Joseph John

Joseph John died on 15 September 2026, aged 88. His death was reported by Daily Coffee News on 20 October 2026, and an obituary was published through the Lifemark Center at Skylawn Memorial Park in San Mateo, California. The place and cause of death were not made public.

He was survived by his wife, Urmila, his son, Melind, and his daughter in law, Steph. In his obituary the family invited those wishing to honour him to enjoy a cup of Indian coffee, suggesting roasters including Barrington Coffee Roasting, Bibo Coffee and Kaveri Coffee Works.

Joseph John was born on 14 March 1938 in Madurai, in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He studied physics, obtaining both bachelor's and master's degrees, and in 1958, at the age of 20, began work with India's atomic energy programme. He later told Fresh Cup magazine that he had trained in nuclear physics at universities in India, Sri Lanka and the United States.

In 1964 he came to the United States to study for a doctorate, part of the earliest wave of Asian immigrants after restrictive immigration laws were relaxed. At Florida State University in 1965 he met Urmila, a fellow graduate student from India. They married in 1967, and in June 1968 he received his PhD in nuclear physics from Florida State.

After his doctorate John moved to San Diego to work for Gulf General Atomic, then part of Gulf Oil and a predecessor of today's General Atomics. Much of his work there was for the United States Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Defense. When the division was sold in the early 1970s and its new owner ran into difficulty, he took on the job of rebuilding his department, which he later called his business education. In 1983 he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and worked as a business turnaround specialist until about 1991.

That year an Indian coffee grower, who knew him through a family friend, asked for help compiling a list of American importers and roasters. The task drew John and Urmila into the trade, and in 1992 they formally launched Josuma Coffee Company to import Indian coffees for the American specialty market, where the origin was then little known. Based in Menlo Park, the company dealt exclusively in Indian coffee, built direct relationships with estates and sold both green and roasted beans to roasters and coffee houses across the United States and Canada. John also served as an unofficial adviser to the Coffee Board of India on growing its share of the American market, and Barth Anderson, co-founder of Barrington Coffee Roasting Company, credited him with introducing him to Indian specialty coffee in 1996.

In the mid 1990s, experimenting in his garage, John developed an espresso blend made only from Indian beans as proof to roasters of what Indian coffee could do. Cafe owners asked to buy it, and as Malabar Gold Espresso it became Josuma's flagship product. He was an outspoken advocate for using high quality robusta in espresso blends, a view that challenged the prevailing attitudes of American specialty coffee.

From 2002 he wrote widely for trade publications about espresso extraction and blending and lectured at Coffee Fest and other industry events, where thousands of existing and would be cafe owners attended his class Espresso and Coffee: More Different Than You Think. Roast magazine published his two part article on espresso blending in 2008. He retired in 2017, and in 2018 signed Josuma up as an early supporter of the UC Davis Coffee Center, where a conference room bears the company's name. In 2023 he published Creating a Perfect Espresso, gathering most of his writing and teaching in one book.

John and Urmila, whom he met as a graduate student at Florida State University, were married for 59 years and built Josuma together; between them they held two MBAs, according to the company. Their son, Melind, was born in 1972. Melind and his wife, Steph, went on to manage Josuma, which remained family owned and operated.

John is credited with helping to establish Indian coffee as a recognised origin in American specialty coffee at a time when few roasters offered it, and with influencing both American roasters and producers in India. His Malabar Gold Espresso, his lectures and his writing brought a scientist's rigour to espresso, and Josuma's support for the UC Davis Coffee Center helped build a home for academic coffee research.