“You’ve got to remember what you’re investing in, which is the future.”
In February, we heard from Washington Vieira of @SantuCoffee on the topic of #CMInvest. Having grown up on his grandparent’s coffee farm in Brazil, Washington eventually found his way to Scotland and set up Santu. He buys coffee direct from farmers he knows personally in Brazil and roasts it in Leith.
About the speaker
Speculating and accumulating: what it means to invest in people.
Washington Vieira is the founder of Santu Coffee. He has been roasting coffee here in Edinburgh for two years.
Born and raised on a coffee farm in Brazil, he saved enough for a flight to Boston as a teenager where he started out by washing dishes at a pizzeria, while he took photography classes and learned English.
He eventually found his way to New York where he was running two restaurants (fancy pizza by now) and becoming interested in the speciality coffee industry when he met his wife, Erin. Inspired by a weird experience with a fortune teller in New Orleans, they left the States to go back to Brazil, where they had the great luck to meet a speciality coffee farmer at a local fair. They ended up living in a little green house (shed) on a mountain next to his farm, learning the coffee trade from the inside out. When they finally moved to Edinburgh, they decided to bring this incredible product directly from their farmer friends to the UK.
You’ll find them in a chilly factory in Leith, roasting coffee and dreaming of toucans.
Favorite quotes from this talk
