For us is a pleasure to introduce you Manuel Alejandro Correa, he started working at Café Granja La Esperanza in 2012 as a trainer and nowadays he is our Quality Director. At the beginning it was a huge challenge for him being part of this family because he had to do big changes not just in his professional live, also in his personal live.
The first situation he had to confront was changing his residence place, he was living at Buenavista, Quindío and he move to Trujillo, Valle del Cauca, where we have two farms, Cerro Azul and La Esperanza. Manuel lived at La Esperanza farm for about two years, where he performed the job of quality promoter of the Geisha variety.
What is this role about? And Why is it important? Manu, as we know him, told us that he had to train the coffee pickers to collect the cherries at the maturity that we need, also that he had to make sure that the work of the coffee pickers was well done, validating that no uncollected fruits remain on the trees. For him this was an excellent experience because he learned much information about one of the most important varieties of CGLE.
More or less in 2015, there was an opportunity for Manuel in Caicedonia, Valle del Cauca, our main region, where we have two farms (Las Margaritas and Potosí), the quality laboratory, the main storage, and the controlled temperature storage. In this place he could be closer to his family, also he got the chance to study of new topics. Manuel told us that in his new role of quality assistant, he learned from cupping, physical analysis of the beans, profiling the coffees, and all the necessary information of the different varietals that Café Granja La Esperanza produce and offers.
After developing his first role at Caicedonia, Manuel change of job as milling analyst, where he was in charge of verifying that the characteristic of the coffee hadn’t change after the milling process. In this position he worked for about another 2 years and then he started performing as Quality Director. Nowadays he is the person in charge of the quality group, who verify each of the baches that are produce at CGLE, classify them, give them a profile and a score. This is the way how Café Granja La Esperanza guarantee that the product that is shipped to the clients is the right one.
Manuel says that for him is gratifying the opportunity that CGLE has given him and the chance to become a Q-Grader. For Manu, his studies in coffee business administration have helped him achieve his dreams, but the trust and opportunities that Café Granja La Esperanza has given him have been fundamental to achieving them. Now he would like to be able to participate in baristas competitions and continue learning about the coffee world.