Holly Kent Payne ’09 and Andrey Perez ’25 are brewing up a caffeinated storm, bringing high-quality coffee to American consumers.
By Darrach Dolan
Next to water, coffee is the most popular beverage in the U.S., with 66% of Americans saying that they drink coffee daily. Not surprisingly, people have specific coffee rituals, and many feel their days don’t begin until after the first drink. However, few are as rigid as the great composer Ludwig van Beethoven, who insisted on using exactly 60 coffee beans per cup he drank.
Unlike Beethoven, Holly Kent-Payne ’09 was born in tea-sipping England and didn’t discover her passion for all things coffee until she took a job as a barista at a small coffee shop in Chicago. She is now the head roaster and green bean buyer for Thread Coffee in Baltimore (coffee beans are green and smell like grass before they are roasted and take on their familiar chocolate color and distinct aroma). Her goal is to bring ethically sourced premium beans to consumers through the cooperative where she is a worker-owner.
Perez’s grandfather and uncle inspect the equipment on the farm. Photo provided by Andrey Perez.
Perez’s grandfather and uncle inspect the equipment on the farm. Photo provided by Andrey Perez.
Andrey Perez ’25, although born in Puerto Rico and raised in Maryland, has coffee in his blood. His grandfather started a coffee farm in Colombia, where two of his uncles continue the family tradition of producing high-end Arabica coffee beans. Perez, in partnership with one of these uncles, Victor Ortega, founded Crezia Coffee in 2024, a business dedicated to bringing his family’s coffee directly from the farm to American consumers.
Both Perez and Kent Payne are part of what’s called the “third wave” of coffee, introducing high-quality, ethically sourced, and fairly priced beans to the American market.
The first wave of coffee describes the introduction of mass-produced and marketed coffee, spanning most of the 20th century. Think of it as the age of instant coffee, where convenience and conformity of flavor were the thing, and little attention was paid to quality or complexity of the beans.
The second wave of coffee began toward the end of the century when companies like Starbucks and Caribou Coffee developed a welcoming social setting for drinking coffee and introduced a variety of drinks (often sugary or flavored). It was almost as if they were reimagining the coffee shop culture of Vienna or Italy for a modern American audience. They did pay some lip service to the origins of the beans and different types of roasts, but they were more about a sort of manufactured Bohemian or sophisticated experience. Their roasts remained dark, and the taste profiles bitter, although both were considerably better than first-wave coffees.
The third wave, as Kent Payne describes it, is about the coffee itself, its origin, its flavors, and educating the coffee drinker about the complexity of varieties and roasts, as well as making stronger connections between those who grow the beans and the consumers.
Whatever your taste and whether you prefer a first-wave cup of instant coffee, a second-wave “iced short schizo skinny hazelnut cappuccino with wings” (half decaf and half regular with skim milk and foam), or a third-wave premium brew from one of these two alums, coffee has come a long way from the brew first cultivated in Ethiopia in the ninth century. The story goes that the coffee tree was discovered by Kaldi, a goat herder, who accompanied his goats into the forest every day. One evening, when it was time to go home, the goats didn’t respond to his calls. He discovered them in a clearing where they were eating the bright red fruit of an unfamiliar small tree that grew under the canopy of larger trees. The goats were unusually excited and, in some versions of the story, were dancing after eating this mysterious fruit. The next morning, the goats rushed back to the same tree and became increasingly lively as they ate more of the fruit. Intrigued, the boy tried the fruit, and the rest is history.
Whatever the truth of this origin story, coffee was cultivated by the Ethiopians at least as early as the ninth century and introduced to Yemen in the 10th century when the Ethiopians briefly occupied that country. From there, coffee drinking spread quickly through the Islamic world and Europe and eventually Asia and the Americas.
Although the Ethiopians and Yemenis monopolized coffee production for several centuries, today coffee is grown in mostly mountainous regions, between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, in the Americas, Asia, and Africa. Since the 1840s, Brazil has consistently been the world leader in coffee production, with Vietnam recently surpassing Colombia as the second-largest supplier. The United States is a relatively small producer of the beans, with Hawaii accounting for nearly all the American production, although there are ongoing attempts to develop coffee farms in California and Florida. Given its popularity and reach, coffee is second only to petroleum as the most traded product worldwide.
Bags of green coffee beans at Thread Coffee. Photo by Darrach Dolan
Bags of green coffee beans at Thread Coffee. Photo by Darrach Dolan
Kent Payne explains that there are two main types of commercially grown coffee trees, Arabica and Robusta. Arabica is the original coffee tree, discovered by Kaldi, and it has been cultivated into hundreds of different varietals since its emergence from Ethiopia, each with its own distinct flavor profile. Arabica coffee is sweeter and less acidic, and it is considered a higher grade of coffee than Robusta. Thread Coffee, under Kent Payne, sources Arabica beans primarily from Peru, Honduras, and Rwanda, with some of their blends also featuring beans from Colombia, Mexico, and Ethiopia. Perez’s Crezia Coffee develops blends from the three Arabica varieties grown on the family’s farm—Castillo, Pink Bourbon, and Geisha.
Robusta is native to Western and Sub-Saharan Africa and wasn’t discovered and grown commercially until centuries after Arabica. It is more disease-resistant and easier to grow at lower altitudes and without shade cover. Robusta beans contain almost twice as much caffeine as Arabica but are more bitter and have a woody flavor. It is popular with large commercial and instant coffee makers. Many espresso blends contain a high percentage of Robusta, as dark roasts tend to be more bitter and mask the inherent bitterness of Robusta.
New coffee trees are planted. They will become productive in three to five years. Photo provided by Andrey Perez.
New coffee trees are planted. They will become productive in three to five years. Photo provided by Andrey Perez.
Kent Payne never imagined she would become a coffee connoisseur, let alone a professional one. She came to this country from England with her mother when she was 16, graduated from high school in Maryland, and dreamed of a career in publishing. She enrolled in Washington College largely because of the Rose O’Neill Literary House, where she enjoyed the regular readings by established authors and the creative writing offerings. She graduated with a major in English and a minor in creative writing and went on to earn a master’s in creative writing from New York University. Shortly after graduating from NYU, she decided that the writing life was not for her. Instead, she pursued her literary interests by teaching at a for-profit college in Chicago. It was during this period, as a young academic struggling to make ends meet, that she discovered her passion for coffee.
Being an adjunct professor did not pay well, and the number of classes she taught varied unpredictably from semester to semester, so Kent Payne took a side job as a barista at a small coffee shop. There she learned more than just how to foam milk and make latte art. She educated herself about the origins of coffee beans, the roasting process, and the various flavors and notes in different blends. By the time the for-profit college closed (too many lawsuits from disgruntled students), she was already on the path that would take her far from academia.
Andrey Perez ’25 would seem to be a more obvious and logical candidate for a career in coffee than Kent Payne. Growing up, he had spent many happy vacations on his family’s coffee farms in Colombia. But he wasn’t thinking coffee when he entered Washington College. He had his sights set on becoming a doctor and was on the pre-med track from the beginning. To his surprise, he discovered he loved the business classes he took as survey courses to fulfill the requirements of a liberal arts education. He shifted from the pre-med track to a double major in chemistry and economics. While he still loves science and is applying his understanding of chemistry to how to better grow coffee, his focus is on developing a business importing and distributing his family’s coffee from Colombia.
Perez came up with the idea of selling beans directly from the family farm and cutting out the middleman for a class project at Washington. He reached out to his uncle Victor Ortega, who was an enthusiastic supporter. Together, in June 2024, they co-founded Crezia Coffee, named after Victor’s mother and Perez’s grandmother, Lucrezia. For both men, the name was symbolically important because they wanted the buyer of their coffee to know the family story and feel almost an extension of their family through the beans. Perez’s business professors and peers have helped him at every step from developing the concept, writing a business plan, analyzing the markets, branding the product, and making Crezia Coffee a reality.
Perez explains how being able to trace the coffee to its source is what Crezia Coffee is offering the consumer. When you buy his beans, you know they come from a specific farm where every bean is hand-picked and sustainably grown and processed.
Worker-owners Nani Ferreira-Mathews and Holly Kent Payne ’09 toast with a brew from Thread Coffee’s line of nitro cans. Photo by Darrach Dolan
Worker-owners Nani Ferreira-Mathews and Holly Kent Payne ’09 toast with a brew from Thread Coffee’s line of nitro cans. Photo by Darrach Dolan
Andrey Perez ’25 with a bag of Crezia coffee. Photo by Pamela Cowart-Rickman
Andrey Perez ’25 with a bag of Crezia coffee. Photo by Pamela Cowart-Rickman
Knowing how the beans are grown, harvested, and processed is an important aspect of the third wave’s holistic approach to coffee. A coffee tree produces fruit known as coffee cherries. Each cherry typically contains two seeds—the coffee beans. There are two traditional ways of extracting the seeds from the fruit. The first involves laying the cherries on the ground and letting the fruit ferment off. Some people think this adds flavor, while others note that flavors are inconsistent, changing with every lot, and the beans can taste of other things in the local environment. It can also be quite difficult to successfully dry beans in tropical environments where there tends to be a lot of rain. Another criticism of this type of processing is that diseased beans are not easily removed through this process.
The second method of harvesting the beans involves washing the fruit and skins off before drying them. This is faster and more consistent than the first method, but in the past, it consumed vast quantities of water and produced polluted runoff that affected streams and rivers and degraded environments. Crezia Coffee beans are processed using a more advanced and cleaner version of this method. Ortega is very conscious of producing sustainable and environmentally safe beans. The runoff water is recycled and cleaned in a series of ponds on his farm, ensuring it does not pollute streams or groundwater. And the discarded fruit is used to fertilize the coffee trees. Additionally, this method has the advantage of removing bad or diseased beans because they float to the top during the soaking process.
As Perez said, “Every bean of Crezia Coffee is perfect! You cannot say that about coffee from big warehouses.”
Kent Payne is equally concerned with buying only the highest quality of beans from sustainable and equitable sources. She points out that the coffee industry has had a sordid history of exploitation. From its colonial past, where the industry enslaved people to work on coffee plantations, took land from indigenous people, destroyed tropical forests, and decimated animal populations, to more recent times, where farm workers are underpaid and can work in brutal conditions, and to a lesser extent, the exploitation of baristas who earn relatively low incomes at coffee shops in developed countries.
Holly Kent Payne ’09 with Thread Coffee's roaster. Photo by Darrach Dolan.
Holly Kent Payne ’09 with Thread Coffee's roaster. Photo by Darrach Dolan.
When Kent Payne returned to Maryland to be closer to her mother, she took a job as a barista in Baltimore. This coffee shop was unambiguously third-wave and focused on the quality and origins of the beans it used. Although she enjoyed working in this environment and was becoming increasingly informed and passionate about coffee, she was frustrated by the lack of opportunities for advancement in the industry. As she points out, a barista’s career is limited. “If you’re lucky, you can become a coffee shop manager,” she said.
While working at the coffee shop, though, Kent Payne discovered a local coffee roaster with an economic model that resonated with her sense of justice and offered a promising economic future in the industry.
Thread Coffee was established as a worker-owned cooperative. The concept is simple. Thread Coffee buys green beans, roasts and blends them, and distributes the beans to coffee shops, stores, or directly to consumers. The company's employees can choose to become worker-owners or remain as equitably paid workers. The company sources its green beans through importer cooperatives that, in turn, source from cooperatives in coffee-producing countries. Throughout the entire process, workers are guaranteed equitable pay, work under reasonable conditions, and the beans are grown sustainably and ethically in terms of the people and the environment.
Leaving the coffee shop for Thread Coffee, Kent Payne worked her way up and is now one of two current worker-owners, along with Nani Ferreira-Mathews. There are four additional employees, none of whom are ready to become co-owners at the moment. Kent Payne says that it is a personal choice and not everyone wants the responsibility of running a business, but they are always open to new worker-owners taking the leap. For Ferreira-Mathews and her, both of whom had worked as baristas or coffee shop managers for years, running a business was a natural, if challenging, next step.
In the six years since the two women took over from the previous worker-owners, they have grown the business by almost 100%. Thread Coffee is available in many retail stores in the Mid-Atlantic region, sold and brewed in small coffee shops throughout the same region, and available by mail directly from the company. They primarily sell whole-bean blends developed by Kent Payne but also offer ground coffee upon request and have established a line of nitro cans—their coffee blends in ready-to-drink cans.
Kent Payne is the head roaster and blender, a job that requires a developed and sophisticated palate. A person with the skills and palate to assess and grade coffee is called a Q grader, and they are to coffee what sommeliers are to wine. The Q grader determines the coffee quality by “cupping” – first deeply inhaling the aroma of a freshly brewed cup of coffee, then slurping it to aerate it as it passes over the tongue. Since she is not only the Q grader but also the roaster and blender, Kent Payne judges the flavor and makes roasting adjustments to improve it.
Photo by Jennifer Quinn.
Photo by Jennifer Quinn.
Beans freshly roasted at Thread Coffee. Photo by Darrach Dolan
Beans freshly roasted at Thread Coffee. Photo by Darrach Dolan
At Thread Coffee she roasts the green beans in a drum roaster, which is not that different from the drum roasters people have been using for over a century. In essence, the beans are rolled in a drum heated by gas burners. This is part science and part art. The beans should be heated quickly until they crack, but not so quickly that they singe or burn. Then, they should be roasted at a lower temperature to cook evenly. Kent Payne has developed recipes for roasting times and temperatures based on experience with beans from each source. Even so, every new sack of green beans has to be evaluated and the coffee cupped before she is satisfied that a batch conforms to their established criteria. The roaster, while it works as traditional drum roasters do, is fitted with electronic sensors that monitor internal temperatures in various places and with controls that can open vents or turn up or down the gas burners. Once she has established how a particular bean should be roasted, Kent Payne can code the formula into her laptop and have it control subsequent roasts.
Crezia Coffee doesn’t roast its own beans. Instead, it has a local Q grader in Colombia who roasts and tastes their beans for them. Both Thread Coffee and Crezia Coffee favor lighter and medium roasts, although they also offer dark roasts. Kent Payne explains that lighter roasts bring out more of the bean's flavor. Lighter roasts are also higher in caffeine, despite many people associating darker and bolder roasts with higher caffeine.
While America is the world’s single largest consumer of coffee, Americans are still far behind northern Europeans when it comes to per capita consumption. The Finns are the world champions, drinking a staggering 26 pounds of coffee per person each year. Kent Payne and Perez hope that their blends of high-end coffee can attract more Americans to the coffee connoisseur fraternity and one day rival the Finns in per capita consumption. In the meantime, you can buy Thread Coffee or even take a latte art class from Kent Payne at threadcoffee.com. And you learn about the Ortega family farm, or order fresh-from-the-farm beans at creziacolombiancoffee.com
Built with Shorthand