Fresh Cup Magazine | June 2016

COFFEE SPANISH | KYLE ANDERSON | SURVIVING A REMODEL | COFFEE PRICES | JUICE | CASH ONLY?

June 2016 » freshcup.com

CAFÉ PARTNER Opening a café within another business.

Page 68

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Dallas’s OAK LAWN COFFEE Page 42

freshcup.com | November 2014

T H E M AGA Z I N E FO R S P E C I A LT Y C O F F E E & T E A P R O F E S S I O N A L S S I N C E 1 9 9 2

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FEATURES

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June 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine » Vol. 25 » No. 6

54 68 44 DO YOU KNOW KYLE ANDERSON? The co-owner of Baratza never expected his grinders to become café staples.

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BY CORY ELDRIDGE

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BRAND CONSTRUCTION

GET JUICED

CASH IS KING?

PARTNERING FOR PROFIT

Before you ask customers to pardon your dust, consider how a remodel can distinguish your brand identity.

Fresh, unpasteurized juice has never been so readily available or in demand. Is it a fit for your shop?

Is there space for a cash only café, or are minimum charges worth imposing on your customers? Should you even take cash at all?

Coffee and tea companies team with retailers.

BY ELLIE BRADLEY

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June 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

BY CORY ELDRIDGE

BY SUSAN JOHNSTON TAYLOR

BY EMILY MATRAS

DEPARTMENTS June 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine » Vol. 25 » No. 6

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Slavery in coffee; grinding science; coffee yeast; La Marzocco and Counter Culture’s new digs.

Speaking the Language of Coffee

by Andy Newbom and Andrew Russo

THE FILTER

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THE WHOLE BEAN

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BEHIND THE BAR Local Coffee San Antonio

by Cory Eldridge

NINE BARS Three (or Four) Real Ways to Be More Hospitable

by Cody Kirkland 40

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ORIGIN

Merch Madness

The Ever-falling Price of Coffee

by Cory Eldridge

CAFÉ OUTFITTER

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The Overhaul: Part 2

by Brian Helfrich

Oak Lawn Coffee Dallas

by Ellie Bradley

IN HOUSE

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CAFÉ CROSSROADS

12 FROM THE EDITOR

16 CONTRIBUTORS

Origin Matters

76 COUNTER INTELLIGENCE People and products

80 ADVERTISER INDEX

78 CALENDAR Trade shows and events

FROM THE EDITOR

Origin Matters

WHEN I ATTENDED MY FIRST SCAA EXPOSITION

CONNECT WITH US

Fresh Cup Magazine

@FreshCupMag

@FreshCupMag

ON THE COVER: Café Partnerships Ritual Coffee Roaster’s location inside of San Francisco’s Flora Grubb Gardens.

Photo courtesy of Ritual Coffee Roasters CORY ELDRIDGE, EDITOR cory@freshcup.com

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PHOTO O F CO RY BY CYNTH IA M EAD ORS, TO P RIGHT PHOTO BY DAN LEIF

in 2014, I had been Fresh Cup’s editor for just a few months. I had been impressed and delighted to see that so much attention within the specialty industry went to farmers, and this was reinforced at the show. But as I had more and more conversations about connecting farmers to specialty coffee, a sinking feeling took hold. What about the pickers? Where was the discussion about laborers? The conversation about who benefits from specialty coffee seemed to have stopped before reaching those who needed it most.

I wasn’t the only person feeling that lack.

At this year’s show, the role and state of farmworkers came up again and again, and with urgency. An entire session of the Re:co symposium was devoted to coffee laborers. An Expo panel titled “Who Wants to Pick Coffee?” included fieldworker Mario Antonio Gonzalez, whose words and tears about the hardship faced by him and other workers was wrenching. That week, the SCAA released a white paper called A Blueprint for Farmworker Inclusion.

The paper is worth your attention, and this sentence sums it up well: “Farmworker engagement and empowerment represents the next frontier in the social impact of specialty coffee and an opportunity to invite tens of millions of farmworkers into the growing community of people whose lives have been positively affected by specialty coffee.”

I wholly agree with this, but I’d add a clarifying line: if we don’t do this, specialty coffee as we know it won’t exist. If we don’t find a way to make the job of picking coffee by hand on mountain slopes worth it, these millions of people are going to find other jobs and many already have. The cornucopia of coffees we love will be thinned.

I don’t think that’s grokked by many in our industry, and I think many other issues in origin countries are just as poorly understood. I know I have massive gaps in my knowledge. This is a problem, and it’s one I want Fresh Cup to address on a regular basis.

To do that, we’ve launched a new column called, simply, Origin.

Every month, we’ll dive into an issue to help you better understand what is happening in the places where coffee is grown. Often, these aren’t feel-good topics, but that makes them critical. As often as we can, we’ll point you to other resources and organizations that are working on that month’s topic or who have a deep knowledge of it.

In the inaugural column, I look at what I currently believe is the prime factor driving farmers and pickers away from coffee: the ever-falling price of coffee.

I invite you to tell me what you think of these subjects. If there are issues at origin you’d like to see covered, please send me a note: cory@freshcup.com. I always want to hear from you.

FRESH CUP MAGAZINE THE MAGAZINE FOR SPECIALTY COFFEE & TEA PROFESSIONALS SINCE 1992

-FRESH CUP FOUNDERWARD BARBEE 1938-2006

-ADVERTISINGAdvertising Sales JAN WEIGEL jan@freshcup.com

-FRESH CUP PUBLISHINGPublisher and President JAN WEIGEL jan@freshcup.com

Ad Coordinator DIANE HOWARD adtraffic@freshcup.com Marketing Coordinator ANNA SHELTON anna@freshcup.com

-EDITORIALEditor CORY ELDRIDGE cory@freshcup.com Associate Editor ELLIE BRADLEY ellie@freshcup.com

-CIRCULATIONCirculation Director ANNA SHELTON anna@freshcup.com

-ARTArt Director CYNTHIA MEADORS cynthia@freshcup.com

-ACCOUNTINGAccounting Manager DIANE HOWARD diane@freshcup.com

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD DAVID GRISWOLD Sustainable Harvest Coffee Importers

ANUPA MUELLER Eco-Prima

CHUCK JONES Jones Coffee Roasters

BRAD PRICE Monin Gourmet Flavorings

JULIA LEACH Toddy

BRUCE RICHARDSON Elmwood Inn Fine Teas

COSIMO LIBARDO Toby’s Estate Coffee

MANISH SHAH Maya Tea Co.

BRUCE MILLETTO Bellissimo Coffee Advisors

LARRY WINKLER Torani

SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION Fresh Cup Magazine is distributed worldwide each month by post. Fresh Cup Magazine is available by subscription: price—one year U.S. $48, two years U.S. $68, one year Canada and Mexico $55, other countries $85 per year. Single issues—$5 each, plus shipping. (Checks must be drawn on a U.S.-affiliated bank.) Canada Post International Publications Mail Product-Sales Agreement No. 40025272.

PLEASE ALLOW 6–8 WEEKS FOR DELIVERY OF FIRST ISSUE. Copyright ©2016 by Fresh Cup Publishing Company Inc. Contents may not be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. ISSN: 1094-8228

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CONTRIBUTORS KAITLIN THROGMORTON Kaitlin Throgmorton is a freelance writer based in Raleigh, North Carolina. She’s worked in marketing, and that knowledge comes handy in her piece on how to incorporate merchandise that complements and boosts your café’s identity. Her article “MERCHANDISE” on PAGE 51 gives a primer on selling more than drinks.

BRIAN HELFRICH In April, Brian Helfrich began telling the story of Summit Coffee Company’s transformation into a business that refused to accept the status quo as an operating standard. This month, he details the second installment of Summit’s overhaul: getting the staff onboard. Helfrich is the co-owner of Summit, located in Davidson, North Carolina. Check out IN HOUSE for part two of his story on PAGE 30.

ANDY NEWBOM & ANDREW RUSSO In this month’s WHOLE BEAN (PAGE 34), Andy Newbom and Andrew Russo explore the intricacies of communicating at origin, with an emphasis on Coffee Spanish. The two wrote Coffee for Spanish Buyers, a new guide to help overcome communication barriers at origin. “At its heart specialty coffee is about people, and the key to opening the door to people is language.”

SUSAN JOHNSTON TAYLOR It’s rare to find cafés that are cash only.

In fact, many are steering away from cash altogether. On PAGE 60, Susan Johnston Taylor writes about changes in payment methods in “CASH IS KING?” Taylor is a freelance writer who’s covered small business for the Atlantic’s CityLab, the Boston Globe, Cheers Magazine, Dance Retailer

News, and Pizza Today.

CODY KIRKLAND How do you get an objective perspective of hospitality? Go where no one knows you, order a coffee, and observe. In this month’s NINE BARS, Cody Kirkland tells about the take-home messages he learned from his experience as a customer in Denver (PAGE 38). Kirkland is the manager of the Rose Establishment in Salt Lake City.

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EMILY MATRAS Leasing a stand-alone space isn’t the only option for cafés looking to initiate or expand their business. In “CAFÉS IN OTHER SHOPS,” Emily Matras describes how coffee and tea companies have reached new audiences through strategic business partnerships (PAGE 68). Matras is a freelance writer based in Washington, DC, who covers food, business, and lifestyle topics.

The FILTER A Fine Blend of News and Notes

n April, Catholic Relief Services’ Coffeelands Program released a report with the fairly wonky title Farmworker Protections and Labor Conditions in Brazil’s Coffee Sector. Its sub-title got more to the point: Exploring Isolated Cases of Modern Slavery. It would be an overstatement to say a bomb was dropped when Coffeelands director Michael Sheridan presented the report at

In 2013, Brazil’s Ministry of Labor and Employment updated its Dirty List of employers who were discovered to hold people in slavery, or, more legally accurate, in “conditions analogous to slavery.” This means workers are subjected to debilitating workdays, degrading conditions, debt bondage, and forced labor, all of which break Brazilian law. That year, fifteen coffee farms were on the list.

The report stresses that these fifteen farms represent a fraction of a percent of Brazil’s 287,000 farms. This is a problem that can be fixed. the Re:co symposium (the gist of the research had been known for a while), but hearing the words coffee and slavery spoken together always sends a jolt.

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On the fifteen farms, the number of people rescued by the ministry ranged from six to seventy-five, with the average number in the mid twenties.

CRS teamed with the non-profit Repórter Brasil to dig into the list. The team found that the people most at risk are impoverished, migrant, AfroBrazilian men, the vast majority of whom are descendants of slaves. Most of them were recruited by labor brokers, a common and often exploitative means of labor acquisition across coffee lands. The farms most likely to enslave workers are mid-sized farms on hilly terrain that precludes mechanization, making them more dependent on labor. Few of the employers who enslaved their workers were prosecuted.

While each farm violated the law in its own way, one commonality was none supplied their workers protective gear while applying pesticides. If it was available at all, the workers had to buy it. Living conditions were also universally deplorable, filthy, and unsanitary. Some workers were overseen by armed foremen. Debt bondage and confiscation of IDs was rampant. The

P HOTO BY DAN LEIF

Slavery in Coffee

Fresh Cup Magazine « freshcup.com

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report says that when ministry inspectors arrived at one farm, it was pouring rain and the workers had no rain gear. Some even had no shoes.

As awful as this is, the report stresses that these fifteen farms represent a fraction of a percent of Brazil’s 287,000 farms. While there are certainly more farms enslaving workers, even if the problem was 100 times worse than reported, that would still ensnare fewer than 1 percent of Brazil’s farms. That’s not meant to minimize the issue, but shows this isn’t a problem saturating the industry. It also shows that with enough effort, this is a problem that can be fixed.

Looking toward a solution ties in with one of the most important recommendations that Sheridan makes: Brazil should not be punished for this. On first look, that seems backwards. Shouldn’t we punish a country that doesn’t protect its citizens? The impulse makes sense, but it’s wrong on at least two fronts. First, boycotting a country’s products often hurts those least able to absorb the economic pain. In our industry, that means farmworkers. Second, and more importantly, we only know about these travesties because Brazil has laws against them, and then enforced those laws by investigating farms and reporting violators. Punishing them would tell Brazilians, especially coffee farmers, that this transparency is harmful; that’s certainly the lesson other countries would learn.

We need to applaud Brazil for this type of work, and encourage other countries to follow. Even with that positive message, Brazilian farmers will bristle at the word slavery. At a forum following Sheridan’s Re:co lecture, an upset Brazilian farmer defended his country and fellow farmers, asking why his country, which has robust and enforced labor rules compared to many coffee origins, was being singled out. It’s an unfortunate response, but a natural one.

Well before CRS released their report, Brazil’s labor transparency was under threat. In 2014, a construction lobby successfully petitioned Brazil’s Supreme Court for an injunction against the Dirty List, arguing it violated the due process protections of businesses. While the information that would have been released in the Dirty List has found ways to get to the public, there’s no timeline for the injunction to be lifted. It’s proof of how fragile transparency can be.

Eradicating slavery and forced labor should be a priority for our industry. Two of the declared hopes of the report are to “raise our collective ‘farmworker IQ’” and to bring farmworkers into the conversation about sustainability. How the workers who picked our coffee were treated should be a question we ask about every coffee we buy.

—Cory Eldridge

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From the Lab: Coffee and Cocoa

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here might be a scientific reason that coffee pairs so well with chocolate—and yeast is to thank. A study published in Current Biology looked at the influence of human migration on the global distribution of yeast. Along with fermenting wine and beer, yeast is also used widely in the production of coffee and chocolate.

To gain a better understanding of the genetic diversity of yeasts around the world, lead researcher Catherine Ludlow and her team embraced their restrictive travel budget and began culturing the yeasts contained in coffee and cacao from various regions of the world. Ludlow and her team isolated sixty-seven yeast strains from unroasted coffee beans from countries that included Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, Mexico, Kenya, Ethiopia, Yemen, and Indonesia.

ILLUSTRATIO N BY BILL AUTOM ATA/FLICK R

NORTH, YEAST, SOUTH, WEST: Visualization of a mitochondrial chromosome from the genome of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, or brewer’s yeast, which can be isolated from unroasted coffee beans.

The researchers found three known yeast populations from which all new populations had derived: a North American oak population, a European strain, and an Asian variety. Coffee and cacao yeasts appear to be the result of genetic combinations of strains from each of these known populations.

While the study didn’t specifically address how yeast contributes to the flavor of coffee, yeasts have been linked with microbial terroir, raising questions for future research on the effect of yeast on the flavor profiles of coffee.

—Ellie Bradley

Fresh Cup Magazine « freshcup.com

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Coffee Professionals Team-Up to Publish Study on Grinding

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ver wondered what would happen if you froze coffee with liquid nitrogen then ground it in a Mahlkönig EK 43? A team led

by Christopher Hendon explored this scenario in an effort to determine how grinding roasted coffee is affected by bean origin and temperature. The study, published in Scientific Reports, was conducted by a team of coffee professionals, including Lesley and Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood, Matthew Perger, Stephen Leighton, and a fleet of multidisciplinary scientists across the globe.

The team conducted two experiments. In the first they wanted to see if origin or processing method affected a ground coffee’s particle size distribution. In the second, they wanted to see what temperature did to distribution.

In all of the grinds, the team found that the 99 percent of particles produced by the grinder were smaller than 100 micrometers (which is the diameter of an average human hair). While the big particles make up a large proportion of

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coffee mass, the small particles contribute 75 percent of the accessible surface area, making them the determining factor for the rate of extraction.

The first experiment was pretty definitive: the grinds of coffee from four origins and two processing methods were statistically indistinguishable. All the coffees ground the same.

Given the coffees’ similarities, one origin was selected for the temperature experiment. Roasted beans were placed in liquid nitrogen, dry ice, the freezer, and on the countertop. Then they were ground. Samples were controlled for condensation and ground using a Malhkönig EK 43 because its design minimizes the time between dropping coffee into the hopper and grinding. At freezer temperature and below, the coffee ground in a more uniform manner, producing a narrow distribution of fine particulate sizes.

At ambient temperatures, the coffee fractured in a less predictable manner.

So a group of scientists froze coffee, ground it, and measured it with

lasers—so what? While origin and processing method don’t influence how coffee grinds, temperature does.

Looking at coffee at a microscopic level showed that the common café practice of adjusting burr aperture throughout the day might not be enough; grinding finer with warm burrs will not produce the same result as grinding coarser with cold burrs. More importantly, however, is that grinding coffee at realistic temperatures, such as those found in cafés, poses significant challenges for quality assurance.

The take-home message: though freezing can be an effective method to mediate consistency, don’t start freezing all your shots just yet. Frozen beans break into smaller pieces, which means with the same recipe, the rate of over-extraction is increased. Coffee is hard to work with at room temperature, and as the burrs and weather get warmer leading into summer, espresso quality becomes increasingly variable.

—Ellie Bradley

G RAP H BY C HRISTO P HER HEND ON

THE PARTICLES BETWEEN US: The particle size distribution of ground caturra and bourbon beans, from Las Ilusiones in Guatemala, shows a temperature dependence. At cold temperatures the counts of particles are tightly distributed.

The spread of the particle counts increase proportionally to temperature up to room temperature, where the grind profile shows a divergent particle size distribution.

Fresh Cup Magazine « freshcup.com

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Counter Culture’s New Headquarters

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ounter Culture Coffee has a new headquarters in its hometown of Durham, North Carolina. Architect Matthew Konar repurposed an old manufacturing plant and grain mill to become Counter Culture’s new roastery, corporate offices, and hands-on training center. The plans focused on sustainable design and included materials like reclaimed wood bleachers, a custom water filtration system, and energy-efficient appliances and lighting. The training center will serve local coffee professionals and the public, providing hands-on coffee education that includes classes, certifications, and weekly tastings; the training area also includes a dedicated lab space where participants can practice brewing and espresso skills.

—Ellie Bradley

La Marzocco Opens Café in Seattle

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hy make fine espresso machines if you can’t show them off? La Marzocco opened their first café and showroom, sharing a building with local radio station KEXP on the Seattle Center campus. The combined café and showroom will serve as a foundation to launch the company’s new Roasters in Residence program, which will invite the world’s leading coffee companies and individuals to participate in month-long residencies at the café. Visiting residents

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will curate the coffee menu and integrate their educational programming within the space to engage the local and coffee community. The space offers a fully functional café, open daily, and a showroom with La Marzocco’s commercial and home espresso machines. The showroom also includes a glimpse into the company’s historical archives, allowing guests to explore vintage machines and products from the last ninety years.

—Ellie Bradley

Grounds for Health works in Latin America and Africa to reduce the incidence of cervical cancer among women in developing countries. By partnering with coffee cooperatives and communities, Grounds for Health ensures women in coffee-growing regions have access to the best possible care, including screenings and treatments.

Grounds for Health officially expanded its East Africa program to include Kenya.

They will focus on Nyeri County, the country’s largest producer of high-quality coffee, where approximately 53 percent of the labor force works on coffee farms, tea plantations, or in another agricultural industry.

TO P RIG HT: P HOTO CO URTESY O F CO UNTER C ULTURE C OFFEE; BOTTOM LEFT : PHOTO BY JERE MY BITTE RMAN

GROUNDS FOR HEALTH KENYA

The Recess: Owner Robby Grubbs wanted to keep equipment off the bar, so the Mahlkönig Peak grinders were set in a recess, along with syrups, a scale, and a ticket printer.

Director of training Brandon Acuña loves that printer.

“I don’t know how we would do anything without it.”

New Plans: This café didn’t start with a Modbar in the plans, but extensive testing at their roastery lab convinced Grubbs to bring it in.

That changed the design of the bar, which now includes custom, woven-brass drip trays, which in turn inspired brass accents throughout the café.

Close Module, Warm Cups: To keep the espresso modules (the black boxes) close to the groupheads, they went under the bar. To keep the counter clutter-free, ceramic cups went on the modules, which warms them the way a traditional machine would.

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Steam Station: When things get busy at Local, one or two baristas steam milk while another pulls shots. A separate steam station keeps those crews out of each other’s way.

To-go Cups: Where to put to-go cups?

“This is probably the thing we talk about the most,” says Acuña. These dispensers are in all of Local’s cafés, and this location has three (the others are hidden in this photo).

Pour-over: This station, set on a slightly lower counter, is the bar’s visual anchor.

A gorgeous, brass V60 filter holder is the closest thing any bar has had to a hood ornament.

(Happy) Milk Accident: This bin was meant to hold pitchers. Then Acuña realized it could hold milk, two gallons of it, along with three alternative milk boxes.

It has its own drain.

The Island: A two-door bar fridge with milk, water for iced americanos, and seltzer for espresso service is housed under the island. Acuña mandated the counter stay clean.

Toddy on Tap: Cold-brew coffee is kegged and run through a tap system next to the POS, an easy turn-andpour for the cashier.

EK and Ice: Local started as a multiroaster, and along with three of their own coffees they still feature a guest roaster. All the coffees are pre-dosed and ground on this EK 43. Next to it, an ice bin is filled from an icemaker in the back of the café.

Multi-POS: Learning from an older Local café, a second receipt printer sits under the main POS. When lines form, a floating employee takes a second iPad POS and rings up orders that the main cashier fills.

BEHIND the BAR Local Coffee San Antonio

» by Cory Eldridge «

Batch-brew Bar: The Fetco batch brewer is kept out of the way on the back bar, but close in for the cashier.

P HOTO BY PAIG E GEFFK EN

Pastries on Top of Pastries: The case holds croissants, muffins, macarons, bars, and even “Pop Tarts” from Bakery Lorraine.

The drawers underneath hold extra pastries. Fun fact: pastries served in bags are tax free in Texas.

Light Box: These boxes send a spotlight down on the bar, giving it a show feel.

Acuña says, “At night it’s really gorgeous.”

This big one doubles as a menu board.

ne of the best parts of opening a new café is the opportunity to take the features of your older cafés and fix the things that aren’t working and refine those that are. It’s a chance to game out and experiment with new ideas, especially those that would require a remodel in the established shops.

That’s what Robby Grubbs enjoyed most when he and his team at Local Coffee were neck deep in planning and building out their newest shop near the University of Texas’s Health Science Center in San Antonio. It’s been the best part of opening each of his four shops. “I’m excited to do it again,” he says.

“There are so many lessons we learn each time we do this.”

Happily for Grubbs and Local’s director of training, Brandon Acuña, most of the lessons their last café taught them were the positive kind. The last café Local opened is in the Pearl Brewery building, itself dab in the middle of a food paradise, and lines out the door are a constant. Handling that kind of volume while maintaining a high level of coffee led them to have one employee float between stations, often working as a second cashier by going down the line with an iPad to take orders. They’ll also put two baristas on milksteaming duty while a third pulls shots.

“It’s about putting things where they’re most efficient,” Grubbs says. “Our Pearl location has so much influence on our Med Center.”

One clear example is the steaming station, which unites two wands instead of having them flank the three Modbar groupheads. Another is placing the cashier’s duties—the point-of-service, pastries, and batch brew—on the opposite side of the bar. That keeps the cashier and baristas out of each others’ way.

Lessons can be overlearned though. Building a bar in the wake of a shop that regularly sees a thirty-deep line all day might lead to overkill. “You can set up a bar to have five people, but when you’ve got a slow shift with two people it might not work so well,” Grubbs says.

What can be as exciting as trying out new ideas is bringing those to the older cafés. Acuña took a small, custom-built rack from Local’s sibling roastery, Merit Coffee, and hung it from a basin at their steaming station to hold towels. It was perfect. “That’s going to show up in all our cafés,” he says.

Evaluating your work flow, finding better ways to do things, discovering a killer way to store towels—this is what a new shop can offer. When it’s approached with care, it leads to a pretty sweet bar.

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Café OUTFITTER: Merch Madness Drinks and food are just one element of branding; retail items also tell customers a lot about who you are as a company. Branded merchandise helps curate the image you want to project to each new face that steps through your door. Whether you’re into snapback hats, stickers, travel mugs, buttons, or loyalty programs, the items you choose to sell should have intention behind them.

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4 2

1) RETAIL MUGS Drinkware is a good place to launch your merchandising segment. Reusable drinkware encourages sustainable practices, promotes your brand, and gives your customers a friendly reminder of your café each time they use the mug. These travel-friendly vessels from RETAIL MUGS get your logo onto a product and into the hands of your regulars. retailmugs.com 2) TOTE-ALLY AWESOME Coffee pairs just as well with tote bags as it does with pastries and indie music. HEART had these totes specially designed by their friend Drew Steadham at MAKE IT GOOD, keeping consistent with their dedication to local, hand-crafted work. Whether you choose to partner with a local artist or stick with a classic logo, offering a branded tote shows your customers you care about helping them get through their busy day. makeitgood.com

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3) LOOKS GOOD ON YOU, THOUGH Cultivate loyalty among your customers by lending a helping hand on bad hair days. Sweet snapbacks like these from DARK HORSE COFFEE ROASTERS capitalize on cool factor through thoughtful branding. Dark Horse went straight to the hat experts to have these made, seeking the design expertise of HEADLINE CAPS and NEW ERA to bring their hat dreams to life. headlinecaps.com, neweracap.com 4) 33 BOOKS CO. Loyalty programs got their name for a reason. These tasting journals from 33 BOOKS CO. are ideal for encouraging community engagement in independent shops, multi-roaster cafés, and cupping labs. Create social media tie-ins or build an incentive program for frequent flyers. With a mini flavor wheel and room for notes on thirty-three coffees, what better way to invite customers to learn more about your offerings?

33 Books offers both branded and standard designs.

33books.com

In HOUSE

am a fundamental believer in change, and I try to run Summit Coffee with that in mind.

Convincing myself and my partners in 2014 that our coffee program was in dire need of an overhaul was relatively easy, as I outlined in part one of this case study. Getting our staff onboard with a fundamental shift in how we operate our cafés was a bit more of an obstacle.

My predominant leadership skill, according to Tom Rath’s StrengthsFinder analysis, is as an activator.

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Which is a simple way to summarize my belief that the business will be judged not by what we say and what we think but by what we get done. I was also aware, however, that our coffee shop had blossomed into a coffee business, and retraining a staff of thirty-six could not—and certainly should not—happen overnight.

Here I sit, twenty-four months later, on the other side of this transformation, having learned and relearned that in order to activate a staff to change, you are only as good as the people who surround you. Step one

is, and always will be, finding and empowering these people.

Enter Evan Pollitt in February 2014, the first employee I ever recruited. I knew Evan as a regular customer, a mustached man with an obvious knowledge of coffee and an even more obvious awareness of craft. Evan had no professional experience in coffee prior to his hiring, but I knew we needed to think—and hire—outside the box to help steer us in a new direction.

Evan shared my newfound passion that being good wasn’t good enough.

P HOTO BY FABIAN BLA NK

The Overhaul: Part 2, Asking The Right Questions » By Brian Helfrich

That while we were sourcing great coffee, our brewing and preparation fell short. Thus, despite being the greenest employee on staff, Evan dove headfirst into SCAA reading materials, Counter Culture Coffee trainings, and catalog cuppings.

When our previous director of coffee left the business that June, we made a choice—let’s reward ingenuity and foster a culture of improvement by naming Evan his replacement, and let’s work together to bring about the transition necessary at Summit Coffee. Let’s invest in building a leadership team. Let’s make careers out of coffee, not only for Evan, myself, and for my brother, Tim, but also for Andrew Kelleher and Lilly Wilson, two wicked-smart Davidson College graduates who could partner to remake a coffee business.

My two-year-old daughter is in the “why” phase of life, and I love it because it reminds me so dearly of us in 2014, as we were midway through step two: question everything.

indicates we care about everything we sell. And if we don’t care about it, we shouldn’t sell it.

As most shop owners realize, it’s really expensive to train an employee properly. It’s spending money on non-revenuegenerating work. It’s not just the trainee, but it’s the trainer. It’s also the effort, the energy. And it’s coffee and milk.

So much coffee and milk were harmed during the remaking of Summit Coffee. This is step three.

Throughout this process, we have spent tens of thousands of dollars just on training. Yes, let’s send eight employees two hours away for an all-day espresso class. Let’s

We believe in action, in the process, in putting ourselves out there on the blind road to excellence.

Why do we use a timer grinder, instead of a scale, for our batch brewing? Why do we grind coffee at that setting? Is our coffee brewed at the proper ratio? Why do we intentionally over-extract espresso for blender drinks? Why do we have twentyfour syrup options? Why does our twelve-ounce latte have only one shot? Why do we have a twentyounce cappuccino?

It’s staggering, in hindsight, all of the little changes we’ve made in two years. But we believe in action, in the process, in putting ourselves out there on the blind road to excellence. Yes, how we extract espresso for a frappe is important because it

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buy better scales and better grinders and more grinders. Let’s buy a La Marzocco espresso machine just for staff education, because we all know training while trying to serve isn’t a healthy recipe. Let’s take one Counter Culture

in 2016. I chose patience. I hate inactivity. I hate indecision. But how can you guide a staff this big to forget and then relearn everything about coffee without some patience? You can’t.

Step four.

It’s been exhausting and exhilarating, trying to uncover a passion for craft in each one of us. It’s taken a whole lot of patience, a whole lot of money, a whole lot of questions, and a whole lot of great people. coffee at a time and, gram by gram, let’s figure it out.

When you have thirty-six employees, it takes time.

At a meeting of our leadership team this January, we each chose a word to help guide us professionally

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When we made the decision in early 2015 to open a roasting segment of our business, we did so because we wanted to be more intimate with the coffee process. With that comes an inherently deeper care for what coffees you source, how they’re roasted

and, ultimately, how they’re prepared for the customer. And that requires a deeper investment in each person who works for Summit Coffee.

At our first all-staff cupping, when we debuted our new catalog to our entire staff (we made a cold turkey swap to our own roasted coffee), one team member described a Guatemalan as “breakfast cereal.” Another could only find the word “bold” for our darkest roast, and a third said, “I don’t really like coffee.” Holy expletive, I thought, we have miles to go before I sleep.

Rome, as they say, was not built in a day. Nor is a coffee business. And, eleven months after that first cupping, our staff has been retrained entirely.

It’s been exhausting and exhilarating, trying to uncover a passion for craft in each one of us. It’s taken a whole lot of patience, a whole lot of money, a whole lot of questions, and a whole lot of great people.

Next month, I’ll tell you how our customers took the change.

The WHOLE BEAN Speaking the Language of Coffee » By Andy Newbom and Andrew Russo anguage is crazy. Almost as crazy as coffee people. But the language of coffee has its own madcap cadence.

In every industry and market the lingua franca is often a complex mashup of technical jargon, local input, and global agreement. All of us who call the wonderful world of specialty coffee home know that we have our own language that can easily cause confusion and division when misunderstood or misapplied. But for those of us who work with coffee professionals on the coffee-origin side in Latin America, there is an additional layer of communication challenge. The language of coffee in Latin America is Spanish. This “Coffee Spanish” doesn’t abide by simple Spanish translations.

Success in coffee is predicated on knowing both technical jargon and social niceties that

More often than not it is a tangled web of jargon, slang, and colloquialisms sprinkled with enough regional and country differences to make your head spin. These language differences can make or break relationships and business agreements.

As coffee professionals on the buying side (buyers, roasters, baristas, importers, exporters, etc.), the final handshake is the culmination of a long series of events. It might involve

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hours of air travel, hundreds of miles of driving down dusty roads, hiking the farms, and finally cupping the coffee. Success in coffee is predicated on knowing both technical jargon and

social niceties that build relationships.

A myriad of challenges awaits the coffee professional aiming to bring home the pride of a producer. All the hard work, dedication, and relationship

C HRIS RYAN

build relationships.

building can be shattered with a misunderstood technical processing term or poor understanding of cultural and societal traditions. The intricate details that play a hand in negotiations and relationships are some of the primary challenges for the vast majority of coffee professionals. It is more than a simple lack of Spanish or English fluency, but comes down to understanding the coffee-centric technical language used in both English and Spanish. Knowing what the local preferences are for appearance, conversation, and business often play unseen, albeit powerful, roles.

Communication is a tricky subject in Latin America. Green buyers and drinkers from consuming countries bring with them their own tasting lexicon and grading standards. And often the words and phrases they have learned in other producing countries.

Though sometimes understood by larger, more storied operations, these items rarely translate for the farmers, millers, and other men and women making the daily operation run. Scouting for a new relationship and dashing off into the mountains of, say, Bolivia without understanding the differences in language, grading, and growing that exist there will torpedo any chance of establishing a meaningful relationship. Take, for example, interpretations of weight and distance. A quintal is a Latin American unit of measure with different meanings to different people in the supply chain depending on a number of technical factors and math equations. Assuming it means one thing in negotiations when, to the producer, it means something else, can strain relationships, logistics, and financial agreements.

A simple translation of the term morteador in Mexico may be understood, but applied in Peru the producer could, at best, be confused and, at worst, be insulted that you wish he would destroy his coffee. Over years of traveling to coffee-growing communities and attempting to communicate with people at every point

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SPANISH TERMS TO KNOW Here are a few Coffee Spanish words and phrases that will help you build bridges whether you are visiting origin countries or simply exchanging emails or tweets. You won’t be a fluent Spanish speaker, but as Edwin Martinez of Onyx Coffee says maybe it will help you “look a little less foolish.”

• mas o menos = more or less. But really: I will try; it will be sorta close to what we just sorta agreed to; and other wonderful ideas.

• está bien = it’s OK. But really: chillout, relax, don’t worry, I forgive you, it’s cool; invariably leads to sharing a beer & laughing.

• chivo/chido = cool. But know which version each country uses as using the wrong one is an insult.

• Me gusta mucho su café! = I like your coffee!

• beneficio humido/seco. In most Latin American countries (but not all) these are the terms for a wet mill/dry mill.

• pergamino/cafe seco = parchment coffee (coffee with yellow husk still on).

• oro/cafe verde = green coffee. Oro is gold because green coffee is like gold!

along the coffee supply chain, we have found that communities often use very different words and phrases for the exact same technical terms involved in coffee from seed to cup.

Many of these words defy literal translation, resulting in frustration.

It is important to understand the culture and try to be the best damn Ecuadorian or Salvadoran or Mexican you can be when visiting. Leave your American, British, or Korean world behind and step into the shoes of your hosts. Drink the local beer, visit local festivals and shops, and most importantly, express sincere gratitude for the time spent and people met during your journey. In other words, lighten up and dive into the local culture.

Many of the experts and producers we spoke with in producing countries could not express this enough.

“Don’t pick your nose at a meeting,” writes Luis Rodrigues of Caferium in

El Salvador, “and always bring a little present for your host.” You should know that everyone loves coffee Tshirts. Bring a few from home and a nice selection of coffees from remote regions. You will win coffee friends for life.

Coffee friends are the best friends to have. Improving your understanding of the language of coffee is a killer foundation for any coffee professional. Whether you are a green coffee buyer, roaster, barista, café owner, importer, or production bagger, it behooves you to learn Spanish as a language and, as importantly, to learn Coffee Spanish. Knowledge and application of the social norms and cultural variations of the regions in coffee lands will build meaningful coffee relationships that last.

At it’s heart, specialty coffee is about people, and the key to opening the door to people is language.

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NINE BARS Three (Or Four) Real Ways to Be More Hospitable » By Cody Kirkland s a barista, it’s easy to obsess over and improve drink quality. But hospitality—how you shape your customers’ experience—is equally important as any beverage, regardless of its quality.

Improving your skills in terms of hospitality can be tricky, though. There is no recipe or flavor wheel to refer to when adjusting your customer service. Behind the bar, it’s easy to lose perspective on what it’s like to be a customer at your own café.

The best way to improve your own hospitality is to visit other cafés. Your experience as a customer can help you evaluate your own methods and the customer experience at your café. As a customer, ask yourself questions: What makes this service good or bad?

Am I comfortable or annoyed? Do I feel

When you scrutinize your experiences elsewhere, it’s easy to see how you can improve. valued or dismissed? Are the good or bad aspects of my experience systemic, managerial, or the result of an individual? When you scrutinize your experiences elsewhere, it’s easy to see how you can improve. In order to do a little hospitality research of my own, I headed to Denver—somewhere I had never been, where nobody knew my name.

Here are some lessons in hospitality, experienced at a handful of cafés.

Lesson One: match your customer’s pace. My first stop was at Novo Coffee, during a slow time mid-afternoon.

I ordered an espresso and sat at the counter and watched the barista work.

He could tell that I was in no rush and

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open to interaction, so he engaged me in conversation—my thoughts on the espresso, what I was up to that day. Another customer walked in and ordered a coffee to go, and he helped them promptly and with a smile, but without too much conversation. I ordered a beer but the barista didn’t make me get off my barstool to pay. Next to me at the counter were two women deep in conversation—the barista let them talk without interruption.

He did everything right; he could have let me stare into space as he worked, but instead he entertained me. Rather than asking the coffee-to-go customer which of three coffee varieties and three brew methods they preferred, he sensed their urgency and handed them a cup from the batch brewer. The women next to me at the counter were there to talk to each other, not the barista, and he respected their privacy.

My second stop presented Lesson Two: be mindful of noise. The first thing I noticed when entering Huckleberry Roasters was its small size. As I stood in line to order, one of the baristas set a finished drink on the counter and twice she shouted, “CORTADO!” even though the guy who ordered the cortado was sitting less than ten feet in front of her.

It was jarring in such a small space, and the barista could have said, “Excuse me, your cortado is ready,” instead of simply shouting the name of his drink.

After this incident, though, Huckleberry excelled in terms of ambiance. It was a gloomy day, but the baristas’ electro-pop music selection brightened it up. It was turned up pretty loud for such a small café, but it worked. The baristas were chatting as they made drinks, but their conversation wasn’t loud enough for the whole room to hear. They were using a rubber spill mat, like you’d see at a bar, to tap bubbles out of steamed milk and to settle espresso into portafilters. There was no metal-on-countertop banging

like I’ve heard in countless other cafés.

When I left Huckleberry, I felt simultaneously relaxed and energized.

My last two café visits formed opposing halves of Lesson Three in hospitality: instruct and educate. Just up the street from Huckleberry, I entered another café and ordered a house coffee from the barista. After ringing me up, she handed me an empty mug with no explanation. Our interaction was clearly over, so I walked around the corner of the bar until I found an airpot.

Apparently it was a self-serve situation, but the barista didn’t instruct me whatsoever. Simply saying, “The coffee is at the end of the bar,” would have prevented me from feeling like a moron, wandering around with an empty mug.

The next day, my experience at Amethyst Coffee Company was the polar opposite. As soon as I walked through the door, one of the baristas invited me to sit anywhere—he would take my order at the table. He brought a large glass of water and a small glass of cascara tea. I ordered an espresso pairing, which came with sherry and also bitters with soda. Another barista delivered my order, and she described the various characteristics of the espresso and the sherry. She explained that because she had to substitute the espresso on the menu for a different one, she chose her house-made rose bitters with soda to go with it.

The baristas knew it was my first time at Amethyst but didn’t know I was a coffee professional. None of their attempts at customer education—whether about how they do things or about the beverages themselves—felt superfluous or patronizing, though. Amethyst embodies hospitality, and a single visit there would essentially summarize all three lessons: they matched my pace, they had a noise-free ambiance, and they educated me. I’m sorry to say, but you could have just visited Amethyst instead of reading this article.

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ORIGIN The Ever-Falling Price of Coffee » By Cory Eldridge here’s a quiet crisis in coffee, one that’s hard to discern because it’s taken a generation to unfurl and is experienced by the poorest, least enfranchised, least connected members of our industry. Making it worse, it’s a crisis that has benefited us on the buying side of coffee, making tackling this problem not just difficult but bad business, at least in the short term.

We’re not paying enough for coffee today, not enough to keep farmers planting coffee or laborers picking it. We’re not merely paying too little today, we’re paying way less than we ever have.

The data on the right are simplified graphs of the C market prices (commodity coffee futures) since 1973 that plot approximate year-end and June prices. The top graph is what you’d see if you looked at the historical price data available on investment sites. It shows the volatile reputation the C has earned, but also that the spikes don’t go much over $3 per pound of coffee and the lows have only gone below 50 cents once. On the day I’m writing this, the C is at $1.28, right at the historic median of about $1.20. It seems we’re paying about what we always have for coffee.

We’re not. Not even close.

In the second graph, I’ve adjusted for inflation. Outside of a few spikes, it’s all downhill from 1980. The median price for this set is about $1.73.

But even that doesn’t show how much less we’ve been paying for coffee. The median price from 1973 to 2000 is $2.93. For three decades, commodity coffee cost $3!

(The arbitrary January-June set means I left out the all-time high of $3.39 in April 1977, $13.32 today, and the April 2001 low of 42 cents, a catastrophic 56 cents today.)

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This data does not connect oneto-one with the entirety of the coffee market. The C price isn’t what you will pay for a pound of green coffee on a given day—it’s the price for a futures contract, not a bag of coffee in a warehouse. It also doesn’t show us what farmers are paid. Premiums, grades, origin, regional differentials, co-op dues, transport, and plenty of other factors shift prices up and down on both ends of the chain. Still, it’s the marker of what green coffee has cost over the past four decades, even for the specialty side of the industry.

As much as our nook of the industry dislikes it, the C is the peg that all coffee prices hang on. Some certifications offer price floors (Fair Trade International guarantees a minimum of $1.40, for example), but their premiums are tied to the C. Some direct-trade importers and roasters have, to greater or lesser degrees, managed to detach themselves from the C price, and auctions are a true market outside of commodity, but direct-trade and auctions account for a sliver of coffee. And every story of a $30 auction coffee will compare it to the C price that day, because that is still the metric of coffee’s true cost.

The C price is the best gauge for what our industry pays the folks who grow our coffee, and we have been paying them less and less every year.

While we’ve done that, we’ve piled demands onto farmers. As their payouts splattered on the sidewalk, consuming countries asked for more certifications, increased transparency, improved growing practices, and novel processing methods. None of those are bad (I dig a red honey coffee) and those demands come with promises of premiums, but when a farmer goes through all that and looks at the $3 price paid by the roaster (which is probably not even the price she got) she’s surely glad to get a price better than the C, but she’s

also thinking this is half the price her dad got in the eighties when all he had to do was drop it at the co-op.

That’s untenable.

In many origin countries, there is a strong belief that we have lost a generation of coffee farmers. I say it’s a belief because the data isn’t great (yearly numbers on farmer age is not what poor countries spend money collecting). But the average age of a Colombian coffee farmer is 55, and it’s the rare, usually wealthy, farmer who wants his child to inherit the business, so it’s a belief I share. I believe we’re losing the next generation, too. Prices aren’t the whole story here, but talent follows cash, and if you can get paid more to farm another crop or to work an entirely different job, you won’t grow coffee. That goes doubly for laborers.

Across Central America, most acutely in Guatemala, a major reason farms haven’t rebounded after roya isn’t just the cost of replanting: the labor force withered away too, either leaving the country or finding better pay.

A last point, one this data set does not prove but I believe correlates: the eruption of specialty coffee culture and the spread of small roasters in the mid-2000s is when coffee was at its absolute cheapest. I expect specialty coffee would have taken off even if prices were higher, but it’s worth considering what sort of springboard effect historically low prices had on the ability of roasters to enter the market and on the willingness of producers to cater to the desires of quality-focused buyers.

If this correlation is causal, then the industry as we know it owes its existence to the low price of coffee and the low income of farmers and workers. If we want our industry to continue, if we want to keep getting the amazing and ever-better coffees we love, we will have to find a way to balance that ledger.

Data: tradingeconomics.com/commodity/coffee

PRICE OF COFFEE FUTURES 350

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Café CROSSROADS Oak Lawn Coffee » Dallas, Texas

By Ellie Bradley » Photos by Levi Leal

The idea behind it was to be for the community and by the community.

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ak Lawn Coffee sits among a cluster of shops, restaurants, and medical offices on Oak Lawn Avenue, a busy thoroughfare bordering Dallas’s trendy Uptown neighborhood. The café’s white-brick facade mirrors the aesthetic of many of the buildings in Dallas—the coffee inside is another story.

Daylight floods through the walls of windows, casting a calming glow on the shop’s slate-colored walls. A three-group La Marzocco GB5 stands near the door, inviting guests directly to the coffee with its pearly sheen.

Most of the seating lies beyond the L-shaped bar, allowing baristas to see and greet customers as they arrive. A line of stools rests under the far side of the bar, giving inquisitive visitors a front-row view of the tamping and grinding—and of the pour-over bar that houses a line of Hario V60s. Oak Lawn offers drip coffee brewed in a Fetco Dual brewer; customers can also choose from AeroPress or french press preparations.

With a veterinarian and a pet supply store as neighbors, the space originally opened to serve coffee to urban

pet-owners. In 2011, Freeland Ministries acquired the property upstairs and ultimately came to manage the coffee shop.

After a major remodel, the store reopened as Oak Lawn Coffee. While the church still owns the café, the store operator and general manager team have the autonomy to make the decisions that affect daily operations—a single text message is usually all that’s needed to get the approval from the owners, including for shakeups as dramatic as changing the food menu. The shop runs as a non-profit, tithing or donating 10 percent of all proceeds.

“The idea behind it was to be for the community and by the community,” says current store operator Ben Hernandez.

Founded on values of service and self-improvement, a number of people have overseen the company since its launch—but the volatility hasn’t come with animosity.

Hernandez came to Oak Lawn as a barista in 2014, climbing the ranks to general manager before taking over as store operator in January. Past employees have gone on to become roasters, pursue graduate education, and even return to Oak Lawn in an advisory

capacity, such as current art director Hannah Aaron. Aaron coordinates local artists to bring their work into the shop, giving the shop an interior decor as dynamic as its business model.

For Hernandez, Oak Lawn is a springboard. “I want to be working myself out of my job and into new horizons,” Hernandez says. “That’s the essence of it all.”

Hernandez attributes the success of Oak Lawn to an influential series of store operators, and to financial partners who were willing to take a hands-off approach to running specialty coffee. “We really started to harbor this culture of honor where we built each other up. We were free-flowing with our knowledge.”

Previous store operator Joe Newton brought in a strong foundation of business knowledge and service practices. Hernandez says that he was the dreamer, while Newton was the realist; together, they brought standards and procedures to daily operations, elevating service and cultivating a supportive learning environment for their baristas. “Everything had a rhyme and a reason.”

The lineup of roasters at Oak Lawn speak to the spirit of self-improvement. Hernandez calls their coffees from Heart, Tweed, and Commonwealth Roasters their three “Old Faithfuls.” Ryan Fisher is a co-founder of Commonwealth and a former store manager of Oak Lawn. “We automatically had a great relationship,” Hernandez says of the partnership with Fisher. The coffees from Heart were selected to bring a taste of West Coast coffee culture to the southern store, while the Dallas-based Tweed has been a deep source of knowledge to Oak Lawn. Hernandez says that he has a rich relationship with Tweed’s head roaster Jonathan Aldrich. “He has contributed to my coffee knowledge as a whole. He’s been that example of super selfless and forthcoming with knowledge.”

Adding tacos from Austin-based Tacodeli to the menu is just another aspect of the company’s venturesome personality. Making Oak Lawn a more welcoming environment for customers meant adding more food options. Noticing that customers would walk in looking for something substantial to eat, Hernandez made the decision to bring in Tacodeli when the company opened a location in Dallas. The tacos are delivered fresh daily, stored in hot-holding, and served until eleven; Hernandez calls it one of his best decisions and says he’ll never look back. Oak Lawn recently started carrying specialty pies and quiches from Pielanthropy, in addition to their pastry selection from local baker Rush Patisserie.

As much as he likes changing the shop, Hernandez loves seeing new faces walk in the door, using new customers as a litmus test for their success. “I want people to feel welcome,” Hernandez says. “I want this dude who rides a Harley to realize that specialty coffee is for him and he is welcome.”

Bringing in new menu items, working with roasters that continue to hone their craft, and measuring success by the response of new customers are all in tune with a café that has learned to thrive by empowering its employees to not just transform the shop but to find their way to bigger and better things.

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DO YOU KNOW Kyle Anderson?

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BY CORY ELDRIDGE

ne of the most seemingly out of place machines on the counter of a café is a Baratza grinder. It sits there, a diminutive little guy beside its towering fellow grinders. If the counter is recessed, it might be wholly out of customers’ sight. An airpot of coffee weighs more than it. It’s the coffee equipment equivalent of Muggsy Bogues: small, but it can play with the best.

And it does. A lot.

That’s not what Kyle Anderson expected when he started Baratza with Kyra Kennedy. Their plan was to import and sell home espresso machines, but then a grinder they licensed was a big success. It showed them there was a hunger for a better class of home grinder. That led Anderson, an inventor with a pretty major innovation to his credit, to make Baratza’s first grinder. The idea was for it to be a great home grinder. Our industry had other thoughts.

This summer, their newest line of grinders, the Sette, will take posts on café bars. With a conical burr whose outside ring is the one that rotates and a built-in Acaia scale, it’s a show-stopping grinder with a gorgeous design.

As cool as it is, I mainly wanted to find out more about the guy who created it.

Right off the bat, I learned that beside the great Kaldi himself, Anderson might have the greatest possible answer to the simplest question in our business.

This interview has been edited for clarity and space.

tle automatic home espresso machines. What we found, about a year into that business, was that Solis also had a little coffee grinder. We were amazed at how it sold.

We decided to create our own grinder, so we created the Maestro in 2001. We did some innovative stuff with the Maestro and it was quite the success. In 2004, we decided to sell the espresso machine side of the business and dedicate ourselves to coffee grinders. That was the year we introduced the Virtuoso, which was our grinder through and through.

THE SETTE, PARTICULARLY THE ONE WITH THE ACAIA SCALE, IS A CULMINATION OF A LOT OF THE INNOVATIONS YOU’VE BROUGHT TO GRINDERS. WHERE HAVE THOSE IDEAS COME FROM?

All of our best ideas have come from customers.

Weight-based grinding came from Jared Rennie at Noble Coffee down in Oregon. He was using our Virtuoso on their coffee bar. He said, “Have you ever thought about incorporating a scale in your grinder?” And I said, “No!” I got out a napkin, this was at the SCAA show in Anaheim, and I just sketched a quick idea and he said, “Yeah! That would be perfect!”

THAT’S AMAZING.

And we did it. That’s where weight-based grinding came from. It really kind of shook the world up.

HOW DID YOU GET STARTED IN COFFEE??

Back in 1989, I invented, with my tennis partner, the world’s first super-automatic espresso latte machine. To say it was disruptive was a bit of an understatement. I started that company in the basement of my house. We grew pretty rapidly and we introduced espresso to 7-Eleven, McDonalds, Washinton State Ferries, corporate cafeterias. The name of the company was Acorto. These were strictly commercial machines: 300 pounds, $17,000 each.

It was a big deal. It had built-in refrigeration, two grinders, a huge, Italian brewing mechanism in it. It was a bit of a paradigm shift that you could push a button and make really good espresso or espresso-based drinks. So that’s how I got into coffee, and I was just in the commercial side of things.

YOU LEFT ACORTO, WHICH IS NOW CONCORDIA, IN 1999.

WHY NOT STAY IN ESPRESSO MACHINES?

Kyra and I started this company with a specific intent (I had a non-compete when I left Acorto) not to compete on the commercial side. Initially we set out to bring in lit-

I FIND IT SURPRISING THAT A GUY WHO INVENTED THE SUPER-AUTOMATIC IS THE GUY WHO MAKES THE GRINDER FOR POUR-OVERS, THE MOST HANDS-ON WAY OF MAKING COFFEE.

Yes and no. There’s a common thread here. We took a look at what people were doing at the beginning of this thirdwave thing, and looked at all these little tins sitting around being stacked up in the café, with baristas in the morning pulling individual beans out to get as close as they can to a couple tenths of a gram. And we took a look at that, and it just harkened back to my days at Acorto, and I said, “This is stupid.” Talk about wasteful in terms of time. We strive to make our grinders a tool that helps you make better coffee. And a tool makes the work you have to do easier. And though it is part of, you’re right, manual brewing, we’re trying to take dialing in of the right grind and getting the right dose, we’re trying to eliminate those two variables so you can nail it. We’re still using a machine to do what could be done some other way, but to make it really easy. In that way, it’s consistent with where I started.

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Before you ask customers to pardon your dust, consider how a remodel can distinguish your brand identity. A clear vision for the future of your business will help answer important questions of how much, when, and should I really knock down that wall?

BY ELLIE BRADLEY

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PH OTO S C OURTESY O F FER RIS C O FFEE

FERRIS COFFEE OVERHAUL: Their nineties aesthetic needed to go. That meant more that getting rid of the columns.

our baristas constantly bump into each other, your cabinets don’t stay closed, and the customers trapped behind slow-moving lines are sending waves of palpable rage. Maybe you can hardly see your customers under the track lighting that used to be ambient but is now just obnoxiously inadequate. You look at your tired logo, the paint color that was all-the-rage in 2007, and you realize: it’s time to make changes.

Whatever your aha! moment, the realization that a renovation is imminent only leads to more questions: How much should you spend? How should you allocate your resources? Should you shut-down completely or try to sell coffee in the midst of construction? These considerations, and many more, are necessary for coordinating a smooth remodel. Even more important is how you will use the opportunity of a renovation to move your business forward; each change should play a role in strengthening your brand identity.

Setting a clear goal for why you are tearing down walls and asking customers to pardon your dust helps answer questions that arise along that way. Even better, a clear vision helps you commit to your project.

“You can’t half-ass it. You can’t reopen with old cups with an old logo, or tired old recipes within a new space,” says Jake Leonti of F+B Therapy. Leonti works with specialty coffee companies to plan build-outs, remodels, and rebranding projects. He operates by the philosophy that if you’re going to touch one aspect of your business, that’s your chance to touch everything. “Brand is always so much more than just a concept; it is truly a lens and a philosophy that they should be living by. And that means it affects everything you look at.”

As you focus the vision for your company’s brand and image, imminently practical elements of a remodel can’t be forgotten. Tom Palm owns Design & Layout Services.

He advises keeping track of licensing as you build plans.

“You better go down and see the health department, because if you change the menu and bring in different equipment, you’ve got to clue them in.”

Leonti stresses the importance of keeping in contact with customers during the remodel process, whether you stay open or not. “Social media, signage, engaging with customers; all those pieces are something that should be utilized,” he says. Construction projects provide fodder for in-person conversation and content for social media.

No universal guidelines govern café remodels or aesthetics (and thank goodness, otherwise it would be a pretty bleak industry). Every project presents unique challenges and opportunities to “touch everything,” as Leonti says, giving cafés the chance to redefine their image, boost revenue, and reach new customers—all the while giving their employees an improved work environment.

Here’s how four companies took on their remodels.

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PROJECT ONE: REBRANDING

| Water Avenue Coffee

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“It all kind of culminated together with our rebranding, our new logo design, new merchandise, but also as a way for our staff to really understand that the company’s been through a big evolution and this is our defining year to continue to grow,” says Matt Milletto, vice president of Water Avenue Coffee and Bellissimo Coffee Advisors.

Milletto says that Water Avenue took the rebrand as an opportunity to do a lot of things they couldn’t afford to do when they first opened—from a handpainted mural to small touches like cabinet doors.

“We’ve taken this opportunity to really clean up and pay attention to every tiny detail now,” he says. “It’s just a reflection of our brand.”

For Water Avenue, rebranding also meant adding a lunch menu to bring in more traffic throughout the day. Noticing dips in their daily sales around lunchtime, they made the decision to bring in a chef to run a breakfast and lunch program. Employees now deliver food to customers. “It’s like coming to

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P HOTO S BY CO RY ELD RIDGE

t doesn’t take a sledgehammer to infuse drama into a renovation. An effective rebrand can achieve as much as knocking down walls and building a new bar. Brand is a business’s identity, and when Water Avenue Coffee in Portland, Oregon, approached their rebrand, they focused on more than just their logo. They revamped their interior aesthetic, bag design, merchandise, workflow, service style, and boosted their food menu.

Coincidentally, some remodeling happened too.

a new job,” says Milletto. While the employees were thrilled with the changes, it still required training and an adjustment period.

“I truly feel that the three most important aspects in retail are quality product, customer service, and then the environment that you’ve created,” Milletto says. Bringing in a chef and rethinking branding elevated all three of those aspects.

“We didn’t have to restructure a lot of the service area or bar flow,” says Milletto. “The bones were

there, we just kind of gave it a face lift, as well as integrated some new elements.”

The plans included moving roasting operations to a nearby second location, freeing up floor space to add bar seating for guests and to allow chef Ryan Kennedy room to do his work.

Water Avenue managed to close for only two days to bring in a large sidebar that fills the space where their roaster used to be. “We actually had a coffee cart out front, just giving away free coffee and pastries for the two days we were closed, just for the inconvenience,” says Milletto.

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or many new cafés, build-outs quickly become cost-prohibitive, limiting upgrades in the early days and months after opening.

Especially for businesses taking over a functional coffee space, it can be hard to justify the expense when you have little revenue. New York’s Everyman Espresso inherited the espresso bar that became their East Village location. “Over the subsequent year we did everything that we could to make it our own,” says Sam Lewontin, general manager of Everyman.

“There’s only so much you can do with existing infrastructure.” Everyman opened a second location in SoHo, providing another revenue source and the chance to finally make changes at their original store.

Everyman used ideas from their SoHo build-out to improve the flow of their East Village store, but ultimately their plans were driven by a desire to meet the needs of the surrounding neighborhood. “There were a bunch of bar-flow ideas that we implemented in the second location that worked very well,” Lewontin says. “We took a lot of those ideas and fitted them into the existing space and fitted them to what we knew our guests and our long-standing neighborhood wanted—what the neighborhood wanted from that café.”

Everyman relied on their second location while they closed down their East Village store for about a month and rebuilt from the ground up. They used a pop-up café at a tiki-themed bar in Tribeca to continue generating revenue and retaining employees.

The East Village store also happened to share a space with a theater.

“A lot of the design elements that went into remodel were chosen with an eye toward better integrating the café into the lobby space,” Lewontin explained. This integration allowed them to better serve both daytime regulars and theater patrons.

Everyman reopened their East Village store three years ago to an overwhelmingly positive response from customers. “It is a better version

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| Everyman Espresso and Ritual Coffee Roasters of that café in basically every way,” Lewontin says.

By integrating successful elements from the SoHo shop, but prioritizing design for the needs of East Village, Everyman focused their remodel on giving customers the best possible experience at both locations.

“We were very clear about the fact that were were doing it for them,” Lewontin says. “To create a better café in which we could serve them better and faster and create a better and more welcoming environment.”

The day Ritual started construction, Rinaldi stood in the door and gave away coffee, letting people know what was happening. She also penned a note, then had it enlarged and posted it in the window of the shop so people would feel like they were hearing directly from her.

Getting away from the dark, cramped feel of their original space, the Valencia store now has an open floor plan that greets guests with a wrap-around espresso bar and naturally directs traffic through the store.

RITUAL COFFEE ROASTER’S remodeled flagship café

On the Left Coast, Ritual Coffee Roasters had a similar project with their flagship store in San Francisco’s Mission District. After nearly a decade in business, the successful café was showing signs of wear. Surfaces were hard to clean, doors would fall off their hinges, and baristas were cramped behind the bar. “It was kind of ridiculous,” says owner Eileen Rinaldi.

Ritual’s remodel lasted six months, but they shut down operations for only two days. The rest of the time they operated out of a modified space they affectionately referred to as Tiny Café. “We built a wall and turned our 1,800-square-foot café into a 400-square-foot café,” Rinaldi says.

“We eliminated our pour-over bar and just did batch brew and espresso.”

A remodel of a flagship store can mark the beginning of a rebranding across the business. Ritual opted to coordinate a phased remodel and rebrand. “For us, all of these things were connected,” says Rinaldi. The store still proudly displays red accents, calling back to the company’s original cup-and-star logo. But the splashes of red are one of the few design elements that survived the rebrand. Ritual recently launched a new website to match the look and feel of the remodeled store, including a new line of merchandise, all imprinted with the cup-and-star logo.

(To read more about how Ritual has continued to redefine their business, check out “Cafés in Retail Spaces” on page sixty-eight.)

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PROJECT TWO: THE FLAGSHIP REMODEL

Merchandise

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Your merchandise and display should be curated with as much thought and care as your café design. BY KAITLIN THROGMORTON

or most cafés, serving great coffee and tea is the focus of their business. Along with their drinks many shops sell merchandise, and a good merchandising strategy can determine whether those items sit on the shelf untouched or become an integral part of a shop’s identity and profitability.

From the time a patron orders a drink to the time they receive it, several minutes elapse. “You don’t get that captive time in many other types of businesses,” says Jackie Ardrey, a former merchandising executive who now owns Cold Brew Kitchen, a line of ground coffees designed for home cold brewing.

While patrons wait, the café has an opportunity to grab their attention, and a strategy to make this happen can result in more sales.

The first thing to consider in merchandising is how your café will balance the brand and the customer.

While the two overlap, merchandising flows out of an established café brand and identity. Once a café starts to sell branded merchandise, customer feedback can then inform those decisions.

In Greensboro, North Carolina, Urban Grinders knows this firsthand.

The café is both a coffee shop and an art gallery, and its merchandising, which accounts for 30 percent of revenue, revolves around that dual identity. Owner Jeff Beckett explains that Urban Grinders brand and merchandise reinforce the shop’s focus

on art, but sometimes “you’ve got to accommodate the customer,” he says.

“We try to have merchandise that caters to our customer base. Coffee cups for businesspeople in the shop, but also vinyl records and art for the artists,” says Marcus Moore, Beckett’s business partner.

Palace Coffee is in what owner Patrick Burns calls the “coffee desert” of Amarillo, Texas. Because of this, Burns’s merchandising strategy focuses on education and equipment— as well as presenting the merchandise in a friendly, accessible manner. Since some patrons drive several hours to get to Palace, they sell all kinds of brewing accessories, and staff are always available to answer questions.

“If they want us to be a one-stop shop, we can be that, so they can get everything they need for home brewing,” Burns says.

Similar to knowing both your brand and your customer, being selective about products is essential. Despite almost daily pitches from vendors, Beckett says that Urban Grinders only sells products that match their theme and style. Burns says when he selects merchandise for Palace, “The main thing I look for is a company known for quality.”

Once a café has quality, branded merchandise, the next step is to captivate the customer. “You have the world of art open to you, but there’s a narrow place where that art and your brand intersect,” says Ardrey.

Ardrey recommends weaving brandaligned prints, colors, and signage into merchandise displays of coffee bags and mugs in order to highlight them and capture customer interest. “Especially with a coffee shop, people coming in again and again, you need some change,” says Ardrey, who suggests designing new merchandise displays to match the seasons. In order to create an appealing space, Burns, who worked in retail before opening Palace, likes to get out from behind the counter. Seeing the view from the customer’s level ensures his merchandise area works functionally and aesthetically.

While tangible items are important for a merchandising strategy, thinking beyond products can also be effective.

In line with its education focus, Palace Coffee offers brewing classes once a month. As a bonus, it’s a hands-on opportunity to sell merchandise.

Ardrey says shop owners should get to the point where café vision and brand align with customer feedback, where they say, “OK, this is what I want to be about,” but then offer enough variety that it works for customers. Ideally, the merchandise a café carries is both a foundational statement of brand and identity, as well as an evolving reflection of the customers served. When merchandising intersects with the identity of the café and the needs of customers, cafés reap the rewards of boosted sales and happy customers.

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PROJECT THREE: TOTAL OVERHAUL

| Ferris Coffee

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industry. In that time, they’ve worked diligently to show people their new business identity and invite the community into their new (stunning) space, volunteering to run brew bars at city events, and even running airpots of coffee out to college bus stops in the dead of winter.

VanTongeren acknowledges that there was certainly risk in such a dramatic change, but that it was necessary to move the company forward.

“Obviously the point of a renovation is to get new customers. You can’t be afraid to lose a few customers in order to gain a new following.”

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ocusing the lens through which you view your business sometimes means changing the lens altogether. Just ask Ferris Coffee in Grand Rapids, Michigan. After nearly a century of business, the company conducted a self-evaluation and realized that they weren’t a match for the surrounding community.

“We saw this change in the neighborhood,” says David VanTongeren, director of retail for Ferris. “We realized that we didn’t have the right venue to host them.” VanTongeren says that Ferris recognized their coffee program and the café at their headquarters were in desperate need of an overhaul. There was also no seating for customers, a late-nineties aesthetic that screamed “out-of-touch,” and they had a decades-old reputation of being a coffee company that didn’t do craft coffee. So they tackled the task of transforming themselves into a specialty coffee company, including better sourcing practices, improved roasting techniques, and higher standards for preparation. And a whole new look.

Ferris took the idea of “touching everything” to heart. They renovated the entire building, including the offices. The exterior paint and lettering got a makeover and the downstairs café was completely gutted. Ferris completed the remodel, rebranded the company, and reintroduced themselves as a specialty coffee company.

Walking into Ferris now, you’d never guess that the open, airy café used to house overcrowded shelves and tacky, decorative columns.

Floor-to-ceiling windows flood the space with natural light. A large community table is just one of the many seating options available to customers. A glistening, three-group Synesso and a pour-over station sit on opposite sides of the L-shaped bar, welcoming customers to stay and talk coffee, or proceed to one of the shop’s many nooks to sip, study, and—most importantly—stay.

It’s taken almost two years for Ferris to gain their place in the specialty

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P HOTO BY J IM C HAP MA N

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uice made a lot of sense as a new addition to Black Coffee Roasting Company’s diverse menu. The Missoula, Montana, roastery and café that is housed in a large Quonset hut had long featured on-tap kombucha, brazilnut milk, and house-made shrubs, drinking vinegars made with fruits and vegetables. Adding a line of juices was really just a matter of formulating some tasty recipes.

This year they launched three juices, named by their colors: red, orange, and green. What each of those juices includes will depend on the season. Co-owner Jim Chapman says, “When we decided to do juices, we made the decision to not be rigid in our menu offerings, but to make juices that use produce that is available, fresh, and ripe for juicing.”

Red, for now, is beet, apple, carrot, lemon, and ginger, and for a two-ounce shot of this fruitful, organic cocktail, Black Coffee is charging $2.

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That’s another reason juice made a lot of sense to the shop, and why other cafés are looking for ways to incorporate juice into their menus. Charlie Wettlaufer is the VP of sales and marketing at Goodnature, a manufacturer of cold presses that his father founded when he built a futuristic cider press in the 1970s. Wettlaufer says a sixteen-ounce glass of fresh-squeezed juice can sell for $6 to $11, depending on the ingredients and locale. He says a shop making its own juice can pull in a 60 percent margin on the product, while one selling juice pressed by another company will see a 30 percent margin.

A margin like that is worth some consideration. To help you get started, here’s a primer on what a juice program needs.

But before we begin: there’s plenty of debate over the term raw juice and even more over the science of its health benefits. We’re going to leave all that to the side and focus on what it takes to bring fresh-that-day, unpasteurized juice to your shop.

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Countertop Crush Before you go buy fruits and veggies and look for that juicer you got three birthdays ago, understand that juice requires counter space. “If you’re launching from the beginning as a concept of coffee, food, and juice, it’s totally doable,” Wettlaufer says. “If you’re a 300-square-foot café, it might be impossible.”

Black Coffee was able to add juice because they have an expansive bar space. “We have a dynamic work space that allows for a lot of flexibility,” Chapman says.

If you had a hard time fitting an extra grinder on your bar, you might not want to crush a juice operation in there.

Also, bringing in juice means dealing with a new supply chain, one made of highly perishable items. Wettlaufer says, “If you sell salads and sandwiches, you probably already source produce.” If you don’t, that’s a line of research you need to pursue to find suppliers who can guarantee the fresh, high-quality produce you’ll need.

Refrigerator Space Countertop territory won’t be your only space constraint.

Likely the biggest factor that will determine your work flow or if you decide you can do juice at all is your refrigerator capacity. If you have ample prep room during business hours along with refrigerator space, you can make the juice to order. Likely, though, you don’t have room to refrigerate boxes of beets and bushels of chard, so produce will need to be purchased and processed immediately.

Many shops will grind their produce ahead of time or, most likely, do all their juicing before they open shop.

P HOTO BY JIM C HAP MAN

Likely the biggest factor that will determine your work flow or if you decide you can do juice at all is your refrigerator capacity.

That’s an efficient use of your limited real estate. Wettlaufer says, “You can dedicate whatever kitchen space you have for an hour or two.” At Black Coffee, the team juices produce the day its bought, and then refrigerates the juice in glass jars. The process happens only every couple of days.

Regulations By now, you’ve probably been thinking, why wouldn’t I just buy raw, unpasteurized juice from a local company? Understandable. You could just tuck it alongside other RTD bottles you have, right? But that’s not an option because it’s illegal. Regulatoraly speaking, raw juice is sort of like raw milk: a farmer can sell it to a customer, but the farmer can’t sell it to a store that sells it. If you pressed the juice, you can sell it. If not, no dice.

including greens, are shredded and placed in a bag that is then pressed by a hydraulic arm to express the juice. This is the least common type of countertop juicer; the only available models are the low-volume Norwalk Ultimate Juicer and Goodnature’s Countertop, which debuted last year.

Because you have to process the produce before juicing, the noise factor is at play here, so pre-grinding is recommended.

If you want to do organic, that’s awesome—if you have the market for it.

Juicers What machine do you need to take all that pretty produce and turn it into a dried out mess of spent fibers? Aside from citrus-only juicers, there are three categories of juicers, each of which has positives and minuses.

CENTRIFUGAL These juicers work by shredding vegetables and then spinning the pulp so fast it presses against a metal sieve and expresses the juice. These are the most common juicers you’ll find at a home goods store. Prices range from a few hundred dollars for a home model (which would likely wear out quickly in a café) to a couple thousand for commercial models that can rip through whole fruit.

A major downside is that these sound like a blender with the lid off or a saw cutting wood or a weed whacker at work: they’re loud. That makes to-order juice a noisy prospect, so prepping batches before opening will make the most sense, especially to small shops. Another issue is that they don’t process leafy vegetables very well.

HYDRAULIC PRESS These are the juicers that juice companies use. Essentially, they’re modern versions of a cider or wine press, which just squeeze the goodness out of fruit. The fruits and vegetables,

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Organic vs Conventional Because so much of juice’s appeal comes from its health benefits, it may seem organic is the way to go. Wettlaufer cautions it might not be. “If you want to do organic, that’s awesome—if you have the market for it.” He points out that organic produce is substantially more expensive than conventional, so your prices will have to match. Prices at and above $10 for a pint aren’t unusual. “You need a lot of people with a lot of money to do that,” he says. “You should consider doing organic and conventional so you can have some options.”

P HOTO BY JIM C HAP MAN

MASTICATING These are the juicers that people refer to as cold presses when talking about home or low-volume use. Masticating juicers draw produce down a chute into a horizontal auger that crushes the produce and presses out the juice. Along with fruits and veggies, masticating juicers can process leafy greens, wheatgrasses, and even nuts for nut milks.

Their main problem is they aren’t very fast and they aren’t made for heavy-duty use. If you wanted made-to-order juice, you’d have to run a couple of these at a time, at least. You also have to cut up large produce before it goes in the chute.

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ash has traditionally been the payment of choice at coffee shops across the country. After all, it’s immediately accessible and there’s no risk of consumers disputing transactions like they can with a credit card. That attitude is changing, though, since customers just aren’t carrying as much cash as they used to. A 2014 survey by Bankrate found that 40 percent of those surveyed carry less than $20 on a daily basis. Mobile payments tied with customer loyalty programs are becoming popular at many coffee shops—Starbucks has a widely used app and many smaller operators use apps like LevelUp. Cheaper credit card processing through cheaper services means most cafés have made the shift to accepting cards.

Most credit card processors charge a percentage of each transaction plus a small per-transaction fee, which cuts into the thin margins of high-volume, small-ticket businesses like coffee shops. A restaurant where the average ticket is $50 has an easier time absorbing those fees into its margins compared to a coffee shop where the average ticket might be a tenth of that.

“Companies like Square are bringing innovation to the field where small merchants can have relatively low processing fees,” says credit card and payments industry expert Tom Dailey. “But even the innovative companies charge a per-transaction fee plus a flat number of cents. When it’s a small transaction, each small fee can dilute revenue.”

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I suspect that over the course of the next eight to ten years, cash is going to just gradually be eliminated.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Many cafés fall somewhere on a spectrum of payment acceptance, perhaps enforcing a minimum for credit card transactions (by law, credit minimums cannot exceed $10 and are not allowed on debit card transactions) or requiring cash but providing access to an ATM. Mother Fool’s Coffeehouse in Madison, Wisconsin opened in 1994, and co-owner Jon Hain plans to remain proudly cash only for as long as possible. “Twenty years ago, it was far more expensive to maintain a merchant account,” he says. “The costs have come down but we have also a philosophical concept at play.”

Mother Fool’s ethos of buying local and operating a single location doesn’t jibe with the idea of paying a percentage to a payment processor, Hain says. “There’s a desire to keep the money right here and as time has gone on and I’ve learned about the trend toward a cashless society, I don’t like it,” he explains. (Hain and others worry that those who don’t have a traditional bank account or credit card could be excluded from a cashless society. Immigrants may also have challenges qualifying for bank accounts or credit cards.) “It’s going to lead to a lot of pain, but we may be forced at some point to go cashless,” Hain admits.

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Mother Fool’s doesn’t accept plastic, but accepts personal checks, and Hains says they’ve only had one or two bad checks per year. “We’ve been really lucky with it,” he says. “In most cases that’s been an accident.” Regulars who don’t want to carry cash sometimes bring in a larger check once a week to purchase a gift card they can use to get their daily caffeine fix.

Another concession to consumers’ shift away from carrying cash: an on-site ATM added a few years ago. Hains says they noticed a few years ago that “all of a sudden everyone had plastic and people were whipping out a credit card for a $2 coffee.” Not only does the ATM provide convenience to patrons and baristas, but it’s also convenient for those in the neighborhood who stop in to get cash (some people get coffee too, some not).

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It would be tough to open a coffee shop and be cash only. But it’s always been cash only.

The neighborhood doesn’t have a problem with it. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Common Grounds Coffee in Cleveland has also been cash only since it opened nearly two decades ago. When Raphe Neapolitan and his partner purchased the coffee shop last year, they considered accepting cards, but decided against it due to the processing fees and the fact that its patrons are used to paying cash.

“It would be tough to open a coffee shop and be cash only,” Neapolitan says. “But it’s always been cash only. The neighborhood doesn’t have a problem with it.” (Neapolitan also owns a beer and wine shop that accepts credit cards with a $10 minimum, but the nature of the other business

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means higher average spends per transaction compared to a coffee shop.) Frequent drops at the bank next door help alleviate concerns over building up a large stash of cash on the premises, Neapolitan adds.

Since Common Grounds is open twenty-four hours, 365 days a year, it attracts a lot of younger people who may not have credit cards anyway. Like Mother Fool’s, Common Grounds has an ATM on site, which was added a few months before the change in management. “We get a lot of action on the ATM,” Neapolitan says. “When people are walking from bar to bar they’ll come in and use it.”

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When it’s a small transaction, each small fee can dilute revenue. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ However, a cash-only policy does exclude business customers who want to pay for coffee with a corporate credit card and expense it. “We do lose out on those sales,” he says.

“That’s a bummer and we need to find a way to incorporate that.”

Cash-only businesses not only miss out on business customers, Dailey points out that the higher amounts charged on a credit card may also help offset processing fees.

Several studies show that consumers are more willing to spend higher dollar amounts when they’re using plastic, perhaps because they don’t have the visual reminder of paper

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money leaving their wallets. For coffee shops that also stock items like fancy mugs or coffee grinders, accepting plastic could help move those bigger-ticket items, he adds.

Meanwhile, Koffee? in New Haven, Connecticut, opened in 1992 and has eased its credit card policies over the past several years. Koffee? had been cash only, but about six years ago began accepting credit cards with a $10 minimum. Two years ago, owner Duncan Goodall (who bought Koffee? from the original owners in 2002) eliminated the minimum on credit cards and says he’s playing around with the getting rid of cash altogether.

Part of this shift has been driven by lower processing fees. “For smalltransaction businesses like mine, that’s made a huge difference,” Goodall says.

Recent shifts in consumer behavior are another factor. “Fewer people have cash,” Goodall says. “You can easily piss off your customers if you don’t take credit cards, especially the millennials who don’t even carry cash.

The piss-off factor is not worth it.”

While many owners dislike credit card processing fees, Goodall points out that cash has handling costs too.

“You have to make cash bags every day,” he says. “After the shift is done, you have to reconcile the fees out from the register. That takes time as

well, but that doesn’t even take into account you have to take the cash to the bank and buy more change.”

Goodall also dislikes cash because of the potential for employee theft.

“Anytime you have a cash-based system, at some point in time people are going to rip you off,” he says.

“It’s difficult to design and set up a system that tracks cash well.” With mobile and credit card payments, it’s harder for money to go missing from the register.

Still, Goodall sees his coffeehouse moving towards going cashless. “I suspect that over the course of the next eight to ten years, cash is going to just gradually be eliminated.

There’s a continual reduction to where I could reasonably run my business without it.”

Another argument in favor of plastic: some consumers “view merchants that accept credit cards as being more established and credible,” Dailey says. Card processors have democratized payments and provided access for merchants who haven’t qualified to take credit in the past, so the perception is not always accurate, but it persists.

Changing payment policies means weighing several financial, logistical, and sometimes even philosophical considerations, so there’s hardly a one-size-fits-all solution.

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OXFORD EXCHANGE houses both TeBella Tea Company's tea bar and Buddy Brew's coffee bar.

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P HOTO C OURTESY O F ELI MEIR K AP LA N

P HOTO BY CASSIE PERE Z

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PHOTO COU RTE SY OF RI TU AL COF F E E ROASTE RS

FLORA GRUBB GARDENS and Ritual Coffee.

MAKETTO and Vigilante Coffee.

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alk into one of your neighborhood retail stores, like the gift shop or clothing boutique down the street, and you might find shelves lined with coffee table books, cool and kitschy mugs, an assortment of attire, and . . . a barista manning an espresso machine? As brick-and-mortar shops continue to compete with online retailers, a growing number of small businesses are partnering with coffee and tea bars to bring their customers the ultimate “sip while you shop” experience, one that both relaxes and revitalizes customers in a way only caffeine can. We’re not talking about your neighborhood bookstore offering a bland cup of coffee—savvy storeowners are teaming up with

established independent coffee and teashops to provide sophisticated sipping in a retail setting.

In Tampa, Florida, the Oxford Exchange occupies a multiuse retail space that’s become a destination for the city’s chicest residents and out-of-towners. The building houses an upscale gift shop, bookstore, and restaurant, along with separate coffee and tea bars staffed and run by two well-known Tampa brands, Buddy Brew Coffee and TeBella Tea Company. Rather than establish a more common wholesale arrangement, Buddy Brew and TeBella sublease space from Oxford Exchange. “By bringing in small businesses to independently own and operate under one roof, Oxford Exchange allows us to really do what we’re good at while still maintaining a community feeling,” says

VIGILANTE'S coffee bar location at Maketto in DC.

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TeBella owner Abigail StClair. “We’re a part of this amazing atmosphere and energy while still specializing in our own brands.” Patrons can order from either drink bar to sip while they shop, or enjoy Buddy Brew coffee and TeBella tea at the Oxford Exchange in-house restaurant.

Subleasing isn’t the only option for retail partnerships. Take Maketto, in Washington, DC, an innovative retail and restaurant space that opened in the hip H Street Corridor. It’s built to mimic an airy and boisterous Asian night market. Opened last year, Maketto encompasses a sixty-seat panAsian restaurant, a slick retail space slinging fashion-forward clothing and accessories, and an upstairs café area with a coffee bar. The coffee bar was created in partnership with Chris Vigilante, owner of Vigilante Coffee.

Instead of subleasing from Maketto, Vigilante says that for the first six months after Maketto’s opening he pulled a salary as “coffee director.” Now, the relationship has evolved into what he calls a very close wholesale partnership; Vigilante still comes in to roast beans on-site, with Vigilante Coffee branding and signage used at the bar. Vigilante is also a minority owner in the project, which, he says, means he has a vested interest in seeing all three of Maketto’s concepts—restaurant, retail, and coffee bar—succeed.

The benefit of partnering with high-quality coffee and tea bars is obvious for retail shops; offering customers amenities like steaming cappuccinos encourages them to stay in the store longer and linger, increasing the chance they’ll actually make a purchase. But why are coffee and tea businesses choosing to place outposts in retail spaces, rather than opening a new shop in a high-trafficked part of town? Primarily, to get their names in front of a new audience.

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WE NEVER SAW DC AS AN AFFORDABLE RENT PLACE FOR JUST A COFFEE SHOP. THIS ALLOWED US TO MAKE IT WORK IN THE CITY WHILE WE WERE STILL AT A YOUNG STAGE AS A COMPANY. “Partnering with Oxford Exchange is one of the single greatest things to happen to Buddy Brew,” says David Ward, the company’s co-founder. When Oxford Exchange first opened its doors, Ward was worried that having a Buddy Brew outpost inside would cannibalize business at their flagship location, which is less than a mile down the road. “The complete opposite has happened,” says Ward. “There’s no doubt that being in Oxford Exchange has driven new business to our roastery. At our headquarters location, we’re now capped by our ability to park people at the store, since the lot is always full. That’s an amazing problem to have, and a lot of that has been driven by Oxford Exchange.”

Major marketing and public relations efforts by Oxford Exchange have increased exposure to the Buddy Brew brand; Ward says he’s even been interviewed by a Denmark-based airline and a London architecture company.

Attention has also come from the unique events that Buddy Brew has been able to host in the large, flexible space, including a screening of a coffeefocused documentary and latte art competitions. These events have opened huge doors for the roaster, like the barista competition that Ward organized shortly after Oxford Exchange opened; the competition hosted twenty participants from cafés around town, and over 120 spectators. One competition observer was a representative from Whole Foods, who came to see what Buddy Brew was all about after repeated requests by customers to carry the brand. “After the throw down,” says Ward, “the rep approached me and said, ‘We need to get Buddy Brew in our stores.’ Now Buddy Brew Coffee is sold in every Whole Foods store in Florida.”

San Francisco-based Ritual Coffee Roasters also credits their partnership with a local retail store for putting their brand in front of new faces—and

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RITUAL COFFEE Flora Grubb Gardens location.

some famous ones to boot. In 2007, Flora Grubb Gardens planned to relocate its sprawling garden and floral shop in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood, and approached Ritual about putting a coffee bar inside their new location. “Having an outpost in Flora Grubb Gardens allowed us to offer a completely different experience from our other cafés.

Customers could sit outside with a coffee—which is pretty unique in San Francisco—or explore all the shop’s nooks and crannies where treasures can be found,” says Eileen Rinaldi, Ritual’s owner. “Plus, the garden shop is definitely a destination within San Francisco. We’ve served coffee to Natalie Portman, Seal, Martha Stewart, and even Bill Clinton.” Aside from the honor of serving the famous, Rinaldi also says they’ve landed five or six wholesale accounts through their Flora Grubb Gardens location. (See how Ritual has undergone a rebranding that started with their flagship café on page forty-six.)

StClair, of TeBella, echoes the value of new audience exposure through retail partnerships. “Our flagship TeBella location is a dedicated teashop. Very few people wander in off

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June 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

the street just to look around—we’re a destination,” explains StClair. “So we’ve definitely benefited from Oxford Exchange’s heavy foot traffic. Tea is such a niche market, but we’ve been introduced to people who wouldn’t consider themselves tea drinkers, and now they’ve become our regular customers.” In addition to gaining new customers, StClair has also been

by Oxford Exchange founder Blake Casper—a London School of Economics grad and CEO of Casper’s Company, which owns and operates more than fifty McDonald’s across Florida—about partnering just six months after he and his wife opened their first Buddy Brew location.

Similarly, Vigilante was still in the development stage with Vigilante Cof-

WE’RE A PART OF THIS AMAZING ATMOSPHERE AND ENERGY WHILE STILL SPECIALIZING IN OUR OWN BRANDS. approached by more restaurants about heading a tea service. “The Oxford Exchange restaurant’s full tea menu has become something they’re well known for. Because of that, we’ve really become hugely sought after to develop restaurant tea programs, as other restaurants have seen Oxford Exchange’s success,” she says.

Partnering can particularly benefit young brands when the other partner is an accomplished business owner.

Ward, for example, was approached

fee when he was approached about partnering by Maketto’s founders, chef Erik Bruner-Yang of Toki Underground and Will Sharp of men’s fashion brand Durkl. Sensing the benefit of aligning with such-well respected DC brands, he signed on immediately.

Plus, there was rent to think about.

“We never saw DC as an affordable rent place for just a coffee shop. This allowed us to make it work in the city while we were still at a young stage as a company,” he says.

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June 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

PARTAKING IN PARTNERSHIPS: (clockwise from top left) Chris Vigilante of Vigilante Coffee, Eileen Rinaldi of Ritual Coffee Roasters, and Abigail StClair of TeBella. An iced tea prepared at StClair's TeBella Tea Co. bar inside of Oxford Exchange.

with fewer teas so people wouldn’t feel overwhelmed,” she says.

Partners sometimes overlook simple logistical issues. “You have to make sure your hours are symbiotic,” says Rinaldi. “Most retail shops don’t open until eleven or twelve, but most coffee is consumed before eleven.

Before you partner, you have to think about how to manage that.” At Maketto, Vigilante worked around the later hours by offering an alcohol menu in the evening—but that came with another concession. “I had to compromise on the height of the coffee bar, which we had to make a little higher

to serve alcohol,” says Vigilante. “But you have to be prepared to make sacrifices when you have multiple partners in a project and be willing to meet in the middle on things.”

Ultimately, the success of both the retail shop and coffee bar hinges on the strength of the partners’ relationship. “Make sure your visions align, plan for the long term, and seek out opportunities to build trust before you partner—collaborate on an event or do a pop-up,” suggests Vigilante.

“It’s kind of like a marriage, so you’ve got to make sure you pick the right person to partner with.”

P HOTO S (C LOC K WISE FRO M TOP LEFT): VIG ILANTE C O FFEE C OURTESY O F ELI MEIR K AP LA N; C OURTE SY OF RITUAL C OFFEE; TWO BOTTOM PHOTO S BY CA SSIE P EREZ

While both Ward and Vigilante were approached by their partners rather than seeking the partnership out themselves, the requests to team up weren’t made totally out of the blue.

The coffee purveyors got to know their future partners as customers first (Ward in the first few months after he opened Buddy Brew’s first location and Vigilante while he was still a barista at another establishment) and cultivated those relationships, building trust and a solid reputation for quality through each cup of coffee served. Roasters and coffee shop owners interested in partnering with other merchants or restaurants would do well to look first to their regulars—people they have already formed personal relationships with who are clearly fans of their product—since they’ll be most receptive to graduating that personal relationship to a professional one.

Entering into a partnership with other business owners, though, requires a high degree of flexibility—and, occasionally, compromises.

StClair, for example, pared down her menu offerings to just what StClair calls TeBella’s “greatest hits,” instead of offering their full lineup of singleestate and single-origin teas. “We wanted to appeal to a wider audience, to casual lunch goers, so we stuck

Counter INTELLIGENCE SAVOR THE MORNING Who said that oatmeal had to be sweet? To meet the consumer demand for a more nuanced snacking experience, Straw Propeller launched a line of savory oatmeal flavors, including Indian Curry, Moroccan Spice, and Tuscan Herb.

Suitable for any time of day, these savory oatmeal packages transcend the breakfast boundary and satisfy the demand for a dining experience that delivers more complex and authentic flavor profiles. strawpropeller.com

HOT OFF THE PRESS Huhtamaki

recently

SWEET TALKIN’ released

their

Based on the philosophy that what

Impresso cup line in the US, adding a

grows together goes together, Scott

new dimension of visual and tactile ap-

Unkefer founded Just Panela, a com-

peal to take-out drinkware. The paper

pany that makes hand-crafted, USDA

cups have fully customizable options

organic cane sugar from the same land

for printing and embossing, and come

and people that grow and harvest Co-

in twelve-, sixteen-, and twenty-ounce sizes. The

lombian coffee. Boiled from the spent stalk of cane

Impresso includes smart features like double-wall

grass, Panela offers a raw, unrefined sweetener to

insulations, easy-to-apply lids, and an embossed de-

add to your condiment bar—and an origin story that

sign that insulates beverages without the need for

you can be proud to share. panela.com

an additional outer sleeve. huhtamaki.com

MAKING THE WORLD GO ’ROUND

DIEDRICH SCHOLARSHIP FUND

Roastar debuted their new flat-

Diedrich Roasters has estab-

bottom pouches at SCAA, offering

lished the Stephan Diedrich

coffee sellers a host of new options

Scholarship Fund, an ongoing

with the digitally customizable bags.

annual fund of $5,000 per year.

The pouches feature a printable bot-

The scholarship will enable new

tom panel, exceptional stability on

roasters who otherwise would not be able to afford

shelves, efficient use of shelf space, and use 12

the expenses to attend the annual Roaster’s Guild

percent less film compared to stand-up pouches

Retreat. The scholarship honors Stephan Diedrich,

of similar volume. Available options for customiza-

the retired founder of Diedrich Roasters. The ap-

tion include degassing valves, zippers, and rounded

plication and vetting of applicants will be handled

corners. roastar.com

entirely by the executive council of the Roaster’s Guild. diedrichroasters.com

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June 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

» People & Products «

A COOL NEW BREW Brewista offers a cold-brew solution to eliminate the mess and waste of traditional cold-brew coffee preparation with their new Cold Pro Commercial Cold Brew System. Unveiled at New York Coffee Fest, the Cold Pro operates using a permanent filter made of photo-etched stainless steel and BPA-free polypropylene. To prepare cold-brew coffee, simply lower the permanent filter into the brew vessel, add coffee grounds, and water, then steep overnight. brewglobal.com

MORE PROFITS, LESS WASTE

LOOK MA, NO HANDS

Ghirardelli Chocolate Company re-

Looking for a way to reduce di-

cently introduced the stylish and sleek

rect contact with lids in your

Maximo Sauce Dispensing System,

café? Designed to support self-

featuring a unique pouch and portion-

serve and full-service coffee en-

control pump system. The pouches

vironments, the LidGrabber is a simple, innovative

deliver up to 98 percent product

solution that eliminates hand-to-lid contact. The

evacuation for more profits and less waste, reduc-

device was engineered to grab a coffee lid and ap-

ing landfill waste with reusable pumps, bottles, and

ply it to the cup, making an unsanitary environment

plastic pouches. The sauce pouches come in four

a healthier one. The low-cost tool conforms to the

flavors: Black Label Chocolate Sauce, Sweet Ground

vast majority of lids available at retail coffee shops.

Chocolate & Cocoa Sauce, Caramel Sauce, and White

thelidgrabber.com

Chocolate Flavored Sauce. ghirardelli.com

GROUND CONTROL TO MAJOR TASTE

LET’S TALK PUERTO VALLARTA

With efficiency, cost savings,

Save the date! Let’s Talk Cof-

and customer satisfaction in

fee Global 2016 will take place

mind, Voga Coffee recently in-

in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, Octo-

troduced the Ground Control

ber 7–9. The weekend-long event

twin brewer, which allows baristas to selectively

is Sustainable Harvest’s annual

extract the flavors they want, with total control over

supply-chain gathering uniting producers, roast-

each step from the first wetting to the final extrac-

ers, financiers, NGOs, government, and many more

tion. The brewer’s proprietary, vacuum-driven,

from different coffee-producing countries. This year’s

multiple-extraction brewing process is designed to

theme is “Prospering in the New Reality,” with ses-

give baristas the control to isolate the most desir-

sions examining the challenging economic, social,

able flavor components in a coffee and maximize

and environmental issues facing specialty coffee in

consistency in brew. vogacoffee.com

2016. letstalkcoffee.org

Fresh Cup Magazine « freshcup.com

77

Trade Show & Events CALENDAR JUNE

AUGUST

JUNE 5 COFFEE & TEA FESTIVAL PHILLY ICED Philadelphia coffeeandteafestival.com

AUGUST 18–21 ROASTERS GUILD RETREAT Delavan, Wisconsin roastersguild.org

JUNE 10–12 COFFEE FEST DALLAS Dallas coffeefest.com

JUNE 15–17 WORLD TEA EXPO Las Vegas worldteaexpo.com

JUNE 23–25 SCAE WORLD OF COFFEE Dublin worldofcoffee-dublin.com

JUNE 26-28 SUMMER FANCY FOOD SHOW New York City specialtyfood.com

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June 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

AUGUST 28–30 WESTERN FOODSERVICE & HOSPITALITY EXPO Los Angeles westernfoodexpo.com

SEPTEMBER

SEPTEMBER 7–9 COTECA HAMBURG Hamburg, Germany coteca-hamburg.com/en

SEPTEMBER 10–11 COFFEE AND CHOCOLATE EXPO San Juan, Puerto Rico coffeeandchocolateexpo.com

» 2016 Coffee & Tea Trade Shows, Classes & Competitions «

SEPTEMBER

SEPTEMBER 14–17 GOLDEN BEAN NORTH AMERICA Portland goldenbeannorthamerica.com

SEPTEMBER

SEPTEMBER 30–OCTOBER 2 COFFEE FEST ANAHEIM Anaheim coffeefest.com

OCTOBER SEPTEMBER 16–18 NEW YORK COFFEE FESTIVAL New York City newyorkcoffeefestival.com OCTOBER 13–16 LET’S TALK COFFEE Puerto Vallarta, Mexico letstalkcoffee.org SEPTEMBER 20–22 FALL FOR TEA/ NORTH AMERICAN TEA CONFERENCE Ontario, Canada tea.ca OCTOBER 17–20 MOSCOW COFFEE & TEA EXPO Moscow expocoffeetea.ru/en SEPTEMBER 25–26 CANADIAN COFFEE AND TEA SHOW Vancouver coffeeteashow.ca

SEPTEMBER 27–29 FLORIDA RESTAURANT AND LODGING SHOW Orlando flrestaurantandlodgingshow.com

OCTOBER 20–22 TRIESTESPRESSO EXPO Trieste, Italy triestespresso.it

Fresh Cup Magazine « freshcup.com

79

ADVERTISER Index Go to freshcup.com/resources and click on “Fresh Cup Advertisers” to view the Advertiser Index and the Websites listed below.

80

ADVERTISER

CONTACT

ONLINE

AIYA America

310.212.1395

aiya-america.com

Barista Pro Shop

866.PRO.LATTE (776.5288)

baristaproshop.com/ad/fresh

Break the Cup

erodriguez@breakthecup.com

breakthecup.com

5

Café Show Seoul

82.2.6000.6687

cafeshow.com

75

Caffe D’Vita

800.200.5005

caffedvita.com

53

Cappuccine

800.511.3127

cappuccine.net

7

The Chai Co.

888.922.2424

chaico.com

17

Chocolate Fish Coffee Roasters

916.451.5181

chocolatefishcoffee.com

48

Coffee Fest

800.232.0083

coffeefest.com

Coffee Holding Co.

800.458.2233

coffeeholding.com

57

Coffee Shop Manager

800.750.3947

coffeeshopmanager.com

20

COTECA Hamburg

coteca-hamburg.com

37

Curtis

800.421.6150

wilburcurtis.com

2

Custom Cup Sleeves

888-672-4096

customcupsleeves.com

73

Flair Flexible Packaging

920.574.3121

flairpackaging.com

20

Fresh Cup Magazine

503.236.2587

freshcup.com

Ghirardelli Chocolate

800.877.9338

ghirardelli.com/professional

83

Golden Bean

310.266.2827

goldenbeannorthamerica.com

73

Goodnature

800.403.4051

goodnature.com/freshcup

63

Gosh That’s Good! Brand

888.848.GOSH (4674)

goshthatsgood.com

13

Holy Kakow

503.484.8316

holykakow.com

19

Huhtamaki/Impresso

800.244.6382

impressocup.com

9

Java Jacket

800.208.4128

javajacket.com

32

Josuma Coffee Company

650.366.5453

josuma.com

31

June 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine

PAGE 59 49, 65

6, 67

73, 81

ADVERTISER Index (continued) Go to freshcup.com/resources and click on “Fresh Cup Advertisers” to view the Advertiser Index and the Websites listed below.

82

ADVERTISER

CONTACT

ONLINE

PAGE

Monin Gourmet Flavorings

855.FLAVOR1 (352.8671)

monin.com

3, 84

Mr. Espresso

510.287.5200

mrespresso.com

21

Organic Products Trading Co.

888.881.4433

optco.com

37

Pacific Foods

503.692.9666

pacificfoods.com/foodservice

15

Promac

844.776.6221

promac-usa.com

71

PumpSkins

877.994.4600

pumpskins.com

48

RetailMugs.com

970.222.9559

retailmugs.com

73

Royal Coffee New York

888.ROYALNY (769.2569)

royalny.com

11

S&D Coffee & Tea

800.933.2210

sdspecialtycoffee.com

33

Sea Island Coffee

44.207.735.4473

seaislandcoffee.com

65

SelbySoft

800.454.4434

selbysoft.com

23

SerendipiTea

888.TEA.LIFE (832.5433)

serendipitea.com

73

Service Ideas

800.328.4493

serviceideas.com

62

StixToGo

800.666.6655

royalpaper.com

59

TeaSource

855.320.4832

teasource.com

19

Theta Ridge Coffee

800.745.8738

thetaridgecoffee.com

73

Toddy

970.493.0788

toddycafe.com/schooling

49

Torani

800.775.1925

torani.com/foodservice

25

UpShot Filters by LBP

800.545.6200

upshotsolution.com

4

Vessel Drinkware

855.883.7735

vesseldrinkware.com

67

Vio by WinCup

800.292.2877

wincup.com/vio

35

Walker Coffee Trading

713.780.7050

walkercoffee.com

23

Your Brand Café

866.566.0390

yourbrandcafe.com

14

Zojirushi America

800.264.6270

zojirushi.com

29

June 2016 » Fresh Cup Magazine