5.4.24: LT w/ Paul Mike from Hunters Blend Coffee. Pro Second Amendment Lovers of God USA Pra
Summary
➡ Coffee’s quality is influenced by where it’s grown, similar to wine. The best coffee is grown at high altitudes and is considered specialty grade. The process of grading coffee is rigorous and involves assessing various aspects like aroma and taste. The speaker, a coffee expert, has a close relationship with coffee farmers and ensures they are paid fairly for their produce, which is often not the case in the coffee industry. He also pre-pays them to help them avoid high-interest loans.
➡ The text discusses how paying a fair price for coffee can significantly improve the lives of coffee farmers and their workers. By ensuring year-round employment, workers can afford better food and even save money. The text also mentions a retired marine who helps tribal groups in Indonesia get better prices for their coffee, while also sharing his faith. Lastly, it explains how the company ensures the freshness of their coffee, and the positive impact of drinking good quality coffee.
➡ The text discusses the history and quality of coffee, suggesting that the best coffee is subjective and depends on personal preference. It also touches on the idea that the way coffee is roasted can affect its taste, with darker roasts potentially used to mask lower quality beans. The text also discusses the importance of supporting companies that align with one’s values, using the example of a coffee company that supports veterans and opposes ‘woke’ companies. Lastly, it highlights the positive social impact of certain coffee businesses, such as providing employment and supporting church planting.
➡ This text discusses the use of coffee as a tool for community development in areas affected by poverty and natural disasters. It highlights the role of faith and the importance of following a vision, using the example of a successful coffee project in Thailand. The text also emphasizes the importance of not forgetting God and the gospel in efforts to alleviate poverty. Finally, it mentions the joy and fulfillment derived from knowing that one’s business is being used to positively impact people’s lives.
➡ The speaker is expressing gratitude for the impact of podcasts and companies like Hunter’s Blend Coffee, which are changing lives and spreading positive messages. They also extend an invitation to join them on a cruise to Alaska in August 2024, where attendees can enjoy beautiful scenery, delicious food, live music, and engaging activities like live podcast recordings and Q&A sessions with special guests.
Transcript
And I just think of the verse, oh taste and see that the Lord is good. He did this for our yeah, that verse is probably try the Lord, you’ll see he’s good. But he’s also appealing to our taste. The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him and delivereth them o taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man that trusteth in him. Folks, I so enjoyed this interview. We were talking with Paul and Mike of Hunter’s blend coffee this time. We live in so many coffee companies that do not support our veterans.
They’re against the second amendment and have a hatred to those who love Christ. It’s refreshing that we have a platform to showcase companies like Hunter’s blend coffee who have an amazing story in supporting so many around this earth. In the early two thousands, Paul and his wife Grace started buying and importing coffee directly from farmers with the mission of helping the farmers help themselves. The coffee shipped directly to the warehouse roastery in central Ohio. Through this trade model, they have seen hundreds of jobs created and people lifted out of poverty and also churches have been planted through this.
It is absolutely amazing. You don’t want to miss this entire interview. Well folks, here we are. It’s been a long time coming with with hunters blend coffee. You saw that intro. It’s amazing what we’ve seen happen throughout this earth and amount of things that come at us left and right with different companies. We’ve got the woke ones out there and more. We’re just so pleased that our heavenly father connects us with the right folks who definitely care about our country and care about us day and night. So if you go in that description box below huntersblendcoffee.com forward slash and there’s a question mark, ref equals awk.
Just simply go below this video, click on that link and you’ll be able to reach out to them and get your amazing coffee today. So glad to guys, to have you guys here today to talk about not only the coffee, but what God has been doing in your life and through your company. I think that’s the first and foremost one of the greatest parts of the story. And I’m just looking forward to hearing from you. So welcome. Good to be with the LT and all your listeners. Yep, thanks for the opportunity. Appreciate it. Yeah, so we have Paul, I believe, on the left side of your screen.
We’ve got Mike there who does amazing videos. We’re going to show probably a few of those throughout this interview. I get some good chuckles out of it. This all started out of a missions approach, something Paul was involved in for a lot of years. And it as a way then to help the local farmers basically help themselves and not be reliant on some of the handouts that was coming through the missions organization. That’s what started this whole thing. But along the way, we kind of realized there was something hiding in plain sight. And that is a lot of the coffee importers, especially the specialty grade importers, which is what Hunter’s blend is.
It’s the top 6% of coffee. Those importers are located in cities like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, New York. And their values, I mean, Paul just came back from a specialty coffee association, you know, the annual show. And the causes that you see these people supporting would honestly make your hair curl. I mean, if you think about visiting a coffee shop in your average, you know, downtown, you know, a major metropolitan area in the vibe that you get, I mean, they’re typically not necessarily, you know, pro military, pro police, for example. They tend to support causes that literally oppose the american freedom way of life, much less a christian way of life.
You know, we’re obviously pro life. And so the causes that these importers support are directly opposed to ours as free Americans and Christians. And so that wasn’t the intent. That wasn’t the goal necessarily when Paul started doing the importing. But what we realized is we are this coffee by bypassing those importers that are going to support very leftist causes, by bypassing those importers, we are bypassing kind of that underbelly of coffee that is not friendly to the average American. And let me just interject by saying bypassing, we are the importer. We have, we’re registered with the FDA.
We have a continuous bond to import. We directly buy from the farmer. It goes into a shipping container in the ports come up through either New Jersey or sometimes New Orleans, and then by train to Chicago, truck from Chicago to our place. So we are the importer, and I’ve been. Let me just go back to the term hunter’s blend. I’ve been a hunter all my life. I grew up in north, northern Pennsylvania. First day of deer season, school shut down. You couldn’t buy gas. Restaurants were closed, you know, 50 years ago. That’s the way it was.
Now they stay open to get the traffic, but it was like a holiday. And so, as a hunter, I started putting a blend together. You know, that would be smooth, that hunters would like. And I’ve always said hunting coffee makes the hunting world go around. If you’re in deer camp, if anybody listening is hunters, and you go to camp, or you are an elk hunter and you’re up in the mountains and you get up in the morning, it’s the first person up, put the coffee on. It’s part of way of life. It’s kind of that wake up juice.
And then the fact what Mike was saying, if most of that good coffee is imported from the West coast and in those values that are probably taking discretionary income and supporting causes, trying to shut down your hunting, hunters are drinking all this stuff. We just said, these guys, middle America, we need our own coffee. And that’s. That’s really the impetus behind hunters blend coffee. And so the on our end, then, we do support causes that, you know, second amendment. There’s a great organization that’s called Scholastic Clay Trap program, SCTP. If you have kids in school or grandkids, check out SCTP.
Hey, this is Mike with Hunter’s blend coffee, and we’re here at the SCTP nationals in Morango, Ohio, for the highlight of our year, which is serving hot coffee to all these amazing athletes from over 30 states competing in the nationals, the SCTP nationals. And this is an amazing bunch of kids and families. It’s just a great environment to be a part of. Great community. They are patriots. They love this country, appreciate the Constitution, and, of course, the second amendment. These kids understand firearms, firearms safety. It is. We went to our first event in 20, you know, after the lockdowns.
It was the first thing we did publicly after the shutdown, and it was here locally in central Ohio, but it was far enough out of town. We were astounded. I mean, everybody was walking around, almost no masks. Thousands of people. Yes. And kids from fourth grade through high school carrying 510 $20,000 shotguns. There was no violence. There was no trash. Everything was. Yes sir. Thank you ma’am. The most polite kids you ever saw. People would ride around in their, their rangers or whatever, they might have two or three of these guns in the back. They park it, walk off, nothing’s locked, they come back in a half hour, start it up and drive off.
People driving around with american flags Trump flags. I mean it was just, you felt like you stepped into a different realm. But. So anyways, that’s one of the causes that we support. But when I get to talking about them, I get pretty fired up. But SCTP is a great organization that teaches responsibility and gun safety and then proficiency to the kids. That’s just one of the organizations that we’ve supported. But we like to give our money, put our money where our mouth is right now. I noticed when you have on your website this list here, we use only top 6% of all coffee we import directly from the farmers, we bypass the woke us import chain, farmers get paid, the middleman’s cut, we roast and ship fresh daily.
So that’s a lot that you’re throwing at us, showing what you’re doing here. I mean could you explain this just a little bit more about why these things right here are important? Sure. I sometimes, to start this whole discussion, say that coffee is a product of place and people. And place is, it’s a little bit like wine grapes where it’s grown, what’s the word? Terrier or the climate, the soil, the weather, all that comes to bear on the quality of the coffee. So on a spectrum of sea level up to 1500 meters up in the mountains.
The higher up the mountain you go, the harder, more dense the bean is, the more interesting the notes, the character in that coffee, and it should demand a lot higher price. The top 6% of the coffee is considered specialty grade. On a scale of one to 100, 100 being there is no coffee that good. But the scale one to 100 is there’s ten different components of cupping and scoring on a one to ten. So there’s aroma, fragrance, acidity, mouthfeel, overall enjoyment. There’s some subjective parts, but most of it is you. It’s a very rigid set of protocols that we score coffee with.
There’s 450 Q graters, quality graters in the US and I am one, but they’re worldwide. It’s actually kind of a PhD in coffee. And I’m not bragging, it’s just I’ve worked hard for it and. But to score coffee and then say this coffee is an 86, somebody in China or somebody in Japan, somebody in San Jose, Costa Rica, would be doing the same cupping and should be within three quarters of a point either way from me. So we. We take it very serious that we’re not just. I don’t like this, but we put some objective point score to it.
So specialty grade is 81, 82 somewhere in there and up. And all of our coffees have to be at that grade or we don’t buy it. Right? Right. So when I’m looking at this, I mean, you have the coffee apostle. That would be you on the website. When you say q grade. Master roaster begins each batch with premium green coffee sourced directly from the farmers who grew it. Yeah. What. Can you explain that a little bit more for those that might not understand directly from the farmers who grid? How does that mean? Because I remember talking to you guys and.
And there seems to be a connection that you have a very intimate connection with those that are shipping the coffee to you. Is that correct? Yeah. I worked for a church planting mission agency for 25 years. I have a MA in missiology, so that was my life kind of study. Missiology is a combination of anthropology, strategy and theology. How people want to might be open to changing their religious affiliation and move towards God is the anthropology part. And strategy and theology is the fact that God wants a relationship with all people. And if coffee is a product of place, it’s also a product of people.
And the price that coffee’s been getting, it’s just. There’s misery and hardship and poverty and corruption in the coffee growing world. And I know God is there. So out of 25 years of working in missions, I would find myself year after year in Indonesia or in East Africa or in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Ecuador, giving, sort of attending their annual church conference. There no longer were missionaries from North America here. But I was sent just as the mission agency that formed them. Trying to get away from the top down or the dad to son. But now we join arms.
Let’s work together. And we were encouraging the central american church. To send workers to Thailand, to North Africa, Morocco, and various places of the world. That they could be invited to work along with us in that as partnership. I knew these farmers. They became friends of mine. And my feet were under their table a lot. And I began to hear terrible stories of how coffee is traded. I didn’t know it. I’d go to Starbucks and spend $15 for a pound. And one day I asked a farmer group, how much in Costa Rica, how much do you get for your coffee? And they looked at each other and through their different dinero and money.
They spot eighty cents us dollars. Eighty cents. Well, how is this traded? And so the farmer grows the coffee. He doesn’t have technology to process and dry it and mill it. So he sells to a buyer who is delivering to another buyer who that buyer is delivering to another buyer who’s putting a container together. And that container buyer is selling to somebody from Germany. Buyer putting twelve containers. And there’s six or seven intermediaries in between. The final price of what green coffee up in the states from a broker would, might be $3, let’s say a pound green.
The farmer can’t get more than a dollar or a dollar 25 or it won’t work. So we started putting together this idea. Diego, what if I gave you $3 a pound and he looked at me like I was from outer space? That would change my life. And so we started working together. I’d like to tell you a story. The first time I met Diego Chavadilla, and I’m going to make sure he listens to this. He’s a dear brother. There’s a video you might have referenced already on our website about his life. He’s a man of God.
But the first time I met him, I said, diego, I’d like to. What’s your coffee taste like? He said, I don’t know. I said, help me out here. You’ve got 600 acres of coffee and you don’t know what your coffee tastes like. On his table, kitchen table, was a can of gold, nescafe, instant crystals. Like, dale, you’re a coffee farmer and you’re drinking instant. You know, he’s like, well, my daddy taught me. My daddy’s daddy told me, you sell everything. You never drink your own coffee. And I said, well, I. Before we, you know, buy a container, I need to taste your coffee.
So I travel with a little roasting heat gun. Roaster, just a little. It does 30 grams, so it’s very small. You know, there’s part of that video. And so Diego and his three brothers were there, his wife Gloria were there. And I started roasting coffee. And they’re saying, oh, it smells, smells. Bueno, bueno. That’s good. Gloria brought boiling water and I had a little german grinder. I ground it right there, put it in a brew cone with a filter, put the coffee in over a cup and poured that water over it. I could tell as it was going through this pour over, this was good coffee.
But I handed him the cup, I said, diego, you drink your coffee. And he took it. And I’ll never forget he took this sip and he looked at me and he had these big tears in his eyes. He said, that is good coffee, Diego. You grow good coffee. And, you know, we just made a bunch of cups there and just played around with different roast levels right in the living room. And that, that was sort of our beginning. And we started buying one container. Now it’s, we’re buying everything. He, this year it’s just three containers. We personally don’t use it all.
We’d like to, but I found other buyers and roasters in the states that we give him twice to three times what he’s ever seen before in a price. And we actually, the change agent and I really want your listeners to know, this coffee is kind of harvested over New Year’s, January, February. It’s collected. It’s a once a year kind of over two, three month period harvest. And by May, coffee in coffee growing countries, it’s all sold. There’s no money till next twelve months later. So if they didn’t make a profit, they are now. Let me just say it this way.
One time, Diego and I were bumping down the road and he said, paul, I am a happy man. His English is a little funny sometimes. I said, okay, tell me why you’re happy. He said, I have no money. I said, wait a minute. In America, if you’re no happy, no money, you’re not necessarily happy. He said, what I mean is, I sold all my coffee and I was able to pay all my debts. I’m broke, but I have no debt. Wow, that’s, that, that is amazing. And, but I said, what are you gonna do next week? What are you gonna do next month? You need money? He said, and he told me how it works.
He goes to a, it’s a short term loan. It’s a predator loan system like our payday loans. But against next year’s harvest, he can take out $20 to $30,000 per container. The organization, the banker goes out, looks at the crop, looks, yeah, you’re going to make three containers. We’ll give you $90,000, but they take 30% interest. It’s next year’s coffee. So we start out there and say, okay, we’re going to do this different. Diego, if I’m buying two containers, I will give you in May 30,000, up to $30,000 per container as prepayment. It’s not a loan, it’s not a gift.
It’s just early payment for coffee that you’re going to deliver. And what it did for me is lock him into. He had to sell to me because I’ve already prepaid because prices can go crazy. They can, it’s commodity, it can go up, it can go down. And so by locking in three and a quarter, let’s say per pound, and I pay him and everybody else is doing a dollar, 50, 75, I knew I was paying more, but I knew what I was paying and. But for him it made all the difference. He could keep 90 to 100 adult workers that lived around his, on his property.
He could keep them working year round. They were no longer now seasonal workers and they could, every day they had a job. It’s the obligation of coffee farmers. I don’t know if it’s government regulation, but they feed their workers. It’s rice and beans and then in the afternoons it’s beans and rice, but it’s a meal. And so they feed all their workers only when they’re working. So that usually was just during harvest, two months a year. Now it’s twelve months a year. Suddenly the whole community, everybody has a little bit of, you know, belly rolls on them.
There’s meat in their diet. They’ve got their own chickens now tied up because they’re, they have money, they have a daily job. They have a weekly job and they’re getting paid and they’re starting to open up bank accounts and save money as opposed to keeping some money under the mattress. And everybody knows where everybody keeps their money, it’s under the mattress. So when they get drunk and they rob you, they take your money. So there’s a whole lift, a gospel lift, just because in this valley we paid, we directly deal with this farmer and we’re doing it elsewhere a little differently.
In Indonesia we’re working through a marine that retired and went to him and his wife moved to Central Java. I’m probably not going to say his name, just protection, but he has fellowships going, little Bible studies with sort of animistic muslim islamic groups, tribal groups up in Sulawesi in Bali. And he goes in as a coffee professional and says, let me help you get a better price for your coffee. And after a year or two they say, we don’t know who you are, but tell us about why you’re here. And then he tells them that he’s a follower of the book, the Bible, and, and they’re hungry to know there.
And he’s got these studies going and he’s very modest, but he operates like a special ops guy. I mean, he, this is plan a. Now if that don’t work, here’s plan b. If that don’t work, here’s plan c. And, and we talk on FaceTime. Zoom. And, and I’m on part of his ministry board, just hearing reports. It’s just amazing. But we buy his coffee and his coffee is in some of our blends. That’s, it’s just, you might say coffee. But then again, look at Moses. It was just a stick. And God said, take that stick and do this with it.
And when you, I’ll tell this to any listener listening, whatever’s in your hand, if it’s something you give to God in a fresh way, and he says, do something with it, you do it. And it becomes the rod of God. And we sincerely, we take this very serious coffee, just, you know, if it ain’t, this don’t work, I’ll do something. I don’t have anything else. Everything I own is leveraged and I have no plan b. We’re just kind of in the belt loop of God and hanging on. Now, one of the things that I wanted to key on was the fact that when you guys, when somebody orders coffee from you, it hasn’t been sitting for a long time.
There’s a process you guys use to make sure it’s fresh. Could you explain that? Because I can’t explain it very well. Well, each one thing we say, green coffee is good for two years if it’s stored properly. Fact is, we go through coffee every year, so that’s not a factor. Roasted coffee is good for two months and then ground coffee is good for two minutes. And it sounds humorous, but it’s really quite true. Once coffee is roasted for about ten days, it lets off CO2 or carbon dioxide. And that’s, that’s a gas. It’s, it’s, we call the coffee is alive.
So all of our packaging, we’re gonna, we’re gonna take the date, the morning’s orders that come in overnight, if you listening, are order, you’re going to be in a queue. And we look at that and say, we need 1500 pounds of black powder today. So we get the roasting, that coffee is going to be roasted, it’s going to be bagged, and then it’s going to be shipped and we try to get it out. What’s our average right now? Two days to. Yeah, so we’re running just in time. So that’s what it means when you get coffee, no matter how far away you are or how your shipment comes, let’s hope it’s there in three days to a week.
You still are in that eight week window, that two month window, if it’s whole being. And then when you grind in your home, your kitchen will fill with the most delightful. You can enjoy the ritual, grinding your coffee and making your morning cup of brew and just thank God that. Just thank God that you’re going to see another day. Yeah, I mean, I was explaining to my friend here, we, we do a Bible study here every Tuesday evening. And I pulled out the coffee and said, check this out. And, you know, we brooded and we just sat down and, you know, we took our first sip.
Man, now I get it. And I just never, I never really understood because I drive through drive thrus, I get a cup of coffee. You know, back in the day when I used to get it all every single day, you know, you drink it, you just don’t think twice about it. Yes, there’s been times when I drink coffee and I go, wait a minute, this tastes terrible. And I throw it away. So I understand that. But I didn’t know the other side, that coffee could taste this good. So it just blew me away. And I, and I thought that was, that was pretty amazing.
Another thing I really wanted to share with folks and really fun stuff here. You guys have an amazing YouTube site also that folks want to get a couple of good laughs. I mean, I enjoy this one of them that I noticed here, we’re going to play it. Play another one here. But I wanted to look at this one. How to make a. I noticed this guy’s wearing. It looks like you guys went out and got somebody dressed up. So. Okay. Is that. Yeah, yeah. Fourscore and seven years ago, give or take a couple hundred, everyone in the colonies drank tea.
But after the Boston Tea party, that was considered unpatriotic. In fact, in the letter to his wife, John Adams wrote, tea must be universally renounced. I must be weaned. And the sooner the better. Well, mister president, we couldn’t agree more. Just like you, we like our coffee black and our tea in the harbor. So today here at Hunter’s blend coffee, we’re going to demonstrate to you how to make a proper cup of tea. First of all, you need to get some water, then add in all your tea, then add a wee bit of gas to your proper tea, then preheat your tea, then let freedom ring.
Oh, good. These are just amazing. Gone through them and picked our favorites. Probably play a few more as we do in the editing bay, but you guys just are having a great time. You’re supporters of our amazing country. You’re making amazing coffee and you’re touching lives around the world with the gospel. And I just think that that is something folks need to know about. Lt. Let me just tell you a little story. It’s a little bit like Mike Rose stories. At least this is the way I heard it. I read an article that, that is what I’m going to tell you.
And I’ve since then tried to find it, and I can’t find it. There’s a couple of thick books. One called the black, the, the black gold. It’s about the history of coffee. But, you know, in 1775 or six, you know, we thumbed our nose at King George and we said we had a, you know, without taxation without representation. Taxation without representation. The stinks. And there was this righteous rebellion, and we threw over the tea. Well, the British responded by blocking the harbor, and there was other harbors were blocked. The Dutch took their worst ship from the West Indies, or actually Java port in Indonesia.
And the worst coffee, because they thought it’s probably going to get sunk in the harbor. But let’s see if we can sneak in. And they went in in the Carolinas, is what I heard, one of the colony there. And they, they offloaded coffee. Well, the colonial women without tea were going in the woods getting sassafras roots and trying to make something to drink, and they, the history, this article said that the colonists took the coffee like a bug to a flame. We loved it. It was an expression of rebellion. It fed into that whole boycott thing.
But the Dutch continued that throughout the next 100, 150 years in that they imported to the US the world’s worst coffee. And so if you look at drinking trends, Americans drink 80% of them. Now, this was maybe ten years old. This may have changed, but 80% of Americans drink sugar and or cream in their coffee because it’s so nasty. And other parts of the world, like Scandinavian and Germany, it’s, it’s like the other way around. Only 20%. They historically got some of the world’s best coffee. So just a little bit of coffee. The higher up the mountain, the more dense and hard the bean is.
We actually call it hard bean or high grown, but it also is smoother. There isn’t the acidic and the astringency and the bite to it. And so lt, when you said you drank, it was just amazing. It was just smooth. That’s what 86, 87 coffee tastes like. Roasted accurately. It should be smooth. You shouldn’t really need cream and sugar. On the other hand, what if somebody asks you what is the best color? Is there really an answer to that. No, because you might like blue, but they like red. So what’s the best coffee? It’s whatever you like.
There’s, it’s amoral. So if you like coffee dark, bitter, strong, black coffee with a lot of cream and sugar, that’s the way your daddy drank it. That’s the way you learn to drink it. You know, knock yourself out. That that is way you like it. You like that combo. We meet those people all the time. But if you’re a new coffee drinker and you, or you just like a lighter roast, what you’re liking is some of the nuances. There can be floral notes. There can be citrusy notes. The acidity is snappy. In a good sense, it ought to be snappy and citrusy, not bitter and sour.
Lower grown coffee is always going to be sour and bitter and must roast it dark, so that kind of hides it. And I have a theory. I don’t know if I can prove this, but my suspicion is that charbucks, excuse me. Starbucks started that familiar dark roast note because it was easier to disguise lower quality coffee. They were buying good coffee, but they couldn’t get enough of it. I’ve heard an inside source tell me this. So you might get arrested here, but they couldn’t get enough of this good sumatra, so they brought in and they just started darkening and deepening their roasts to where it was so burnt.
And that kind of became the Starbucks signature roast profile. I can recognize it anywhere in the world. I go to Starbucks right now. When you have in here, from the farmer to your mug, you can feel confident your morning copy has been safely in the hand of patriots. We had talked before a little bit about this. You mentioned it briefly, but that’s important to you, that there’s companies out there a lot of folks seem to be spending their money on that they don’t realize are woke companies. They don’t support our country, they don’t support our veterans and more.
I mean, that, we’ve tried to share that a lot on the, on the channel, and we know when we get a chance to highlight those type of things as they’re happening. But that’s very important to you guys, correct? Yeah, it’s very important. Yeah. And one of the things that we really have found and in some of the alternative platforms, you know, true social and rumble and those type of platforms is that patriotic, conservative Americans recognize what we’re offering more quickly than, like, some of the other sectors that we connect with and people wanting to either intentionally or just because it’s kind of how they’re progressing, but almost like developing a parallel economy.
We don’t have to go. If I have an option a or option b, I can buy from a woke company or I can buy from a company that supports my values. The patriotic, conservative Americans recognize that very quickly. And so, like, for example, we used to be on, on Amazon, and at first we were, we were selling some, but we also saw them starting to, I mean, they were, they weren’t letting people do reviews on our coffee. It was, it was kind of a mess. But when they, we were on parlor at the time, well, obviously Amazon provided the servers that hosted parlor, the social media platform.
Remember that? And boy, after the insurrection on January 6, they just pulled the plug on parlor, shut it down. And in all of our, we were growing great. It was amazing. We were growing wonderfully on there, just organically. And it just shut that down overnight. We just said, you know, why are we helping Amazon out here? What little we do sell on there? I mean, we just cut, we just took our site down off of Amazon because, again, wanting to put our money where our mouth is and we find so that is important to us and we do that where and when we can.
And the cool thing is that I think growing numbers of patriotic Americans, people who are american before their political party, they recognize what we’re doing, and we’ve received a lot of support. And that’s, it goes both ways. It’s something that’s important to us and we’re seeing, that’s important to our customers, and there’s a lot of ways to think about it. I think what’s been helpful recently for me is to think whenever I buy, I’ll just say Coca Cola. Whenever I buy Starbucks, whenever I buy a big major corporation that hasn’t been very friendly to the conservative cause, you’re empowering them.
You’re actually voting them in that power. And big pharma, big food, big. I mean, when you look at tv media channels and half of their board is big pharma reps or big food, 90% of the ads on tv are pharmaceutical or cereal brands. How would those media outlets ever report some other way of eating or medicating? You know, they’re bought and they’re paid and coffee is, is, can be the same way. There’s, there’s a lot of good roasters. I’ve, I, I could name a whole list of them that are good, careful roasters. Then I start asking them, you know, where their coffee came from and when they basically don’t know, then I know where it came from.
Yeah. And at the end of the day, we all vote with our pocketbook whether we want to or not. So I may say a lot of things that I stand for, and I think we all fall into this at different degrees at different times. You don’t, you kind of, we kind of get stuck in our ruts and just do the same thing we always did. But we do vote with our pocketbook. My ag teacher used to say it this way. He said, put your money where your mouth is. And, but people are now doing that more and more intentionally, choosing to be purposeful with their spending.
Hunters blend coffee is not the cheapest coffee out there. If you’re looking for cheap coffee, you’re buying a different grade of coffee. And that’s okay. If that’s what somebody, I talked to somebody the other day, they just like, I don’t know, one of the, the red can or the green can, whichever, you know, store coffee. And I said, hey, that, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s kind of what Paul said, if this is what you like now, if, if you, you’re going to tell a big difference with our coffee, but it’s up to the individual. But when you get to this score of coffee, say in 86, then compare prices that way, it’s, it’s kind of hard to beat hunters brand blend price for our score, for the high score that it is.
And so it’s not, we don’t, we don’t mark something up just because our margins are actually probably less than a lot of coffee companies. But it’s, it’s, we, you get what you pay for. And so, but yeah, we all, we all vote with our pocketbook. I wanted to show one more thing here. The, we didn’t highlight a lot of, but I just wanted to make sure folks hear this with all of the mentioned. Diego earlier, with the additional income, has been able to improve working conditions, upgrade employees for seasonal year round. You mentioned that. And sponsor over 40 pastors to plant churches in Thailand.
The farm co op provides dignified employment to 80 plus women, many of whom were previously exploited in some form of the sex trade. So there’s, you know, again, we’ve mentioned this a little bit before, but you’re planning churches, you’re seeing the church plant happening also all revolved around this business that you set up with coffee. And I just wanted to make sure we highlight that as we come to a close. Yeah, we, I call it the scarlet thread of our, of our company. I really want to see a kingdom of God, the church being encouraged and grown in places that it is not.
And coffee is grown two to 300 miles north and south of the equator. The tropic of cancer and Capricorn, that whole band on mount. There’s been a lot of dictators, a lot of bad climate, hurricanes, there’s been a lot of destruction and poverty. And coffee is actually a tool of community development. And to see God’s kingdom come in a greater way. That number in Nicaragua is now 62 churches have been planned. There’s 25, 30 young men in a pastoral training program he’s funding out of our coffee purchases. So it’s his tithe and how he’s doing it.
Here’s a clip from their movie cafe Diego. The cost of a dream. To see how God is using Diego’s family is really exciting. And to see what God has done in this region in a holistic way just gives me encouragement that God has called us to do what we can. We don’t often understand where that’s going. But to be faithful and what he has called us to at the time. The Bible says it’s not by might, it’s not by his words, by my spirit. We have all the organizations who tries to relieve poverty, and they do their projects and they do it well.
But if you forget God, if you forget the gospel at the end, you will not break the cycle of poverty. When you bring Jesus, you bring hope, you bring direction, you bring a purpose for people’s lives, and that will help them to see life in a complete different way. I’ve learned lessons of faith from Diego when I don’t know much, when I don’t have much. God knows it all. He owns it all. That if we’re just willing to pass it on, his shovel’s bigger than what we can put out. He had nothing, and yet he had faith that we need to be a blessing to the people that God brings into our paths.
It’s a lesson to me, and it’s a lesson really to all of us. There’s people whose life has been changed, whose families has been touched and has been restored, and that gives hope to the people. There are more important things to do than to follow what everybody is doing. The main thing is for me now, what I am doing here for the kingdom of heaven, why the Lord allowed me to born here just to drink coffee, to eat something. No, he got a vision for us. Are you doing your vision? That’s the main thing. Are you following the vision that God has for you? Or you are following your own vision in Thailand.
That lady you showed in the picture, that’s an aka tribal group in a little village Deutsche. Just about an hour outside of Chiang Rai in northern Thailand. And yeah, there’s 80 women. It takes them eight months to hand sort. They’re looking at every bean and they have three holes in front of them. Good, better, best. And we buy the best. And right now there is such a pressure on thai coffee in Thailand. They’re getting $8910 a pound just by keeping it in country because there’s so much in country consumption and coffee shops starting. So this past year we did not import any.
I just want to be clear with that. That project was a success actually. It put the Abanzo coffee brand on the map. Their coffee is being some of their best coffee is now being. The Japanese will still pay the money. So they’re 15, $20 a pound. If they can get that kind of money for coffee, God bless them. I’m trying to help where there is no, it’s everything. Even though it’s specialty grade, it’s sold in the commodity New York Board of Trade pricing. And that just fluctuates, usually at the demise of the farmer. Yeah, yeah. I look right here in this video.
You have on your video tab under your website at the very bottom story about Nicaragua. And just looking at the video clips here of folks worshiping and you have them with their children and more, it just grabs your heart and just amazing how it must feel knowing that you’re being used of the Lord to touch people’s lives and through this business. And it’s just, just really amazing. Love seeing everybody worship there. Wow, that’s just great. Men praying together. So guys, just want to remind you, you can go below this video hunters blend, coffee.com, forward slash. And it’s got a question mark and r e f and equal sign and then awk.
Awk. So the best way is just go below the video or if you’re listening, you can just go below the podcast and that link will be there for you to click so that they’ll know that you watch this video and that you’re visiting from the LT interview is basically what we call them. So appreciate that. Appreciate you guys. Is there anything you want to say before we close in prayer? Well, I just want to thank you lt, for what you do. There’s a lot of sources out there and you know, we listen to different ones at times, but, uh, you know, some force, some, you know, social media or whatever platforms focus only on the doom and gloom and or maybe don’t.
You know, I like, I just appreciate what you do, bringing out the news and then, but bringing the hope of Jesus Christ, the victorious one, that we, the church, win, we don’t lose and we don’t walk in fear and we have the winning, we have the power, we have the authority. And so I just appreciate you bringing those two together. We can look at the facts of what’s going on around us, but the truth, capital t. The truth is, you know, Jesus is the truth and he is victorious. He is the conqueror. He conquered death and hell and we win.
And to keep our focus on that. So I just, I really appreciate, you know, what you all do there. I love, my closing statement would just be, I love mixing sacred and, and just the everyday because God is right there. Why would God create this rhododendron type bush with little red cherry fruits that should you take the pulp off and expose the bean and dry it in the sun and roast it in heat and then crush it and pour hot water over it. You can get something with so nuanced that there’s 400 different descriptors used to try to describe what one is tasting from wet dog to cigar.
And I just think of the verse, oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. He did this for our. Yeah, that verse is probably try the Lord. You’ll see he’s good, but he’s also appealing to our taste. We have a God who delights in giving his people pleasure. And encourage all your listeners to try some coffee and see that it’s good. Oh, wow. That’s a great, great parting statement. Absolutely amazing and appreciate, you guys. I think we’re going to be able to see you in the future. Is that correct? Yes, indeed. Get on the steam.
Get on the ship. So you’re going to be at sea with Lt. Are you going to hang out with us? Yeah, we’re looking forward to that. Yeah, that’s awesome. Wives with us. Oh, great. That’s good. Yeah, I can’t wait for that. It’s going to be a great time. We’re going to have. We just went over the, all of the planning, the schedule and everything, and I thought I’m not going to have enough to say we have to fill up all this time. Well, after we looked at the schedule, we’re not going to have enough time. There’s going to be tons of things to share and people to talk to and meet and greet time and stuff.
And so, yeah, I just love to have maybe four or five if they could just reprint me and put me all over the place. That’d be great. So we’re going to be really busy. Hey, also, let me just share that Mike is my brother in law and there’s three of us that that own hunter’s blend LLC. It’s our other brother in law. Remember the new heart? My Darryl and my other brother Daryl. That’s kind of what this feels like. But my two brother in laws, I married Mike’s sister, and Ken Beachy married Mike’s sister, Twyla. So Grace, Twyla and Mike are siblings and the three of us know in hunters plan, so, yeah, so all three of us are going to be on the, on the boat ride.
Oh, that’s going to be great. Now. Looking forward to that. Looking forward to that. All right, folks, so we’re going to close in prayer real quick. We’ll just definitely lift you guys up to the Lord and definitely for favor for you. All right. Heavenly Father, thank you so much once again for bringing us together by your perfect timing. So amazing. As we’ve watched so many things fall apart around us, but at the same time we think of romans 828. We know all things work together for good. To those who love the Lord, to those who are the called according to your purpose.
And so you’ve been able to masterfully put together and wake up so many people to the dangers of what the enemy has been using and against us to, to try to hurt us, hurt our businesses, hurt our lives. And you just perfectly came in, allowed podcasts to pop up, allowed companies to be able to go out there and show what they’re doing, not only the name of just the coffee for Paul and Mike and their families, but for your name and spreading the gospel and planning churches, how amazing you are to use us for that and that we can enjoin you in this work that you’re doing to change lives forever throughout this earth.
So we just ask for continued protection over hunters blend coffee, what they’re doing, how they continue to reach out to so many people and touch their lives through taste and tasting to know that you are good. We ask all this in the name of our savior, Yeshua Christ, our savior. Amen and amen. Thank you guys so much. Looking forward to talking to you again soon and really appreciate this interview. I hope you guys just continue to prosper, that’s for sure. Thank you. Thanks. Same to you. Same to you. I invite you to join me and the and we know family on a cruise to majestic, Alaska, August 11 through the 18th, 2024.
We will chart our adventure aboard the luxurious Holland America’s western, cruising us to historically historic alaskan ports like Juneau and Ketchikan, destinations renowned for their scenery, teeming with forest and wildlife, the freshest caught salmon, and other delicious cuisine, and known for the locals family charm. The Isaacs are coming, too, and we can’t wait to sing, worship and patriotic songs by this renowned award winning group. We’ll also enjoy powerful biblical messages and share life stories with my family and me, listen in on a live, live podcast recording and have Q and a time and interviews with special guests.
So visit annwinate.com and book your trip with LT and the family today..
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