Virtual Tour: Atlas Coffee Importers
Virtual Tour:
Atlas Coffee Importers
NAME
Chelsey Walker-Watson (she/her)
COMPANY
Atlas Coffee Importers
POSITION/ DEPARTMENT
Sales & Marketing
DATE OF BIRTH
Oktober 15
DATE OF FIRST DAY AT NKG
September 25, 2017
WHAT DO YOU LIKE BEST ABOUT WORKING AT NKG?
I truly adore our team and am grateful that my values align deeply with the company.
Since our inception, much has changed in the global specialty coffee market, but our team has never lost sight of our founding principles and has embedded the value of mutual benefit deeply within our company culture. Over the years we’ve partnered with many great organizations doing work all along the supply chain. An early connection with the Coffee Quality Institute (CQI) and its various origin projects allowed us to be the quality consultants and import partner for many new regions and groups—notably we were the first importer to bring in full containers of specialty coffee from Myanmar to the US. We’ve supported farmer health programs, including Grounds for Health and individual cooperatives to build clinics for their members. At the other end of the chain, we have been a long-time sponsor of groups like Glitter Cat Barista, a non-profit that served members of marginalized communities with professional development and competition resources. We have also been proud to be a part of the NKG PACE Program as an additional avenue to support diversity in our industry. We have been deeply enriched by our PACE Partners’ efforts and presence, and they have made great contributions to our team.
Like the rest of our colleagues in the industry, Atlas has been tested in the last five years by the layered external challenges of COVID, the shipping crisis, high interest rates, historically-high/inverted coffee market and most recently, import tariffs. At the same time, internal changes from consolidating some functions within NGUSA, to relocating our office and launching the Digital Transformation Project have reshaped our work in many ways. Through everything, our small staff of 14 people (13 based in Washington and one in California) rely on our shared values, excellent communication, and working very intentionally as an inter-connected team to ensure that our customers receive the best coffee and best service possible.
In October 2024, we celebrated the grand opening of our new office in downtown Edmonds, a quaint coastal town north of Seattle, known for its arts scene and focus on community. Since then, we’ve enjoyed getting to know our new neighbors and walking to the beach during our lunch breaks to enjoy the spectacular views of ferries coming and going against the backdrop of the Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains.
The office was designed so that our Cupping Lab would be the very heart of the space, representing our focus on quality. In addition to our internal QC, our lab also functions as an education hub for the coffee community. We see our customers’ success as our success, and we support this by offering a variety of classes and events for coffee people. As the education landscape is evolving, so are our course offerings. We just hosted our last-ever Q-Calibration course and will soon have our first courses to feature the SCA’s new Coffee Value Assessment (CVA) curriculum. We also just hosted an F1-hybrid varietal-tasting event highlighting our membership with World Coffee Research. We hope to host more of our NKG Colleagues and invite everyone to pay us a visit!
World of Coffee opened its inaugural Asia edition in Busan, responding to the region’s rapidly developing industry. This year’s follow-up in Jakarta showed out in equally spectacular fashion from May 16 to 18, with over 400 participants drawing an international crowd in a clash of culture and coffee. The three-day affair was filled with workshops, cupping corners, and the highly-anticipated World Brewers’ Championship.
This time in our MAG, we talk about a word and concept you probably all find rather abstract and maybe also slightly over-used: change. It can cause frustration, feelings of being overwhelmed and even provoke some kind of inner resistance – if that’s you, I can definitely relate! However, I am convinced that there is not only incredible potential but also the opportunity to challenge ourselves, learn and grow to achieve meaningful progress. We do not always see how far we have come and are pretty good at overseeing past achievements. Thus, we wanted to make exactly this visible: where at NKG are stories to celebrate, successes and achievements which became reality due to open minds and new ideas?
Sometimes it is time to focus on positive news only. That’s why we want to share a lot of positive news and success stories here in our 2025 @ NKG so far update:. Congratulations, everyone!
2 Responses
love the new space ☕
Always an inspiration! Well done, team Atlas!