International Coffee Day: how did you get into coffee?

Today, 1 October, is International Coffee Day, and this year it is the first one officially on the UN calendar. The theme the UN and the International Coffee Organization picked is "honouring the people behind every cup". This thread is for exactly that: the people.

So tell us: how did you get into coffee?

Where did you start? A weekend job, a cafe you walked into one day, a family farm, a roastery that needed an extra pair of hands?
What was the moment it stopped being "just a job"?
Where are you now, and what would you tell someone who is starting where you started?

Every role counts, from the farm to the counter: baristas, roasters, green buyers, Q-graders, technicians, trainers, owners. Short answers are welcome, long ones even more.

If you are just starting out, read the replies: this is the career advice nobody writes down. And if you want the numbers behind it, here is who is hiring across the supply chain today.

I'll go first. My way into coffee was from the other side of the counter: I'm a software developer, and coffee is what every one of my working days runs on.

What pulled me in properly was noticing how hard it is to find coffee work. The jobs are scattered across hundreds of roastery websites, cafe Instagram posts and general job boards that don't know what a Q-grader, an AST or a green buyer is. A barista who wants to move into roasting, or a roaster who wants to get closer to origin, has nowhere to look and nobody to ask.

That is why I built Career.Coffee, and why this community exists: so the people who make the cup can find the next step, and help the person behind them find theirs.

I read every thread here, so tell me yours: where did you start, and where are you now?

International Coffee Day: how did you get into coffee?

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