Maya Hartwell

Maya Hartwell spent ten years in the buying department of a mid-sized European flavour house before moving to independent procurement consulting for food manufacturers sourcing vanilla and other high-value spices directly from origin. She has negotiated supply contracts across Indonesia, Madagascar, and Uganda, and has advised clients ranging from craft extract producers to FMCG manufacturers with annual vanilla spend above USD 2 million.

Her expertise is squarely on the buyer side — the decisions, documents, and due diligence processes that determine whether an import relationship delivers what it promises. She has seen the consequences of inadequate specification writing, poor sampling protocols, and contracts that protect neither party when a shipment arrives off-grade.

At VanillaRoots, Maya provides the Western buyer perspective: the questions a European or North American importer needs answered before committing to a direct-source relationship, and the practical steps that make those relationships work reliably over multiple seasons. Her writing is the most operationally specific content on the site — grade selection maths, extract manufacturing economics, contract clause analysis, and import mistake case studies drawn from real procurement failures she has advised clients through.