Episode 72: Benita Chelagat (Coffee Plus 254)
Meet Benita Chelagat! She's a Watertown resident and founder of Coffee Plus 254, a Kenyan coffee brand. In this conversation we talk about growing up in Kenya, splitting time between the capital city, Nairobi, and her grandma's farm in Kericho. Then we get into her moving to the US for school and her coffee journey. You'll hear about her getting to know farmers back home in Kenya and their challenges with the coffee business and how Benita's set herself up to try and bridge the gap between those farmers and the roasters and market here in the US.
Released January 22nd, 2026
(Click here to listen on streaming apps) (Full transcript below)
Find out more at coffeeplus254.com or Instagram
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Transcript
Matt: 0:07
Hi there. Welcome to the Little Local Conversations Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hanna. Every episode I sit down for a conversation with someone in Watertown to discover the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. This time I sat down with Benita Chelagat, who is the founder of Coffee Plus 254, which is a Kenyan coffee brand. She's a Watertown resident, but is originally from Kenya. So yeah, we'll get a little bit into what it's like growing up in Kenya and then into her story with the coffee. So I’ll let her introduce herself, then we'll get into the conversation.
Benita: 0:38
My name is Benita Chelagat. I am the founder of Coffee Plus 254, which is a Kenyan coffee brand that's bringing more specialty coffee to the New England-Boston area. The reason we're doing that is because Kenyan coffee is great and we would love for people to try more coffee beyond what is typically available in the region. So representing farmers from farther out west from the most typical coffee area and also bringing in more young people into the industry so they can find a source of employment and source of livelihood through that. And overall, ultimately, we all love coffee, so trying to get better and more Kenyan coffees to customers here.
Matt: 1:18
Awesome. We'll definitely dig more into the company and the coffee. But first, I always like to get a little bit of background info. And obviously, there's some Kenyan connection here. So where did you grow up?
Benita: 1:28
I grew up in Nairobi, which is the capital of Kenya. I spent my first 18 years in Nairobi. Part of that was spent in my grandma's in a place called Kericho, which for most Kenyans, we have a home in the city or outside of our native home. And then for kids when I was growing up, when we have our school holidays, we go to our grandma's home. So most of my time was spent in Nairobi, but when I wasn't in school, I was at my grandma's in Kericho.
Matt: 1:57
Gotcha. And so were you more city or were you more rural or somewhere in between?
Benita: 2:04
Yes, great question. I like to think that I can traverse both areas pretty well, but most people will call me out. Actually, my cousin and my mom recently disclaimed my claims of being a great Kalenjin speaker. So in the region where my grandma is from, we speak a different language. It's called Kipsigis. And I always say that I am very fluent at Kipsigis. And they put me on the spot because I had to speak to someone recently and they totally laughed at me for attempting. It was my best attempt. And I've improved over the years. But I guess I cannot actually say that I'm a Kericho girl. I'm more of a city girl. So Nairobi. I loved growing up in Nairobi. It's a great, vibrant city, lots going on, a lot of community. I grew up in a gated community. A lot of Nairobi communities are gated. And so you end up having a little commune of your own with friends, running up and down, going down to the neighbors' homes. It's kind of like, I guess what I imagine the US was like in the 80s or 90s, according to what I hear people talk about, yeah. And so, you know, you go down to your friends' homes, you end up playing, I don't know, badminton, catch, dodgeball all together, and then lunch is at someone else's home every day when you're at home for the holiday. So it was a lot of fun. I had a great, happy childhood with my family, my friends. I loved school. I enjoyed going to school. I was a bit of a bookworm. I remember reading Harry Potter. I can't remember which book. I just I think it was Goblet of Fire in like a weekend because I really, really loved it. So I think I had a great childhood, enjoyed it thoroughly.
Matt: 3:41
Nice. And what kind of jobs were you exposed to when you were a kid? So was coffee around you when you were a kid or?
Benita: 3:50
Great question. So actually it was not at all. Where my grandma's farm is known for tea. So we grow a lot of tea, black tea. We would go for the holidays, we'd pick two leaves and a bud, was what you're supposed to pick for the tea to get it processed. And so I grew up around tea. Kenyans, we are typically a tea drinking culture. It's a remnant of the British influence from our colonial days. And we actually brew it Indian style, so with spices, ginger, cardamom, etc. And so we grew up drinking tea. I particularly came from a tea growing area through my grandparents. So no coffee whatsoever for me growing up. So I came into coffee, I think the first time I had coffee was when I was maybe nine or ten years old. My dad had a work event. I can't remember how I ended up there, but I remember being there. They had a tea break in the meeting that they were having. And they had two urns, one for tea and one for this thing called coffee. And I just happened to try the coffee. It was brewed with milk, sugar, so quite delicious. Turns out it was Nescafe that had just been like boiled with milk, and similar to how we would have tea, prepared tea with milk. So I loved it. I have a sweet tooth. I've always had a sweet tooth, so it was great. So that was my first time ever having coffee. And I don't think I really had much coffee after that until high school because of needing to study. In Kenya, we have two major exams that pretty much determine a significant part of your trajectory. The equivalent of the ACTs here, I would say. And we have a primary school system. First eight years of primary school, then you do a Kenya Certified Primary Education Exam, KCPE. And then after four years of high school, you do a Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education, KCSE. So I had my first coffee at nine. I don't remember drinking coffee after that. And then I got into high school or secondary school. We had long days, long nights, lots of studying, because this KCSC. KCPE determines what high school you go to. KCSE determines what college you go to and what you study. You can't really go in undecided, like how you can hear for some colleges. So it's a big deal.
Matt: 6:01
So do you have to take a specific test for a specific subject?
Benita: 6:04
Yeah, so you, everyone does English Swahili, which is the two official languages, and then four other subjects. At the time we could choose, I think three to five additional ones. And then you take exams for those at the end of your four years of high school. So for all of the studying that I had to do, I needed coffee to keep me awake. So that's when I started taking in instant coffee. And my classmates, it's a thing in Kenya, you bring in instant hot chocolate, instant coffee, and that's the beverages that you drink in high school.
Matt: 6:35
So not local Kenyan coffee.
Benita: 6:38
It is actually local Kenyan coffee, which is, I learned something interesting about that. I was back in Kenya in October for harvest season, and I learned something quite interesting about that instant coffee that we get. But before I forget, I'll go back to that story of going to high school. The other thing is in Kenya, most people go to boarding school for high school. That's the norm. There are a few day schools, so you either go to a really expensive international school or you go to a not well-ranked small district school or maybe even less than district, a smaller area than the district school. And so most Kenyans go to secondary school. Our school day starts at 7 a.m. And when I was in high school, we would go to bed at 11 p.m. So in the morning we wake up at 5:30, we study from 5:30 to 7. So I need my coffee to help me stay up. And then in the evening from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., we have evening prep, they called it. So I need coffee for that. So then I started drinking more coffee in high school because of that.
Matt: 7:38
And what was your specialty that you were studying for in high school?
Benita: 7:42
I wanted to go into biomedicine. I wanted to work in healthcare. I did not want to be a doctor because I couldn't stand the sight of blood. And so the closest thing to that was biomedicine, so I could make the equipment that physicians needed to do their work. So adjacent enough. So I picked physics, chemistry, biology. I also did business studies because I found it interesting.
Matt: 8:07
Were those fields something you chose? Or were you pushed there by your family or kind of both?
Benita: 8:12
My mom really, really, really wanted me to be a doctor. And I guess I really, really didn't want to do what she because it felt like she was forcing me into it. So then I tried to be a bit rebellious, but I ended up choosing something so adjacent.
Matt: 8:26
It was a compromise.
Benita: 8:27
Yeah, yeah. So subconsciously I kind of was trying to honor her a little bit and chose something that is still close to her. But I didn't really know anyone who was a biomedical engineer or had done biomedicine at all. In my mind, I knew of stories, maybe like rural areas where folks would go to the hospital and sometimes there wouldn't be enough equipment for what they needed. And I thought, why can't we create that and have that available for them? And instead of everyone going into medicine, we need the people to make the equipment. So that's how I ended up picking biomedical engineering or biomedicine.
Matt: 9:05
Yeah. And so that's when you went off to university for?
Benita: 9:08
That's what I studied for in university. Five solid years of biomedical engineering.
Matt: 9:14
Where were you for that?
Benita: 9:15
I went to UPenn in Philly. It was an incredible time. I remember my first experience coming in was just culture shock. The milk tasted different, the water was different. I couldn't figure out how to lock the doors because you know how you can pre-lock your door before you leave. In Kenya, I was just used to you have a key, you lock the door, and you're out. And someone joked before I came that she warned me. She said, You'll go there and you'll be shocked. You won't even know how to lock the doors. And I just laughed it off, like, come on, I can figure that out. Okay. And like the first day I checked in into my room and I did lock myself out. So in my mind, her name is Renee. So Renee's words were just ringing in my mind, like, oh, she was right. Anyway, so I, it was a bit of a culture shock. I remember I think I survived on orange juice and Hershey's chocolate for the first two weeks before I started getting exploring and trying out more and more foods. Because I couldn't survive on that for you know.
Matt: 10:13
It sounds like it has some vitamins in it compared to some other college foods that I remember though.
Benita: 10:17
Yeah, yeah. At least that's what I told myself. I'll survive enough until I figure something out. But after that, I started exploring more the food. I made friends. They introduced me to new foods, part of the American culture, international culture, so friends from other countries. So it eventually felt like I'd found a home away from home. I luckily had been in boarding school for four years, so I already knew how to live by myself or away from family for a while. And that helped with the transition. And then finding friends, making friends, getting into the groove of the studies and being in Philly, learning more about Philadelphia as well was great for me. And I really enjoyed my time in Philly and at Penn.
Matt: 10:59
Yeah. What's the size relationship from Philly to Nairobi? Are they comparable? Like I don't know how big Nairobi is in size.
Benita: 11:05
Nairobi has about four million people. It's probably larger now. Philly, honestly, I don't know if I've ever looked up the population of Philadelphia. But the thing is that in Nairobi, everything at the, when I was growing up was centralized at the central business district. So we would go to the CBD for, I don't know, passport photos or the government offices are all in the CBD. And so everyone would come into this little area. And it was so centralized at the time that everyone from other parts of Kenya would also come to the CBD. So it was quite packed. Like it felt like there was a lot of people any given time if I'm on the street, it was busy. Moving to Philly, West Philly at the time, there were less people in the street, so it felt smaller almost to me.
Matt: 11:51
So after university, you go out into the workforce. Coffee, is it on your radar at this point? What's the next steps from there?
Benita: 11:59
So I graduated university. Coffee was nowhere in my radar. It was a sweet treat that I enjoyed, and also it helped keep me up for my studies. And then I moved to Boston for work. I still at that point didn't really drink much coffee until I discovered Dunkin' Donuts.
Matt: 12:18
Welcome to New England.
Benita: 12:20
Yes. And it became, I think America runs on Dunkin' apparently, and my colleagues would go to Dunkin' in the morning. It was a ritual. Everyone goes on their either Dunkin' stop or whatever it might be. And I think I had a caramel swirl latte for my first Dunkin' Donut drink. And again, sweet tooth. So that became my go-to. And I would drive on my way to work, stop by Dunkin', grab a caramel swirl, head into the office. And unfortunately, somewhere down the line went to one branch that served me burnt coffee, and it was so bad that I stopped drinking coffee for a while. And of course, I understand Dunkin’ is a franchise bad day, you know, bad batch, all of that.
Matt: 13:04
Yeah, yeah.
Benita: 13:05
So, but that just happened to be the batch I got that day, and so I stopped drinking coffee for a while. I can't even remember when I restarted drinking coffee. I just remember being content not having coffee for a while, just staying away from it.
Matt: 13:18
Your day job didn't require you to be researching all night like you were in college because you didn't need the coffee boost.
Benita: 13:25
Yeah, maybe. Or I just figured out ways to cope, and coffee didn't have to be my crutch anymore. Let's just say yes, I became more efficient and better at regulating myself and staying up without the need of coffee.
Matt: 13:38
Sure. Yeah, yeah.
Benita: 13:40
So I'll go with that. At some point, a few years after that, I started drinking coffee again. At work, they used to have these challenges where they would ask you for healthcare reasons, preventive healthcare, they would encourage you to cut out sugar or cut out some whatever vice, right, in your life. So I decided to do the sugar one because I already had a sugar problem. Like ketchup has sugar, all these things have sugar, and I got really into it. So I decided to try and see if I could drink coffee without sugar. So that's when I started drinking black coffee.
Matt: 14:14
And that's the first time you tasted coffee for real in your life.
Benita: 14:18
Yes. And it was interesting. I think, I can't remember what coffee it was I had specifically, but I just remember being curious enough to now go out into a cafe and order black coffee and be okay drinking it without sugar. A few years after that, I met my husband, my now husband, and he was brewing coffee at home. So he brewed me a cup of coffee.
Matt: 14:44
Now, was he one of those like fancy with all the tools or just like in a Keurig or whatever, basic?
Benita: 14:51
It was not a Keurig. I think he it was a French press.
Matt: 14:55
Okay, so a little, you know, a little into the details.
Benita: 14:58
Yeah, I think that's like the gateway into all the fancy equipment and everything. But he made a French press coffee. It was really good. So we would drink that for a while. When COVID hit, we started trying, exploring more and more coffees. We bought a grinder, we used to use a spice grinder to grind our coffee. And then we got into getting a nicer grinder, and then we bought a kettle, a scale, and then eventually got into doing pourovers.
Matt: 15:30
So you worked your way up the ladder. You didn't just make a leap up to the top of all the stuff.
Benita: 15:34
No, no. Yeah.
Matt: 15:36
So that was your COVID hobby?
Benita: 13:58
It was his COVID hobby.
Matt: 13:59
Okay.
Benita: 15:40
Him and one of our other friends. I was the beneficiary of great coffee that, you know, they would pick the coffees and everything, so I benefited from it. What happened is I think they got a subscription. And they started getting all this information about the coffee, where it's grown, the farmers. I don't think I ever saw Kenyan coffee in that, what they ended up getting delivered. And so I got curious and I wondered how come we're not getting any Kenyan coffees. And I knew Kenyan coffee was one of the highest earning exports for Kenya. We just didn't drink coffee as a culture, but I knew we produced quite a significant amount. And so while wondering where we weren't getting Kenyan coffee in that subscription, and then going out and getting a nice latte or a cappuccino and wondering, why is this coffee? Everyone, I think at some point most people will wonder, I'm exaggerating, but I'm paying $10 for a latte. Why is it, why? And the combination of all those things got me to try to understand what is happening with Kenyan coffee. So that is what precipitated my interest in exploring Kenyan coffee a bit further.
Matt: 16:49
Yeah. So where did you start diving in on that?
Benita: 16:52
I went home. I had relatives.
Matt: 16:55
Went straight to the source.
Benita: 16:56
Straight to the source. I needed to see exactly what it is that was making this coffee taste delicious and also expensive. This was in 2022. And so I went to a farm by a distant relative who lived adjacent to my grandma, but on the side of Kericho County that was low-lying enough that coffee did well. I say low-lying because most people there will grow tea in the higher altitude area. And it's still quite high. It's like 17-1800 meters above sea level, but they grow coffee on that side of Kericho. She basically took us through her farm. She said, Come, I'll show you everything that I have. And she took us in. She explained, you know, this is how I grow the tree. I have to dig a hole this big. I have to separate each tree this far from each other. You know, I have to start pruning in January. And then in March and April, I have to apply this fertilizer. And then I have to keep track of if there's any pests that are here. You know, there's just like she literally had a coffee calendar. Each month of the year, there's something that needs to be done to ensure that you get your coffee at the end of the day. And in that process, I learned a lot of things, which I must say, it gave me even more appreciation. Like when you consume tea, meat, you know, vegetables, anything that a farmer has produced, I think a lot of times we take it for granted how much work goes into all of that. And so at a baseline level, I just gained even more appreciation for all the things I consume that are produced by people, especially if they're required to use their hands. So it's more manual than automated.
Benita: 18:37
And seeing her name is Dina, Miss Dina, seeing her hearing what she had to do to get her coffee to our cups was incredible for me at that point. I didn't know, for instance, that when you plant the coffee tree, it takes two to three years for it to start yielding fruit. And of course, as with other agricultural products, if something happens, a natural incident, you stand to risk and lose everything. And this is the money that she uses to pay for her kids' education, you know, like everything. And Kenya, for farmers who have small tracts of land, smallholder farmers, they rely on cooperatives usually. And different cooperatives are run differently. And some, you know, you bring your coffee, you get paid in six months, or you get paid in one year. So to me, at that point I was used to receiving a paycheck every two weeks. So it just blew my mind for the amount of effort and how the payment system works. And then the other thing is I know that I pay her the $10, I'm doing air quotes, the $10 per latte here, versus what she gets paid and other farmers get paid. That gap was just incredible to me that it was that big.
Matt: 19:47
Yeah. And how big was this farm you were looking at? Can you put into context for people?
Benita: 19:52
She had grown it from a quarter of an acre and she was trying to expand it to three acres. So she was literally showing us land that she wanted to buy. We were going to be potential investors in helping her buy this land. At least that's what she wanted us to do. And us here was, I went with my mother, my uncle, and a young lady from back home who we were working with for that trip. Anyway, it can be anything from the size of a tennis court to the size of a football field and so on and so forth. So in one acre, you can fit about a hundred trees. A hundred coffee trees spaced out maybe about two feet or so to three feet, depending on the type of tree. So yeah, she was trying to expand. She was at about two acres. She wanted to expand to three acres, get more production, and also eventually get a license to export her own coffee. There's some nuances to Kenya's regulation of the coffee industry, which impacts how you can do things like process your coffee, how you can sell your coffee, if you can export directly or not. So she was trying to expand the size of her farm.
Matt: 21:02
So it needs to be a certain size before you can be your own exporter type thing. Gotcha.
Benita: 21:06
Yeah, kind of. Yeah.
Matt: 21:07
And so when you made this trip, you had in your mind that you were going to start a business around coffee, or you were just curious about this and were just doing this out of curiosity. What was the impetus for this?
Benita: 21:17
Literal curiosity. I had been on this journey as we talked about discovering coffee. And so I went home and found out that one of our distant relatives was growing coffee. It's just like you're having conversations of this. Oh, did you know Dina grows coffee? Oh, Dina, which Dina? Anyway, so then I took the opportunity. I asked if I could visit her, and she was very open to having us over. And especially because she was in that point of trying to expand. She was like, I want you to see. Come and see, and I'll walk you through. Very proudly showed. She's done a lot. I won't get into details of exactly her entire life story. I think we could do a whole, in fact, we should invite her to do a podcast for that. But she had done a lot to get to where she was. And she was very proud showing us. I was happy for her, glad that she had been able to grow her farm to that point. And actually, she'd gotten to the point where her son became an agronomist. He studied agronomy and he's now working in coffee with other farmers in the area and beyond to make sure that the care that they give the coffee gives them a good yield every year.
Matt: 22:20
Yeah, and is it like passed down generation to generation a lot there, or is it new areas being opened up to coffee, or is it pretty much the same ones being passed down? Like what is it?
Benita: 22:30
It is both, all of the above. Kenya has had coffee since the late 1800s, 1893. And the primary region that produced coffee was a central province of Kenya. So that coffee has been there for years and years. There were some estates outside of that central region, of course, but that's the area that's when you talk to an average Kenyan off the street about coffee, they'll probably think about that area. There have been waves, there's been changes both in the local and the international market that resulted in coffee trees being uprooted, essentially, in favor of other forms of livelihood. So actually in the 80s, we peaked in our production, and we've never been able to get back up to that. More recently, people have been opting for real estate instead of coffee with the fluctuations in the coffee pricing, the coffee market as a commodity. I think over time people have gone into alternative forms, so real estate and other things. Avocado farming also has come up quite a bit. So there are some farms that have maintained continuity over generations. But then with all the flux that happened over the years, there are some regions that had adopted coffee but had moved away from it. And actually the government in the last, since I started looking into it, in the last few years, two to five years, has been trying to promote more coffee growing further out west.
Matt: 23:56
So then where does your coffee business story start? Is this the starting point or is there some more delay before you start thinking about starting something yourself?
Benita: 24:06
There is some delay. So I visited Miss Dina's farm. A year after I met this family, built a relationship with them, and then I ended up going back to Kenya. And they also happened to grow coffee. And I visited their farm. I spent a lot of time talking to their family, trying to understand. So they started with a small patch 40 years ago, now 41 years, and eventually grown it to the point where they can have their own export license. And so they've been with that also processing the coffee on their farm. Like they built an area to process it. So I talked to them, I learned a bit more, and Kenya typically relies on a centralized auction for our coffee sales, which is unlike the majority of coffee-producing countries. In the mid-2000s, we finally got legislation passed to allow for direct sales, meaning you could go today and find a farmer and sign a contract. You would have to have someone in between who's licensed to facilitate the transaction.
Matt: 25:04
So it's like a middleman exporter based in Kenya that you would have to contact before.
Benita: 25:09
Yeah, like a broker or an agent. And that it depends on the size of your farm and what as a producer, what licensing you have yourself. But if you don't have the licensing, you would need someone else to come in between and facilitate that process just because of how highly regulated coffee is in Kenya. So as I was talking to her, I learned more about these nuances and I found out that a lot of farmers would prefer, obviously, to get better pricing. I mean, with time, if you track the commodity markets for coffee, the price hasn't gone up too much historically. This past two years there's been quite an uptick, but historically there wasn't much of a change, whereas the price of labor, imports, all of that has continued to rise. And so farmers are always looking for ways to get better compensated for the coffee that they're producing. In direct market, the fact that it exists is attractive, but the connections to people abroad remains difficult.
Benita: 26:05
Imagine if you're a farmer deep in rural Kenya with no connections out here, and you're probably spending the majority of your time trying to get the coffee, right? And so that is an opportunity that exists for farmers to build those relationships and get coffee over here. So I didn't go out with the idea of starting a coffee business, but I started out on a journey of just learning more. On the producer side, how do things work? How do you guys get the coffee to be so great and you don't even drink the coffee to begin with? How is it regulated? Why can't you do this? Why can't you do that? You know? And then on this side, I came back and I explored more, even after my first trip with Miss Dina. I went, met roasters here, tried the different coffees. I was exploring what makes Colombian coffee different, what makes Brazilian coffee different. So I started out just trying to learn more and more. And in that process, realized that I appreciate coffee, I drink coffee, I know that there are people who are producing great coffee. It would be great if, at the bare minimum, we just appreciated why this coffee has nuance on what the flavor notes it has or how it's processed. So, you know, if you pick up a bag of coffee, like blueberry notes and washed natural or an aerobic fermentation. I mean, there's a lot for a lay person who's not into coffee, it can be almost intimidating to see all of that, right?
Matt: 27:29
How do they come up with those? Whose job is it to come up with that? Is that each, is there someone's job or is that just each brand, you know, they just come up with their own?
Benita: 27:36
Yeah, that's a great question. So officially, let me start with Kenya, because that is, you know.
Matt: 27:43
Sure.
Benita: 27:43
So because we've been producing coffee for years, not to mean other countries haven't been producing coffee for years, but anyway, so our system is unique in that we grade our coffee using letter grades. So we look at it on the size and density of the coffee. The highest premium grade is AA, AB, PB. It's like an alphabet soup of coffee grading. And that was determined based on the size and the density of the beans, but also the next step after that would be the taste of the coffee and the quality of the coffee. And so in Kenya, we had people called coffee liquorers. Weren't necessarily certified. There wasn't like a formal certification or anything, but it's, you know, you learn the skill on the job or you get trained, eventually you develop the capacity to pick out the notes in the coffee itself.
Matt: 28:29
Like a sommelier, except for coffee.
Benita: 28:32
Exactly. That's exactly how I describe it. So now there's a specialty coffee association that certifies people. They're called Q graders who take the same exam and all of that, studying for tons and tons of time through a ton of coffee to figure out, you know, am I tasting blueberry or am I tasting jasmine or what am I tasting in this coffee? I think that's something else that I also appreciate. I mean, on the farm side, especially for us, 70% of our coffee is produced by smallholder farmers, which means it's a highly manual process from the picking of the coffee cherries on the fruit. Coffee's a fruit, you pick the cherry only the red ripe ones, that's a manual process. After that, you sort through manually again to make sure that you really only have the red ripe cherries. There's no green unripe ones that fell in. After that, after getting into the actual coffee seeds, which is we actually drink coffee seeds, even though we call them beans, there's some manual sorting that has to happen. And for Kenya, it starts from the tree all the way to right before you put that coffee on the ship to be exported. There's a lot of manual sorting. Some of the steps obviously are mechanized, but it's still quite a lot of hand sorting. Other countries typically have much larger coffee farms, and so they can mechanize quite easily. 70% smallholder, we're definitely going manual. So, and then the roasting happens, and there's a lot of sorting as well that has to happen. And these Q graders, and anyone who's tasting this coffee, has to sort through coffee. So if you don't store coffee appropriately from the farm, you risk having taste like mold. There's like a wheel that they have, a tasting wheel, it has mold on there, rubber taste. So like these Q graders.
Matt: 30:12
Don’t want that.
Benita: 30:13
Yeah, they're doing the heavy work for us, the heavy lifting. So we never have to taste those.
Matt: 30:17
So this is a third party you send it to, and they do this for all the coffee makers in Kenya.
Benita: 30:23
In Kenya, that is done. So I mentioned that we have a central auction, and so there's a whole group of people who do that qualifying of the coffee. And then the other thing is as a buyer, you also can get samples of the coffee and do the tasting for yourself. So you don't have to be certified if you're doing the buying and selecting your own coffee personally. But there are definitely folks who can do that. We have a university in Kenya which I think has the largest coffee department, coffee research department or office, called the Dedan Kimathi University in Nyeri. And they actually also grow coffee. They have a farm, a large couple hundred acres that they grow coffee. So they have a program, they train students to do this tasting and decipher the differences. So to answer your question ultimately, who determines this? You can either have the Q grader or you have people who just learnt on the job training like with any other job and have figured out how to get the taste notes. And sometimes it's so obvious, even if I did a blind tasting and had, you know, walked out onto the street, stopped five people and asked them to taste the coffees. Some of the coffees, it's quite obvious. And some of that has to do with the coffee tree type, the variety of the tree, how it's processed, and how it's roasted to highlight those notes that you can actually tell. Like I've had a coffee, if you'd close my eyes, I would have thought I'm drinking strawberry juice because of just how strong the smell and the taste. I've had coffee that tastes peppery. It was quite delicious. I know peppery may not be something you expect typically with coffee, but it actually was a really nice tasting coffee. I think it was from Colombia.
Matt: 31:54
What's the weirdest flavored one you've ever had?
Benita: 31:56
The weirdest flavor? I tasted a coffee once that reminded me of jackfruit or durian.
Matt: 32:03
Durian is the one that famously smells like, it's unpleasant, right?
Benita: 32:09
It's unpleasant, yes. I to me durian has a like sickly sweet smell.
Matt: 32:13
But it's famously, I feel like it's been banned in some countries for like being very.
Benita: 32:17
Yeah, you can’t have it in the open. Yeah, yeah.
Matt: 32:19
Strong scent. Yeah.
Benita: 32:20
True. And I've only had Durian store-bought wrapped nicely, so I missed out on the worst of the smell, I guess.
Matt: 32:28
Gotcha. Anyway.
Benita: 32:31
That's the most unusual coffee I've ever encountered.
Matt: 32:34
So to get back with your story, so you were visiting roasters here, but then when did you start putting like contract together with the farmers and figuring out how to distribute here? How did you start piecing that all together?
Benita: 32:48
I think there is the vision, which is to ultimately import coffee here directly from the farmers, work with young people in Kenya to get them involved, whether they want to be a barista, a farmer themselves, export or trade coffee themselves. The other thing is to bring great Kenyan coffee here so we can highlight the spectrum of Kenyan coffees that exist, not just the typical citrus, bright, acidic ones, but they're farmers who are doing more experimental stuff. Different regions have different nuances to the coffee, similar to wine. Which I used to turn my nose up at that in the past, but it really is. I've tasted the pudding, as they say. I've seen the proof, right? So I ultimately started, actually, it was this year that I started. So that's the vision, but that's not where we are now. Where we are now is I work directly with a family. So the family I mentioned, there's one family in a place called Solai in Kenya. So I work directly with that family. Everything is done within, they're called the couriers, everything runs through the couriers, and I source coffees from them directly. And then I get coffees from other partners who have the import licenses, but I work with the farmers so I know the farmers. So I need the intermediary to get the coffee over here. But I try to work with farmers who I have a direct relationship with, or I know that we pay them at a premium to what they would otherwise get from the auction, for instance. And the other thing is not just at a premium, but also shorten the pay timelines. So if a cooperative would do a one-year payment, then we try and pay as soon as possible once we acquire the coffee so they don't have to wait that long.
Benita: 34:26
So I started this year, I think March was the first time I had people who are not friends and family taste coffee that I had been involved in sourcing and roasting and packaging. I did some test runs late last year into early this year. Again, a lot of work behind the scenes, like please shake your roaster's hand the next time you meet them. Or the, if you can, a producer, roaster, someone who's in the coffee industry, because there's a lot of work that goes into dialing in, fine-tuning, figuring out the best way to roast your coffee. I mean, with the weather changes, the humidity changes, atmospheric, you know, ambient condition changes, you have to adjust how you roast your coffee. So there's a lot of work that goes into making sure that you have consistency. And so I've learned to give grace quite a bit because a lot could go wrong. And so I appreciate the work that they also do on the roast side here. I've tried doing roasting myself. I'm learning how to roast. I've done a few runs and I'm looking forward to learning more of that.
Benita: 35:25
And in terms of distribution, so I partnered with Del's Coffee in Waltham. Shout out to them. I started out learning with them, partnering with them, roasting with them. That was this much the first time we had any event with coffee from Kenya was working with Del. And so we had people over at the roastery and we were able to show them the coffee, but also go through a one and a half hour session that we talked about the coffee, how it goes from the seed, the seedling, all the way to all the selection and all the work that happens into something that they can enjoy in their cup. So I went through this journey. I enjoy sharing it with others as well on just being more conscious about your consumption. And so the tastings that we do offer that opportunity to share the information about the coffee and the processes that it goes through. We talk about the nuances and how Kenyan coffee is processed, how a system is set up. And then also I share the stories that I and the experiences I've had with the farmers and what they want me to relate. And then when I go home, when I go to Kenya, I take the information I get, just feedback people give me or from the tastings back to them as well. Because coffee, I mean, every year the yield can differ. You never know. You might have an amazing crop this year and next year you really have to tweak your roasting to make sure that you bring out the best in it. And so we talk about things like if you pick coffee that's not ripe, your roaster can tell and your consumer can tell. You can tell in the taste of the coffee. And so I see myself as for now someone kind of bridging the gap. The farmer can't be here, but I share as much as I can from what they experience and what they want me to share. And then I take what I learned from the market and bring it back to them. So that's yeah, one of the biggest roles I have, which I thoroughly enjoy because I still always just have my mind blown by the amount of work that it takes and the expertise that these farmers have, especially again. I said this before, but because they don't drink this coffee, but they consistently have the systems and the structure to produce this great tasting coffee.
Matt: 37:32
Yeah, so they're making it without tasting the soup, so to speak, you know.
Benita: 37:35
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matt: 37:36
So your company name, where does that come from?
Benita: 37:39
Yeah, so Plus 254 is Kenya's country code. I named it Plus 254 because my goal is to bring more coffees from Kenya and create more awareness about even more Kenyan coffees, join the legion of farmers, producers, roasters, brands who have Kenyan coffee to bring even more coffee here. And so the idea is I will focus on coffees from areas that we don't typically get Kenyan coffee from here. And farmers who are embracing innovation. So, for instance, we have a coffee that we just launched on December 12th from a women's group that is an anaerobic fermentation. Essentially, it just means normally when you harvest coffee in Kenya, we take off the flesh of the fruit and leave it out open air for eight hours to ferment. In this situation, it's sealed in tanks with minimal oxygen, and that affects how the coffee ferments, the coffee seeds ferment, and it affects the ultimate profile of the coffee, like the taste of the coffee. So for some people, the coffee ends up, not necessarily Kenya, but I've seen coffees that end up being quite funky. So some people like the funk, so some producers will highlight that. For others, it tones down some of the acidity, brings out some more of the wine-y characteristics of the coffee. You get to play around with it quite a bit, and it can be a polarizing thing. Some people are purists, I want the classic washed, I don't want any of this, and other people say, I want to explore something new. So it, you know, it's something for everyone.
Matt: 39:12
Yeah, expand your profile, sure. Yeah. Cool. Well then why don’t we get towards wrapping it up here, where can people find your coffee or your tasting experiences? How can they find out more about you and get involved with some of this funky coffee and non-funky coffee?
Benita: 39:29
We currently are online. We are selling our coffees online at coffeeplus254.com. And the plus is fully spelled out p l u s. And we also are on Instagram for social media at coffee underscore plus254. I will announce any tastings that we have on both Instagram and our website. We currently have two coffees that we have available. We don't necessarily have extremely funky coffee, but we do have a new coffee that I'm extremely excited about. It's from a women's group called the Chepsangor Women in Coffee. And they work with a woman, Dr. Rosebella Langat. The story of just how they developed that coffee embraced an experimental process, which for us in Kenya, 99% of the coffees are processed very similarly. It's a risk for anyone who's doing this anaerobic process, because if you know anything goes wrong, you basically lose everything. And so these women have only been growing coffee a few years, since I think 2019 or something, you know, pretty recent. And so they've embraced experimental methods and they are incredibly proud of the coffee, and they expressly wanted me to ensure that we have their coffee in you know, New York, Boston. We had a Thanksgiving, and one of the topics of discussion is I'm so proud to have my coffee featured in Boston and New York and whatever. And so I'm also proud to be able to bring the coffee. It tastes delicious, so even more proud of that.
Matt: 40:52
And what's it called?
Benita: 40:54
It's called Baraka. Baraka is Swahili for blessings. And we were having a Thanksgiving ceremony and they were talking, there was a lot of the recurring things that came up. They speak Kalenjin, the language I mentioned earlier, so the word is Berur in that language, but Baraka, I think, is much easier even for me to pronounce it. And so yeah, we talk about their story. We should then try the coffee, a flight of a few, three to four coffees, and then we will feature a Kenyan coffee, like a Kenyan brand. So now there's brands that are trying to expose more Kenyans to specialty coffee and increase domestic consumption. So we've featured one of those brands in our tastings as well. And then we just go through the entire story from seedling to the cup as well. And so those are also available on our website and on our Instagram.
Matt: 41:41
Nice. Well, I'll put links too so people can click directly through it. Anything else to say before we wrap up the episode or. Go ahead.
Benita: 41:49
One more thing. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. It's a pleasure. It's great to, I find it quite a privilege to be part of the voice representing the farmers here and just representing Kenya and sharing the coffee from home and part of our culture as we do in our tastings as well. So thank you for the opportunity.
Matt: 42:08
Yeah, well, thanks for sitting down to share your thoughts and stories, and thanks to the listeners. Goodbye. So that's it for my conversation with Benita. I'll put links in the show notes so you can find her website. And if you want to hear more of these conversations, you can head on over to LittleLocalConversations.com, where I have all the interviews and information on upcoming events. I have a couple coming up in February. On Friday, February 6th, I'm gonna have the next Creative Chats live podcast event over at the Mosesian Center for the Arts. You can come hear a conversation I'm gonna have with guest Erykah Chanel. And then later in the month in February, I have the next Watertown's Open live podcast event. And this one's gonna be a conversation on storytelling and marketing for solopreneurs. That one's gonna be over at the WCA-TV studios on Tuesday, February 24th at 10 a.m. So if you want to get more info on any of those events, again head on over to LittleLocalConversations.com. And if you want to stay up to date on everything, you can also sign up for my weekly newsletter at the website. And lastly, if you are a longtime listener and like to help support the podcast, keep these conversations going, there is a support local conversation button in the menu on the website where you can become a little local friend and help support podcasts at just a few dollars a month. Greatly appreciated if you can help.
Matt: 43:24
Alright, and I want to give a few shout-outs here to wrap things up. First one goes to podcast sponsor, Arsenal Financial. They're a financial planning business here in Watertown that's owned by Doug Orifice, who is a very committed community member, and his business helps busy families, small businesses, and people close to retirement. So if you need help in any of those areas, reach out to Doug and his team at arsenalfinancial.com. I also want to give a thank you to the Watertown Cultural Council, who have given me a grant this year to help support the podcast. So I want to give them the appropriate credit, which is, this program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. You can find out more about them at watertownculturalcouncil.org and massculturalcouncil.org. And a couple more shout-outs to promotional partners. First one goes to the Watertown Business Coalition, which is a nonprofit organization here in Watertown. And their motto is Community Is Our Business. Find out more about them at WatertownBusinessCoalition.com. And lastly, Watertown News, which is a Watertown-focused online newspaper. It's a great place to keep up to date with everything going on in the city. Check that out at WatertownMANews.com. So that's it. Until next time, take care.
