We have meet and discovered people who works at the beginning of the coffee supply chain. Thanks to all of them, today it’s possibile to taste the Specialty Coffee. With their passion, culture and resilience, we can enjoy great cup of coffee and drink no-industrialized coffee, which is instead always over burned. They have to work hard daily, it’s not easy to guarantee high standard facing with constantly increasing taxes and prices, but they still do it.
Differently from the most of the Coffee Shop, through the current page we want to give them a chance to presente themself, to show how much beauty there is in their terroir and to allow the customer discover people behind the coffee he bought or is choosing to buy! This is also for those who are new to coffee and want to discover the amazing world behind the cup.
Toj Balam
” I started the Toj Balam project in 2018 after two photo exhibitions in Kyoto…Yes, I am also an artist photographer.
But the real beginning of my relationship with coffee dates back to my childhood, I was born in a peasant family in the center of Guatemala in the region of Antigua, where the culture of coffee is part of our daily life. When I finished my studies in the mid-90s, I had the opportunity to travel to Europe, life did the rest and I have lived in Gland (Swiss) since the 2000s. In 2015 my father decided to retire, at that time he was looking for someone who would take responsibility for his small coffee farm. As a teenager I pushed my father to plant coffee, so when it came time to hand over the choice was more than obvious. The only problem was that I no longer lived in Guatemala and couldn’t see which way to go, for the first three years I continued to sell the cherry coffee to coffee buyers. My trip to Japan to exhibit at the Kyotographie festival allowed me to discover the world of specialty coffee. From that moment, at the beginning of 2018, I immediately returned to Guatemala, inspired by the work of winegrower friends from Gland and Vich VD (Swiss). I started experimenting with fermentation formulas to modulate other flavors in coffee. With the results of the experiments of the 2019/2020 vintage in my pocket I returned to Switzerland to focus on roasting.The 2020/2021 harvest was sold as green coffees to roasters in Guatemala and Switzerland and since 2022 I have been selling my own roasted coffees in this way, we can really talk about direct trade and absolute traceability of our products.”
