The global green coffee company Ally Coffee, based in the US, has launched Ally Open, a new online platform, designed to connect small and emerging roasters with green coffee learning programmes and resources.
The initiative is designed to help new operations get up and running and accelerate the opportunity for success at the early stages of running a coffee business.
The platform, which only sells to the US market currently, allows a small roaster to buy as little as 25lbs (11.3kg) of green beans at a time. The beans are shipped quickly via UPS and browsing the site, we saw some interesting options such as this Gesha cold fermentation, which sells for $313 (€278)
Ally Open comprises three parts:
- Purchasing beans
- Online and blended training
- Online resources and guides
The beans come in 25lb and 50lb boxes shipped from its Greenville location to roasters in the 48 continental United States. Green coffee is available in three categories:
- Reserve Lots
- Microlots
- Core Coffees
This provides roasters with a range of quality and prices. Customers can buy the coffee online with a credit card and quickly receive the shipment tracking information.
Ally Coffee COO, Ricardo Pereira said about the launch:
“We want to introduce this platform to coffee professionals throughout the industry, but especially to roasters starting out in their careers or are building up their own business, seeking to find resources, tools, and green coffee,”
Ally Coffee COO, Ricardo Pereira,
Pereira went on to say that the platform was aimed mainly to roasters starting their careers or building up their own business, seeking to find resources and tools, and green coffee.
Pereira added, the company wanted to stay true to its purpose and continue opening up opportunities that move coffee forward and share the partnerships they have built with producers to a new set of roasters.
Ally Open’s learning courses cover roasting, food safety, and sensory evaluation. The ‘Essential Coffee Roasting Course’ starring Rob Hoos is an entirely online course with 14 videos and a detailed companion workbook written by Ally Coffee’s director of Learning, Ildi Revi.
Essential Food Safety for Coffee Operations also has an online, self-paced component and a customised consulting portion to help coffee roasters comply with food safety regulations.
Ally Open also features a ‘Get Inspired’ blog with a wealth of information for coffee industry professionals looking to understand better where and how coffee is produced, the differences between origins, processing terminology, and other aspects of the coffee trade.
We poked around this section and found it has some useful resources, such as the production and shipping yearly calendar below:
We are seeing so many new initiatives in the coffee world at the moment. As strange as it sounds with the COVID-19 spectre, It’s an exciting time to be starting out a business. As you may know the chinese words for ‘Crisis’ and ‘Opportunity’ are built out of the same Chinese characters.
We’ll be watching the evolution of Ally’s online platform with interest.
