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THE END. That's where I would like to begin. Habit number two in Stephen R. Covey's world-renowned book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is to "begin with the end in mind." Many of us in the specialty-coffee industry commit to this practice on a daily basis by passionately connecting coffee consumers to the product via beautiful stories of origin, roasting, and the barista craft. In some ways this final interaction between barista and customer is the culmination of countless hours of communication and care. However, for us to fully realize and maintain this connection, we must always be looking back up the supply chain to honestly evaluate and improve relationships with roasters and farmers as true business partners. With these core ideals in mind, I have been specifically exploring the partnerships between roasters and retailers: how they have changed in the last decade, what is working well, and where roasters and retailers can improve. Having worked for coffee roasters for the last 13 years, I have good idea of what a roaster expects to bring to a wholesale partnership. For example, a large national roaster I spent years with offered many amazing value-added services to its exclusive partners. Whether it's deeply discounted equipment and maintenance, barista training, cost-of-goods and margin analysis, menu and logo design, or site evaluations (not to mention coffee at a discounted rate), this type of partnership was mutually beneficial, as roasters could depend on the entirety of the retailer's coffee business in return for said services. When I first started in coffee, there was a lot wrapped up in the brand of coffee you served, and much of the quality perception of the café came from that partnership. Not a lot of people knew where coffees in the world came from or what coffees made up their blends, let alone how to push the boundaries of coffee preparation. But they did make associations with the roaster—the single roaster—whose coffee the retailer carried. In the past six years, this one inflexible concept has become elastic. Past barista competitor and owner of the three (soon to be four) BARISTA cafés in Portland, Ore., Billy Wilson was the first to tell roasters that he wanted to carry several of the best in the country, not just one of them. With the trail blazed, many café owners followed suit and began what we refer to now as carrying multiple roasters, or hosting rotating roasters. In this loose model, most cafés still maintain their major relationship with a single roaster, but offer others' coffees for select weeks or months at a time before swapping in a new one. Although many things are changing, single-roaster relationships still make up a large segment of the retail café business models today. Considering the advent of hosting rotating roasters, sticking with a single roaster for all of one's café needs might seem traditional and even antiquated for some at this point. There are still massive opportunities to build long-term success in this model, however, and it can be the best option for many cafés. I opened a café almost three years ago and chose to use only one roasting partner. To say it has been eye-opening to own and operate a retail coffee concept after working for coffee roasters for a decade is an understatement. From a roaster's perspective, it has been such an amazing asset to be able to evaluate how to best support my wholesale partners by drawing from some of my own business's obstacles, opportunities, and experience. From a retailer's perspective, I have been able to really highlight the roasting and green-coffee-sourcing practices of my roasting partner. This is part of the two-way communication we would like to promote industry-wide no matter the partnership model. In contrast to the traditional single-roaster model, where the roaster 62 barista magazine