RICH WATANABE, Founder and CEO, Coffee Heritage Project
“I really enjoy coffee. It has meaning for me, and it’s not a very hard sell because I enjoy it, I consume it. I’m a coffee person.”
“THE best coffee would be the one that’s most impactful.”
A swift verdict from arguably the country’s leading coffee connoisseur trumps certification and plaudits from the most elite coffee houses in the world.
Not for nothing is Rich Watanabe, the genitor of and the hard labor behind the annual Manila Coffee Festival (MCF).
His palate for the mystical bean has gone around, from Paris — where the valorization of agricultural products would be an Olympic level flex — to every corner of the Philippines where coffee beans grow.
It seems he had tasted everything, and we are the impressionable plebes gushing about cozy third waves and the next novelty latte.
He had been instrumental in giving local coffee beans global recognition.
“We’re unlucky, because we don’t have enough production [of coffee beans],” he began.
“But if we did, the whole world would be buying our coffee,” he capped off with finality.
And we’d believe it. There are certifications and awards, and relentless research backing this claim.
As founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Coffee Heritage Project (CHP), Watanabe had championed single origin coffees from the islands.
The website of CHP attributes this concept to heavily zoomed in geographies; that is, farms, microclimates, single estates and lots lending their specificities to final flavor.
Flavor profiles, distinct and memorable, could also be derived from processing and roasting methods. Single origin coffees are differentiated from blended mainstream ones vended by the big players, which could consolidate beans from different sources for uniform and consistent taste.
Watanabe is on a second wind making the gospel of Philippine coffees known.
The recent wins of Kalamansig coffee and Kulaman coffee from Sultan Kudarat in competitions organized by the Agence pour la valorisation des produits agricoles (AVPA) (Agency for the Valorization of Agricultural Products) in Paris, France, testify to the support of CHP for the award-winning farmers.
Ultimately, it’s about the farmers, Watanabe said.
Changing course
Prior to founding CHP, Watanabe had it good. His name agreed with a lucrative destiny. He was in trading in New York; not a commodities trader on the floors. He moved about in the value chain. His boss was a diamonds trader.
“I was the one working out the trading itself. The source, getting it out of Customs. I was on the left side of the whole chain,” he explained. The ground ops side, to us streetfolk who appraise his work. Even as he turned his back on the wolfish dreams passed around in Wall Street — cars, estates, piles of money — he was still working the ground. More so now in this personal advocacy, where he wakes up from one remote corner of the Philippines to the next. Beyond organizing the annual Manila Coffee Festival (MCF), which has gotten bigger with each edition, Watanabe roves the country to support coffee farmers. All he did was ask himself what he really liked.
“The things that you usually enjoy most are really simple,” he said, almost philosophically. “Like a sunset. Food.
“And for me, it was coffee. I really enjoy coffee. It has meaning for me, and it’s not a very hard sell because I enjoy it, I consume it.
I’m a coffee person.” He wasn’t coming up with a business idea. He just wanted to do what he enjoyed.
It was the sort of geekery that kept building unto itself.
BETTER LATTE THAN NEVER As founder and CEO of the Coffee Heritage Project, Rich Watanabe had championed single origin coffees from the islands. CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS
Naturally, he sought the best coffee. He went from the technical to the tangible, from helping farmers conduct soil analysis to inviting officials of AVPA, France, to survey farm practices and bean quality. Watanabe’s research ran the gamut of production and consumption, just as every edition of the Manila Coffee Festival presents an end-to-end value chain representing a variety of actors.
The painstaking work eventually dissolved into what he called the “intangibles,” those criteria that tug at something else other than the expert weigh-ins.
“May not be quality-wise the best, but when you’re having it, and you know that you did good by a measure of people or lives, then that’s the best coffee.” He laughed at his philosophical turn.
He started the Coffee Heritage Project with a framework.
Over two years, he turned the policies over: “There has to be some sort of framework for this to stand the tests,” he knew early on. By the end of soul-searching, the base had been solidified. “How can coffee be sustainable?” he asked himself.
“We’re not talking about birds, frogs, lakes and seas,” he explained of his framework. “We’re also talking about people. More often, we look at people as the culprit of sustainability issues. Yeah, true,” he agreed, before adding: “But people are also the solution.”
“If you don’t include people in the equation, I don’t think any sustainability equation is going to fly.” He dug deeper with his team. Who are these people? The capitalists? “Everyone would try to be culturally themselves. And coffees are unique in a way that it is approached from a cultural perspective.”
It might be easier for Watanabe to be a tad romantic on the approach, given his inherent passion for the drink. The Coffee Heritage Project is more of an advocacy than a business because of the warm and fuzzy feelings about Filipino identity it conveys.
“But if you approach it from a business or a retailer’s perspective, that’s good, too,” Watanabe said. His expansiveness and refusal to submit to snobbery, whether in terms of virtue or the coffee I chose to drink during the interview, smack of the same inclusivity that makes the Manila Coffee Festival so well-attended.
Watanabe also founded SGD coffee, a cult café in the residential bohemia of Teachers’ Village, Quezon City. It’s both a laboratory and café that’s thankfully not a chain in Starbucks-studded Manila. The unique proposition — coffee from local smallholders Watanabe has supported through the CHP — impresses upon any visitor the pedagogical heft of what Philippine coffee is capable of. Beakers, equipment and a training center attest to Watanabe’s dogged pursuit of coffee demystification. Good local coffee is within reach, yet it is the international coffee chains that seem to be winning. It is this conundrum that the SGD lab seems to crack, as it becomes instrumental in the global recognition of smallholders.
But there are no brand names in-house. A household name can only be established by big businesses and big production, Watanabe thinks. SGD is all about community coffee.
“I never put a name,” he said of the coffee in your SGD caffè lattè. But there are the communities. SGD, for instance, is shorthand for Sagada. “That [the branding] I leave to the entrepreneurs. You have to give people their space.”
CHP would be the ideal anchor for the coffee community. The cultural rootedness is Watanabe’s contribution to this frenzied world, so that, according to him, “everyone isn’t running around like a headless chicken.”
He and his team “drilled it down” to an elevator pitch: Improve, promote and conserve. The annual MCF takes care of the second mandate and so do roadshows and international promotions. CHP aids other regions in setting up their own coffee events, but without the name of MCF appellated. “Otherwise, it would be just like a corporate chain,” Watanabe said. “That kills the very thing we are promoting — diversity.”
At this point, Watanabe does not even need promotion anymore.
Farmers approach them by word of mouth. A case in point: the Maguindanao coffee that won in France had a resounding effect on the people residing in the next mountain. This cultural transfer had gathered almost 36 sites and patches of ethnolinguistic groups receiving assistance from the Coffee Heritage Project.
And there are more communities showing up in the MCF, with almost 70 farmers in the last edition.
Despite its framework, Watanabe believes it takes maturity among its ranks to keep CHP sustainable.
The veterans’ arrogance among development workers won’t cut it anymore. “I know that every year, there’s some spice or salt, or seasoning that gets added into the brew. There are new players.
“The situation has changed, “and you’re only as good as your last job,” Watanabe concluded.
And if this were his last job, he has been very awake at it.
* * *
QUICK QUESTIONS
WHAT REALLY MAKES YOU ANGRY?
I think it’s when people trap other people in abusive or disadvantageous contracts or situations. People who take advantage of coffee farmers who are not well-versed or equipped to enter into agreements (people, nongovernmental organizations, people’s organizations, organizations within the community, entrepreneurial parts of the community).
WHAT MOTIVATES YOU TO WORK HARD?
I had through the years shared stories about farmers and their struggles, and how they overcame it.
WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH THE MOST?
When you sit down with farmers, having a cup of coffee, they have an almost childlike way of conversing, they don’t see lines between ikaw, ako, and meron and wala. It’s just a nice moment of being together. We’re always happy when we’re in the communities. Sa city, hindi, kasi laging may binabayaran.
WHAT DID YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU WERE SMALL?
I wanted to be a lawyer. The sentiment of putting down what’s right and defending the wrong. I’m not a lawyer, but I do lawyer for coffee farmers. Defense and representation.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU WON THE LOTTO?
I could finally work on the other projects I am sentimental about. This life is about helping others. And maybe get myself a Porsche.
IF YOU COULD SHARE A MEAL WITH ANY INDIVIDUAL, LIVING OR DEAD, WHO WOULD THEY BE?
That would be my old good friend, Goad Sibayan, who won the first AVPA award. He’s a Sagada farmer. We were the ones who did the first AVPA coffee project. He died two months after winning. I want to share gains of what we’ve had so far from the time we did this project.
WHAT’S THE MOST DARING THING YOU’VE EVER DONE?
Ang dami. Getting into conflict areas. Threat to life, to safety, for something you believe in. I’ve thought to myself — what if I put myself in danger, would I regret it? But I don’t think so.
WHAT WAS THE LAST BOOK YOU READ?
Michael Pollan — “How to Change Your Mind.”
WHICH CELEBRITY WOULD YOU LIKE TO MEET FOR A CUP OF COFFEE?
I’d like to meet two people: One, Hugh Jackman because he’s had the same experience in coffee when he was UN Ambassador of Goodwill. He went to Kenya and he was appalled at how difficult it was for the community to be able to sell their coffee at a fair price. He has a coffee called Laughing Man Coffee. Two, Leonardo DiCaprio, who has a project on fungus — the study of micro fungi population. He’s heavily supporting fungi research. I’m interested in why he felt strongly about that. I like how they lend their celebrity status to sustainability projects.
WHAT IS ONE THING YOU WILL NEVER DO AGAIN?
Be indecisive. You just have to enter everything with boldness. Period.
If it’s really your nature to be that, then adversity shouldn’t change your nature.
WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN 10 YEARS?
I see myself to mentor a lot of younger players among the younger producers. It’s happening now: 20-year-olds starting their own coffee or cacao farms. To share with them what we’ve done before and what they could do with it the next 10 or 20 years.
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