Candice Madison

Expertise: Q grader, Q-Arabica instructor, coffee education, coffee roasting, barista, racial equity in the coffee industry

Coffee insight: When choosing your whole bean coffee, try to purchase beans that have a roast date as close to the purchase date as possible.

Coffee fun fact: Most supertasters are women because “female bodies can give birth, and therefore we have to be able to detect poisons and things like that.”

Candice’s father was living in an apartment just off Portobello Road in London when she was a teenager. “It was very much the golden era of Portobello Road,” she says. “Lots of independent stores,” including an established coffee shop where she applied for a job.

When the manager asked about her experience—with things like using a portafilter and steaming milk—Candice admits she bluffed her way through. “Never ever ever ever touched anything but a Mr. Coffee before in my life,” she recalls.

She got the job but says her lack of experience became quickly apparent. The first time she attempted to steam milk, her boss, who was sitting on the other side of the café, called over to her that the milk was burned. Candice jokes, “I was like, ‘Does he have cameras in the milk jug? How does he know what’s going on?’” When she asked how he knew, he told her he could hear that she hadn’t put enough air in. “My mind was blown from that moment,” she says. “I wanted to know everything about coffee.”

Today, Candice is a renowned coffee roaster and consultant, a highly respected educator, and a passionate advocate for equity in the coffee industry. She serves as the Chief Coffee Officer at Rosta Caffe and is the Founder & CEO of her own coffee company, Kandake Boutique Coffees. She is a Q-Arabica Instructor for the Coffee Quality Institute and a trainer for the Specialty Coffee Association.

Candice says her passion for learning shaped her approach to coffee, and being able to teach other coffee professionals continues to fuel her own growth.

Her curiosity shaped her career from her earliest days in the coffee industry. Nine months after she started working as a barista, she began experimenting with roasting, and eighteen months later she passed her Q-Grader exam—and became one of only 12 Q Graders in the UK at the time. Less than two years after passing her Q, she was invited to train as a Q Instructor.

For Candice, stepping into her role as an educator has been one of her proudest moments. When she started her Q-Instructor training, she recalls realizing, “Now I get to teach this. Now I get to help people. And it felt really good that all of the stuff that had been poured into me, I now got to pour into other people.”

Candice’s advice can be summed up in four simple but powerful words: “Drink what you like.” She says that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with just embracing the tastes you enjoy.

“Learn about what you like, and do it unashamedly. There is nothing wrong with having your Starbucks. There is nothing wrong. It means farmers get paid. That’s all I care about. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying your Frappuccino. There’s nothing wrong with really loving a delicious single-origin pour-over. If you limit yourself, all you’re doing is limiting your experience in coffee.”

In 2020, when Candice was working as director of roasting for Royal Coffee, she organized a live webinar called “Race & Specialty Coffee,” and invited Phyllis Johnson, president of BD Imports, to join her in a discussion about the inequities Black coffee professionals faced. Thousands of viewers attended.

When Johnson launched the Coffee Coalition for Racial Equity (CCRE), an organization dedicated to creating a more equitable and racially diverse coffee industry, she invited Candice to step into a key leadership role. As part of their work, the CCRE spearheaded NKG PACE, an internship program designed to “bring more Black Americans into coffee.”

Candice says that she hopes her experiences will help more people recognize that “coffee is for everybody.”

“I just want to keep giving back and keep showing people that people like me have just as much right to be in an industry that is founded on the labor of Black and brown people,” she explains. “I think it’s really important that people like me exist and do things and are visible, because I get it all the time now, get people of color come up to me and be like, ‘I saw you years ago’… It didn’t really resonate with me how important my story was until it started to come back to me.”

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_candygram

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