We love sharing great coffee with every one of you at home, and that's only possible by partnering with equally great coffee roasters. Trade brings together top, independent roasters from small towns across the USA—places you’d love if you lived nearby—and curates the best of the best for folks everywhere.
Today we're pleased to introduce you to North Carolina’s Little Waves. Thank you to Areli from Little Waves for taking the time to chat with us!
If you're ready to jump straight to their amazing coffee (don't blame you), you can do that here!
At Trade, we’re all about origin stories. How did Little Waves begin?
Little Waves began with a magical text exchange between co-owners, Areli & Leon, that referred to the calm and cadence of little waves rushing up on a shore, the spark that started our love story. That was 2010. After starting our new business on a coffee bike and opening three retail locations in Durham, NC we founded Little Waves Coffee Roasters in 2017 to build upon the relationships we had been harnessing in coffee since 2004. Little Waves is a way to deepen and express our love of coffee quality as it relates to the relationships that we have and nourish from seed to cup and cup to seed.
What’s your philosophy when it comes to sourcing and roasting coffee?
While our peak series seeks to source the rarest coffees and flavor experiences that exist, we build the Little Waves sourcing program knowing that coffees and flavor preferences are as diverse as people. We offer an array of coffees within the specialty range that connect quality as it integrates with relationships and impact.
Within this array, we use our day to day, year to year buying program to build relationships, trust, and openness. That sets the stage to enact our common values, create a degree of security that allows our producer partners to focus and build upon quality. We prioritize women and farmers of color, buying from many farmers year after year and building a farmers market like trust across international borders that creates benefit in both directions.
We are interested in preserving the future of Coffea arabica L. as an endangered species, as humans living on an endangered Earth. We love experiencing the wonders of flavor, the experience of beauty in a cup knowing that this work is included in all that’s in the cup.
The Little Waves brand stands out with its vibrant, thoughtful design. What inspired its visual and creative direction?
We want our brand to reverberate our culture, our values and our open-hearted approach. Our current design was created by our team member, Michelle Durango-Lopez, who shares similar heritage with our co-owner, Areli. We took inspiration from the Huichol culture from Jalisco and Nayarit, Mexico where Areli’s dad is from. The inspiration is the idea of The Sun, the Moon and Everything in Tune - an aspirational mantra for the daily work to achieve a harmonious ecosystem within our industry where everyone and the planet is considered and thriving.
Your team is rooted in honoring diverse cultural backgrounds and personal narratives. How does this show up in the roastery’s day-to-day and long-term decisions?
We are a fully woman identifying team and we all come from either immigrant or first generation backgrounds. It plays in the day to day in how we relate to each other, in our communication, in our connection to the coffees. It also plays a role in our sourcing program and how we want to see that representation all throughout our industry’s ecosystem. Our goal as a team is to see all boats rise and develop our business with this in mind.
What excites you most in this upcoming year?
This coming year we are most excited about moving into our new roastery location. Our steady growth has been wonderful and welcomed, but we need more room. It will be lovely to be in a space that is dedicated to Little Waves Coffee although we will miss being close to the churros at our retail shops - Cocoa Cinnamon Lakewood.
Founder Q&A
Tell us a little about yourself—whatever you’d like to share!
My name is Areli Barrera Grodski, I am one of the co-owners of Little Waves Coffee Roasters. I was born in Tijuana, MX, spent several formative years in San Antonio but lived most of my life in North Carolina. I fell in love with coffee first as a community gathering space and then slowly over the past couple of decades became more in awe of coffee, the drink and plant, itself. I love how it connects you with so many people across the planet and how it can stimulate meaningful conversations and collaborations. Coffee is catalytic and for me coffee has served as a vehicle to make an impact with purchasing hiring decisions.
What are your three favorite things about running a coffee roasting business?
In no particular order, I’m happy to create space and opportunity for more women and gender non-conforming folks of color to have the opportunities in our industry that for a lot of its history have mostly been overlooked. I love having the freedom to dream up and implement how a business can serve all who contribute to its success. I love that my job entails tasting a wide range of coffees on a daily basis or in different parts of the world.
We have to ask… how do you make coffee at home?
We like to make pour overs at home and by “we” I mean I drink what Leon is pouring. We use Origamis, and a plethora of other pour over methods. It’s a bit of a lab and the play is endless.
For someone trying Little Waves on Trade for the first time, which coffee would you recommend?
Dinkinesh: Worka Chelbessa! It’s such a beautiful, smooth cup. It’s an easy drinker and goes back to the roots of Coffea arabica.
