A Life in Coffee with Susie Spindler
Over my 20-plus years in the specialty coffee industry, there are certain people I consider our founding leaders—people who have helped shape the coffee industry of today. Susie is certainly one of those people, as well as one of my personal idols. She is relentless in a male-dominated world. She has never let anyone tell her how things are done. In short, Susie sets the rules.
We met at a cafe in Portland on a trendy shopping street near the Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE) offices. Instead of drinking coffee, we ate lunch and talked for several hours about the history of the coffee industry.
