Ninety Plus 10th Anniversary
Semeon Abay, director of profile processing at Ninety Plus Coffee Ethiopia, sits with c.e.o. Joseph Brodsky and Jake Brodsky, far right.
Nnety Plus Coffee is celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2016 with a series of events.
The direct buy coffee importer evolved from founder Joseph Brodsky’s Novo Coffee roasting firm in Denver. Brodsky was inspired by his travels in Ethiopia in 2005 where he conceived of “creating taste profiles at origin farms, rather than the conventional approach of building flavors at the roasting and retail level.”
Ethiopia remains a cornerstone of the business where Brodsky partners with Abdullah Bagersh, who chairs the East African Fine Coffees Association. The Bagersh family was the first company to export coffee from Ethiopia and currently is the country’s fifth largest exporter.
Brodsky said that these partnerships allow Ninety Plus to control quality and innovate taste profiles with a talented team at the source. The company has since purchased its own farms in Panama, established a network of distributors that, under contracts, buy large volumes of green coffee and then re-sell to roaster and retailer customers in their region.
This strategy propelled growth, creating a global reach. Asia became the company’s largest market. In 2015 the company introduced the Levelup coffee brand and later Level 1 coffee.
Ninety Plus Coffee is headquartered in Miami with offices in Volcán, Panama.
Learn more: www.ninetypluscoffee.com