[Narrator] Portland is well known for being a coffee city.
With the country's sixth highest number of cafes per capita...
Opening up a coffee shop in Portland means entering a competitive scene...
With some of the best roasters in the industry.
And while Portland is notorious for its coffee, it's also well-known for its lack of diversity.
Historically, coffee shop owners and master roasters have tended to be white...
Making it difficult to enter the coffee scene as a person of color, or as an immigrant.
The few BIPOC roasters in Portland, however, are breaking the mold...
And bringing their experiences, values and culture to their shops.
For Ian Williams, creating Deadstock Coffee was more about creating a snob-free space...
For people to talk about sneakers than it was about making fancy coffee.
[Noori] My name is Noori Cherry and I'm a barista at Deadstock Coffee.
It started from people who didn't like coffee.
So the owner Ian didn't like coffee, I didn't know anything about coffee...
I was just a young kid who liked sweet drinks...
All of the homies were like: "Ehh, coffee, I guess."
And a lot of people like: "Uh, I'm not used to coffee, this third wave coffee..."
You know, we get a lot of people who are from communities that coffee isn't taught to...
Or coffee isn't told like, "Hey, come be a part of this."
So, you know, black and brown communities, you know...
The kind of like, you know, it's more standoffish of a thing.
So, we wanted to make sure that we did stuff that...
Was for them specifically.
If you don't know about roasting, if you don't know about beans...
If you don't know about milk, espresso machines, grinders...
All these different tools that we have to use, you're gonna have a rough time...
Because all the other shops know about it.
Understanding that you had to be at these events to get access to all this stuff...
Is kind of where Ian developed this snob-free idea...
Because he was going to all these events as a young black male...
And a lot of people were like, "Eh, like, who are you?"
Like, "Ah, like, what, what are you doing with us?"
Like...You know, like, kind of, you know, very standoffish...
Very insider outsider, like "I don't know about you, I don't know what you do."
Every so often, of course, you would come across people who are like...
"Hey, come on over here, we'll show you what we know."
Like, you know, and like, that type of behavior...
That snob-free behavior is really what made him be like...
"I couldn't have done it without these people that were like that to me."
So, he understood that when people come in here...
We don't want them to feel the way he did at those events.
It gets more and less pretentious, because...
People are developing a craft...
But at the same time it's like, you're serving customers.
You're dealing with food service, customer service...
And it's very important that when somebody comes in...
They feel appreciated. Heard. You know?
You look at our neighborhood. You know?
No person in this neighborhood wants to be treated like...
They're less than, because a lot of them already are.
[Narrator] Growing up in China, Joe Yang had never drank coffee.
It wasn't until a term studying abroad in Australia, that Joe tasted his first cup.
The whole experience sparked a fascination that would eventually...
Land him the first place prize in the 2020 United States roaster championship.
[Joe] I know that Portland...
Is, uh, is the most famous coffee city in the world...
Not just in the United States, in the world, so...
I think I have to go there, yeah.
My name is Joe Yang...
I'm from the-the Hefei, It's pretty close to Shanghai.
I didn't know any-anyone before I come here...
It's, for me, it's like a brand new city.
So-so first thing is I just learn how to speak English. Yeah.
Because I know in coffee shops, communication is the best part.
It's hard to find the good location from the landlord...
Because he will check your background, and he will check...
Do you have a business background in the United States?
Because even I have a business background in China...
But that doesn't mean anything because it's a different country.
I have Chinese coffee every year.
I would love to let more people to try the coffee from China.
I got a lot of customers, "Oh, this is my first time to try the real Chinese coffee."
They say, "Oh, really? Chinese has coffee?"
Well I say, "Yeah, China actually is the number nine largest Arabica coffee producer country."
That moment I really enjoy is...the-the customer...
You know, they got my coffee, and take a sip...
They say, "Wow! That's the best coffee in the world," or whatever...
"The best coffee of my life," you know, that moment when...
You really touch your heart.
So I feel...Yes!
[Narrator] Unlike Joe, Hector Mejia began drinking coffee at the age of three.
Raised on his family's coffee farm in Guatemala...
Coffee wasn't just a morning routine. It was how his family survived.
[Hector] Unfortunately, the interest in coffee never happened until my father passed away...
Which, honestly, is something that I regret not being able to have...
Early on to interact with him. But at least that has been a way for me to...
Get to connect and get to know more about my father's life and interests.
My name is Hector Mejia, I'm from Guatemala.
In Guatemala, there was an internal civil war that lasted from 1955-1996.
And in the 80s, my parents came here to the States...
And my siblings were born here. And that's how my my father made...
Money to buy land in Guatemala and get his own farm.
It took me one year to realize that Portland was a coffee city...
I didn't move to Portland thinking about making a business out of coffee.
I realized that if I was to do good here...
Then I could bring coffee from Guatemala, and find a way to have a direct sell to people...
Which was what my father wanted. At least that was the dream.
But once reality hit, I realized that coffee here is very saturated...
It's a very saturated market, very competitive.
People are really used to...
Receiving more than what they were giving, and I was looking for something different.
So once I got the opportunity to open up the shop, I started talking...
To people, explaining how we were not only serving coffee from people that we knew...
But it was our own coffee.
But once people took the time, pretty much because of the pandemic...
People started knowing about us, people started understanding that, oh...
There are way more details behind...
What goes into coffee than what we thought.
First it was only my farm. And once we started selling more...
And now that we are selling more, we have been able to get
More farmers involved. We have this educational program...
In which we teach them about finances, budgeting, projections, elasticity of the business...
How they can reinvest their money, how they can create wealth.
When you put people first...
Then that that's when you really get to get a real political statement...
That can change a community.
So we have realized and we have been very aware of that we are not...
Going to change the coffee industry. We are going change at least...
Our community's reality by focusing our efforts in that specific community.