern Europe. They call it the gateway to Central Asia because it's on the border with Kyrgyzstan.” Sara tells CLO coffee founder Linda Castle.

“It's very European kind of feel. Mixed with the Soviet Asian influences. And it just has this big city vibe to it. I’ll be going back and will be working in a school teaching maths.”

“I’ll be doing the odd bit of roasting as well. I often connect with different people, friends of friends of people on Instagram or wherever. I go off and do a bit of roasting with them. Find out what coffees they've imported in. And sometimes they ask for a bit of advice which I always feel very privileged to be involved in.”

“With coffee roasting it was like I just clicked with it. We had an Indian monsoon coffee last year at CLO coffee. I remember looking at and thinking all these beans are a lot bigger. So we put less in the machine and then the first crack was loads later than any of the coffee we've done before. And I kept thinking of missed it and it didn't look right. And I was like, what is going on?  And in the end, we sent an email to Dark Woods asking for help! And they were like, oh, yes, that's exactly what we did too.”

“As well, I'm doing some anti-trafficking stuff voluntarily with an organization called Sparking Freedom and they've been working mainly with girls in brothels out there. But my background is in awareness and prevention of human trafficking. I did that for a few years in Poland. So I've been helping them get that set up. We’ve created presentations for schools and villages to prevent girls from being trafficked. And we meet people and run events on the streets. Chatting to people and we're just explaining that human trafficking can happen to anyone. And often people are just not aware. And if they are aware, you can prevent that from happening to them.”

Nick & Linda Castle, co-founders of CLO coffee have launched their Experience Good Coffee Podcast to celebrate the good moments that happen over a simple cup of coffee. People all over the world are serving coffee to create memorable moments for their guests and customers. 

Coffee is a secret weapon for cultural transformation. We want to celebrate it and share good stories.