In this interview, Amaris shares the beauty of slow-paced living in Puerto Rico and how it taught her to be patient throughout the phases of life. Today she is pursuing a Food Studies Master’s in Rome, Italy to enrich her passion for coffee. As a coffee expert, Amaris shares her aspirations and interests in producing sustainable and delicious coffee with intentional methods rooted in Puerto Rican culture.
Check out Amaris’s Coffee page on Instagram to keep up with her coffee discoveries and updates from around the world! https://www.instagram.com/caffeologie/
Do you want to start by talking about you and your family’s background?
I am 100% Puerto Rican, or as we say, ‘Boricua.’ Both of my parents are Puerto Rican- my dad was born and raised on the island versus my mom who would be considered first generation. My grandparents moved to the States for a bit, so even though both of my parents are Puerto Rican, their cultures are surprisingly very different from each parent. The Puerto Rican culture itself is very mixed with different cultural backgrounds like European, native, and African. It is sort of a hodgepodge culture that it is hard to explain.
Were you born in Puerto Rico or in America?
I was born in Houston, Texas, but when I was a baby, we left and moved to Puerto Rico. I lived there for about five and a half years and then we moved to Florida. I was seven years old when we left Puerto Rico so I basically grew up in Florida which is completely different than what I was used to in San Sebastian, Puerto Rico. San Sebastian is a town in the mountains, so it’s not coastal but it’s a big city for a farm town. There is a lot of coffee production, agriculture, and slow-paced living. We lived in Jacksonville for about 10 years and it was a culture shock, I think I’ve been living through culture shock all of my life. After Jacksonville, I moved to Tampa for five years, and then I moved to New York City for five more years. For the past year, I was in a lot of different states, and now I’m in Italy.
What were your core childhood years like in Puerto Rico?
Well, I grew up with chickens- my dad had the little chickens roaming around all the time. I just remember being very connected to the earth, I was always outside. I always lived in a warm climate so I didn’t see snow for the first time until I was 23 years old. In Puerto Rico, I remember being in the mountains and being able to see a lot of fruit trees around. We were always very close to the beach, so palm trees and coconuts were my favorite. I remember my dad would use the machete to knock down a coconut and give it to me to drink it straight from a straw. I remember being free, really free because when we moved to the States, it changed drastically. Then my mom was more paranoid and I wasn’t allowed to play outside the same since she was always keeping an eye on me. In Puerto Rico, there is a lot more emphasis on community versus the States where it is definitely more individualistic.
When your family moved to Florida, how did your family keep your culture alive?
I think one main way to keep a culture alive is to find your community. My grandmother and her husband were also living there (in Florida) and are both Puerto Rican from the island. We would get together with them and some of my dad’s childhood friends who lived nearby to put on huge Christmas parties. In Puerto Rico, Christmas is celebrated for 45 days I believe, which is a lot. There would be pig roasts, music, and dancing. My dad even ended up partnering on opening a Puerto Rican restaurant in Jacksonville. So again, I would say finding community is the best advice and then celebrating when you’re together. You can celebrate through food and other ways but I would say my fondest memory is Christmas.
Can you walk me through your journey leading up to coming to Rome?
I went to a four-year public state college in Tampa for my bachelor’s. Originally I wanted to go more into humanities and social sciences, but my dad didn’t really see that as a career. That’s one stigma in Latin communities, that if you’re going to get a career, it should be something super concrete like a lawyer or doctor. I ended up switching to health science since I was going to become an optometrist. Then I decided to supplement my application to become an optometrist by getting a master’s in public health. I got an MPH in health management and policy because I was going to run my own practice when I became an OD but after two years at NYU, I realized I was done with school and didn’t want to go into optometry.
After NYU I went straight into my career which was at the start of the pandemic and so I was working with COVID-19 in the hospital. Working in public health was really sad, and it was something I wasn’t really doing for myself but was doing for others because I thought that’s what a career should be. That’s when I decided I was going to pursue a passion, something for me. I always wanted to study abroad in Italy, to be frank. I also always wanted to go into food, which is why I decided to do food studies. Coming to Rome, I would always tell people I’m doing a career transition but, you can’t fully do a career transition I found. You can’t let go of your past and start brand new, it doesn’t work like that. I am constantly reminded of my public health background and asked how can I apply my previous knowledge in my employment to food education. I thought I could just let go of public health, but I’ve learned how to be adaptable but also embrace every part of my past.
So your main passion is coffee, right?
Yes, I love, love, love coffee. In many ways, that’s why I came here because I wanted to learn more about coffee. With what I’m learning right now about microeconomics, the various food systems, nutrition, and policy, I think it can all be applied to coffee. I love finding shops and specialty coffee, like single-origin blends. I hope to open up my own shop one day.
Would you like to have your own specialty/artisan coffees?
Yeah, before coming to school, I thought it’d be really cool to own from the farm to the shop. My goal was to make bird-friendly coffee, which increases biodiversity. On the coffee farm, you can grow other commodities such as fruit and cheese. There can be a canopy so the birds are able to live in the coffee fields and help fertilize the soil. They’re called Smithsonian Bird Friendly farms, and there are only a few in the world but none in Puerto Rico so I thought that would be cool to do. I’d like to run a shop that goes from a coffee shop in the morning to a more upbeat bar at night but with alcohol-infused drinks like an espresso martini, a Campari-infused espresso, or a Negroni. I think it would be great to have a space to have global or local artists come in to perform and create a really sultry, cozy type of environment. I hope to have it one day in Puerto Rico, but if I could eventually open up in other places that’d be really nice too. The goal is to still have coffee come from Puerto Rico because that’s how I keep my culture alive.
You mention patience and resilience, what is the last bit of advice that you would give to people who feel stuck where they’re at in their career or just life in general?
If you feel stuck, be patient. When you feel like you can’t go anywhere and force yourself to get out of a situation, you’re going to stress yourself out even more. You don’t want to work against the current, you have to sometimes sit still in your situation and reflect inwardly. Ask yourself why you feel stuck, or what is it that you’re not enjoying? Is it the location? Is it the subject you’re studying? Is it your community? Really reflect on where you would like to be and then when you’re able to, make a plan and execute it to start getting out of your situation. Sometimes it can be still like this but other times it can be very disruptive. You could lose a job, get evicted, or lose a family member which could be the catalyst of moving you to a new phase. Those are always unfortunate and they’re probably the toughest, but they’re also the ones that really get you to that next step way faster. Even planning in general, you can plan so much and it may not go exactly as you want so it’s important to be both patient in waiting for the right opportunity to open and then also being adaptable. But also remember it gets better, it always will.
