Greyt Big Talk w/ Christopher Feran

Christopher Feran is a coffee industry consultant, green coffee buyer and roaster, and the founder of Aviary, a small-volume, direct-to-consumer micro-roastery in Cleveland. A lapsed Q-grader, he has worked with startups and established companies in the Midwest, California and New York City, and with importers, exporters and coffee producers across Africa and Latin America. Coffees he has worked on or helped create have won the Cup of Excellence, Best of Rwanda, Taste of Africa and Golden Bean awards, and his work has been featured by Forbes, Bloomberg and Food & Wine.

Through his consultancy, Hinterland Coffee Strategies, he offers green coffee buying, sample and roast evaluation, postharvest quality management and facility planning. Coffees processed with postharvest protocols he wrote placed first, second and fourth in Ethiopia's 2024 Cup of Excellence and won the 2024 Best of Rwanda. Aviary releases top lots, separations and experiments from that buying work, and his long-running blog on sourcing, processing and roasting is widely read in the industry. He has also been director of coffee and a partner at Phoenix Coffee in Cleveland.