Open Seas Coffee Core Values

"Why does Open Seas Coffee define itself by these three core values: intentional, interconnected, and quality-driven?" This blog has been pulled from a written interview that Bryce (owner and executive director) did with Perfect Daily Grind, in response to the question above.

It’s funny, we kind of came at these a little backwards from what I perceive most businesses do. I feel like you are supposed to set those values first and then work your business around that. In our case, we had a strong sense of what we wanted to be about and how we wanted to go about it but it felt almost too comprehensive to nail down into a simple vision. 

It took a long time to refine a big concept into a triad of three values, but ultimately, I see them intertwining to describe our ethos. Almost like three braid of a rope or something that make up who we are…or elements of a DNA helix or something. 

So, I come from a developmental social business background working in producing ceramic water filters in LDC’s (less developed countries) in South East Asia for rural use (Shout out to TerraClear Foundation for anyone who wants to dig in more). Anyway, I always loved coffee but while living there we had very good friends who were coffee producers. Based around time we spent with them I learned a lot about coffee growing, harvesting, QC, and maybe most impactful were the inequities at play. 

While working making filters we spent a lot of time talking about the difference of aid and development/social business work and the harm that dependency cycles can have. When developing our strategy for starting Open Seas we knew we wanted to address the inequities we saw our friends subject to while also being aware of dependency issues. We wanted to participate in business in a more collaborative way where we weren’t the sole party with all the power. By focusing on quality and working collaboratively towards that goal it naturally decentralizes the power dynamic and more evenly distributes it back to producers. It keeps us honest in that it allows producing partners to have a more marketable product and seek other buyers if we cease to be good partners or if our demands would become unreasonable. So, in that way quality is a mechanism for focusing us on being intentional in how we approach our (interconnected) relationships. 

In addition to believing in these concepts as best practice for how we want to approach relationships and sourcing, we also saw these same themes come back around as just good business practice. As roasters, we are realistically in the middle of the supply chain so wanted these values to run outwards from us in all directions. Back to producing and growing partners at origin but also further down the chain to our shop partners. We want to infuse intentionality into every aspect of our business, be it sourcing to training so that when a customer receives a great cup of coffee from a partner’s shop, it feels notable to them and stands out. We want to be the relational conduit between our shop partners and producing partners so when someone has a great experience from a high-quality cup they can also be interconnected back to origin and share about the producers, how its grown, who it grown by, and why they chose it as a good fit for their café. 

We also feel like that sustainability piece that grows out of connection is critical to what it means to be specialty grade or high-quality coffee. Quality isn’t just a cupping score but something that has to benefit everyone it touches from producers to the person drinking. If our lives are not a little bit better off for having worked together then it lacks a certain level of true quality, regardless of cup score.  

With that frame of mind, we carried that core set of values into our trainings, our roasting philosophy, and even customer service for wholesale clients. All of these things build on each other and hold each other in tension to help us grow into the type of business that contributes to the type of world we want to live in.  

Bryce Roszell, 2025