WORDS Tara Crutchfield
PHOTOGRAPH Amy Sexson
16.92 Coffee Matcha Bar Twenty-nine-year-old An’Drew Kamani Williams, aka Drew Willz, has created an ever-evolving brand centered around graphic art, clothing, coffee, matcha, and more. 16.92 Coffee Matcha Bar is in the business of bringing coffee and matcha drinks to Central Florida through the modernity and magic of social media and local collaboration.
His first thought was to roast and sell his own coffee beans, but he thought it would be a good idea to make the drinks too. In early 2020, he started a coffee bar. “Making coffee beans is really hard. Roasting on a popcorn popper, trying to sell to a mass of people is very difficult,” said Williams. “So, I started working with Ethos Roasters, and now they sponsor me, and we created our own roast together.” Their collaborative roast, Roasted Caramel, is the blend he uses at the 16.92 Coffee Matcha Bar.
The brand took its first breath in 2012 in Williams’ design class. Asked to create a mock brand for an assignment, he thought up 16.92, an homage to his birthday, January 6, 1992. Williams graduated from Keiser University with a degree in graphic design. Along with his music, Drew began doing freelance work around the city, steadily building a collaborating network of vendors and artists. His freelance work entailed album covers, single art, and eventually corporate work – making logos, designing color schemes, and uniforms for businesses. “I feel like I had a brand,” said Williams of the company’s beginnings.
A PERFECT MATCH-A Matcha naturally fits into the equation as an alternative for customers who don’t drink coffee. He first tasted the beverage in New York in 2019 while working as a latte artist at an upscale barbershop in Manhattan.
The mother of William’s son, Winston, is Colombian. Her grandparents own a coffee farm in Colombia and would bring coffee to the States. Williams described it more as a decoration, still in its husk. “I got a popcorn popper and started learning how to roast,” he said. “I would bring it around to local shops to see what people thought. I would ask every owner their opinions of it so that I could get better and better. I finally got it where I wanted it to be, and I started selling it.”
Williams was captivated by a shop across the street, Cha Cha Matcha. It’s peppy pink and green facade invited Drew inside to what all this Fuschia fuss was about. The shop was beautiful and current, playing modern music with a steady flow of customers filtering in to get their much-needed matcha pick-me-up. He didn’t know what matcha was, had never tried it up to that point, and wasn’t exactly a convert when he did. “I had it – it tasted horrible. It was disgusting,” he said. “It was the worst drink I’d ever had. […] It wasn’t until I came back to Florida and started playing with the recipes that I started trying to figure out how I could make it taste better.”
Working as the Supervisor and Drink Consultant for Sabu Ramen at The Joinery, Williams would bring his AeroPress and pour-overs to make drinks for the staff. He said working with Kristy Scott in the past at 5th & Hall “sparked the idea.” Scott, the Director of Brand Experience at The Joinery, suggested Williams set up 16.92 at the Lakeland food hall.
He utilized YouTube and other vendors to become a matcha master at his bar. “The techniques that I learned are from social media, through different baristas,” said Williams. He does a podcast on Instagram called “Brewz at Drewz,” where he makes drinks and interviews fellow baristas and artists from around the world.
POPPING UP ON THE COFFEE SCENE
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