News

Breaking news coming out of Brooklyn as Toby’s Estate has announced—and you’re hearing about it first here on Sprudge—a brand new cafe and roasting space to open later this fall in Bushwick. Their sixth location, the new space will operate alongside Toby’s original Williamsburg roastery, allowing the company to “double its roasting capacity while staying true to [their] small-batch philosophy,” per the brand.

Taking over 8 Wilson Avenue, the new cafe will feature a daily brunch menu full of items prepared at their in-house kitchen as well as pastries and grab-and-go items from local purveyors like Supermoon Bakehouse, Ovenly, and King Street Kitchen. Toby’s Bushwick will also serve as the flagship store for Salt Lake City’s Saint Anthony Industries—their first in New York City—who will be highlighting their manual brewers as part of the Toby’s pour-over bar.

When looking for this new space, co-owners Amber Jacobsen and Adam Boyd originally set out to find a larger location to replace their current roasting space, which they have since outgrown after six years. But when Jacobsen and Boyd found the spot on Wilson Avenue, they opted to change course and run two separate roasteries. Fit out with a restored 22-kilo Probat, Toby’s Bushwick will serve at the jumping off point for the new Toby’s Wholesale Partnership Program, “a new initiative that will provide wholesale partners with additional opportunities to tailor coffee programs to their individual needs,” according to a press release provided to Sprudge.

“Many of our partners want to be even more involved in their coffee program and take ownership of everything from flavor profiles to packaging design,” Boyd states. “They want to learn how to source, roast, and blend their coffees so that it becomes an extension of their own brand.”

“We see this program as a great collaborative opportunity for our partners and a way for them delve into this process while still retaining the services that we provide beyond coffee roasting, including equipment loans and servicing, education certification, and consistent quality sourcing,” Jacobsen adds.

In a time when every cafe wants to also be a roaster, it’s a smart move by Toby’s. With two roasters working discretely, Toby’s is able to continue roasting coffee to their own specifications for their six cafes while allowing wholesale accounts the opportunity to make the coffee they serve their own, something that couldn’t be done had Toby’s opted for one larger roaster instead of two medium-sized. It’s a gambit that allows wholesale accounts to have the uniqueness associating with roasting for oneself (without all the upfront equipment costs) while keeping them as wholesale accounts. And for the rest of us, it’s a new place to grab a little brekkie and some filter coffee. And that’s pretty nice too.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

Top image via Toby’s Estate

Disclosure: Toby’s Estate is an advertising partner with the Sprudge Media Network.

The post Toby’s Estate Announces New Bushwick Cafe And Roasting Space appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

What do you get when you cross an exhibition space, a print shop, a work shop, a book shop, and a coffee shop? Well, something that sounds like the set-up for a really terrible joke, but is actually a building filled with creatives and a buzzing coffee shop headed up by Everyday Coffee. Located on the corner of Queensberry Street and Lansdowne Place in the inner-northern suburb of Carlton (a short ten-minute walk from Melbourne’s city center), Everyday Coffee’s latest venue is a small and succinct coffee-shop-inside-a-shop.


In the years since opening their first location on Johnston Street, owners Mark Free and Aaron Maxwell have grown and developed Everyday Coffee in quite an organic way. They now roast their own coffee, have a Midtown store, and founded All Are Welcome with baker Boris Portnoy. Their new space was born out of a conversation with longtime customer Ziga Testen, who at the time was setting up a new studio on the ground floor at Queensberry Street; it’s a partnership between Testen, design studio Public Office, and Perimeter Books.

Everyday Coffee Owners Mark Free and Aaron Maxwell

The design and feel of the space is comfortable, but quite minimal—wooden bar seating lines the front window, and a coffee workbench sits against the back wall. There’s a communal table, bench seating, and a small book display sitting next to a print workshop, which makes for some fascinating viewing.

Chatting to Free about their approach to design, he explains that Everyday wanted the new space to have an ad-hoc, work in progress feel. “Because it very much is one,” Free says. “The design came a little from us and our collaborators upstairs, and a little from our cabinetry and furniture makers Dale Holden and Adam Ascenzo.”

While it feels a bit wrong (and even a bit cliché) to call the space a “pop-up,” that’s ostensibly what it is for the time being—according to Free they could be here making coffee for a month, a year, or indefinitely.

“Everything is on wheels,” he says. “So we can roll out any time if the going gets tough.”

For now, Everyday is cranking out espresso drinks with a black powder-coated La Marzocco Linea, and offering delectable pastries from All Are Welcome (and some neatly packaged chocolates from Hunted & Gathered).

“We were conscious that we were setting up between the two big universities,” Free says of the location. “So we made it a space where people can grab a quick takeaway but also meet up or work on a laptop or browse the books.”

The atmosphere is reminiscent of Everyday’s Johnston Street store, and customers seem to feel at home in the space, setting up their laptops to work on projects and assignments, catching up with friends, or getting their re-usable cups filled before setting off on their way. It’s this approachable feeling that’s made Everyday such a staple within Melbourne’s specialty community—theirs is an ethos of belonging in every new location, with excellent coffee as a delightful extra perk.

Eileen P. Kenny is a coffee professional, winemaker, and Sprudge Media Network contributor based in Melbourne. Read more Eileen P. Kenny on Sprudge.

The post Inside Everyday Coffee’s Maybe Pop-Up Maybe Permanent Melbourne Cafe appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

In a city dense with specialty cafes, and in a field still mostly dominated by men, coffee roaster Juliette Simpkins and her partner, Trevor Moisen, opened Black Ring Coffee in Long Beach, California in the summer of 2017. It took them just shy of six years of work, planning, forming relationships, and learning. They opened with no outside funding.

Black Ring sits on a busy section of Long Beach Boulevard in the city’s northeast section, Virginia Village. The shop’s industrial design and dulcet vibe reflect its steady owner, who seems both unfazed by her newfound responsibilities and determined to will her cafe’s success.

She tells me she’s plenty fazed, that she gets very little sleep, and that she’s taken very few days off.

Then again, six years ago Simpkins quit her job as a therapist for a mental hospital in nearby Orange County. “It was tough,” she says. “You’re seeing people at the worst parts of their lives. A lot of times you help them get better and then you see them back.”

Coffee offered an escape—”It makes me happy, and I was not happy working in that hospital”—so she moved to Long Beach and set out to learn roasting. Primarily self-taught, Simpkins’ journey started humbly. She purchased a Behmor roaster, watched YouTube videos, and read The Coffee Roaster’s Companion several times. A two-year physics degree helped, but there was an unfortunate incident involving a melted air popcorn popper along the way. Eventually, she took a roasting class with Boot Coffee and talked frequently with other roasters, sometimes roasting with them. “Now my roasting is an amalgam of everything I’ve ever learned from every roaster that I’ve roasted with,” she tells me. “I’ve tried their way and then kind of created my own way.”

By late 2014, her roasting dialed in, she and Moisen started supplying MADE Millworks in Long Beach. The coffee’s popularity had them roasting around the clock during the holidays.  “We were taking sleeping shifts so that we could roast the coffee for all of the orders we got,” Simpkins says.

Simpkins borrowed roasting time from Heartbreak Coffee (now in Oxford, Mississippi) and rented time at Arcade Coffee Roasters in nearby Riverside. Soon, they were selling coffee to several homegrown retail shops, like Long Beach Creamery, which makes a signature coffee ice cream using Black Ring’s coffee.

A Black Ring shop was not a foregone conclusion. Long Beach has been in the throes of a massive revitalization, from its downtown corridor to its nether-reaches, and its specialty coffee scene is already getting crowded, with more than a dozen dedicated specialty shops by my count, not including multi-use cafes or large coffee chains. One of Black Ring’s baristas told me she’s opening her own cafe in downtown Long Beach, and Portola Coffee Lab, with six Orange County locations, is opening a new shop in Long Beach imminently.

In late 2016, Simpkins and Moisen identified an empty spot in north Long Beach, a 100-year-old storefront that had been vacant since 2004. It was once a courthouse, and also a jail. The city was anxious to have a tenant and north Long Beach had no specialty cafes.  Together they plunged into the unknown, and Black Ring Coffee was born.

Black Ring Coffee is in elite company among Long Beach cafes in that it roasts its own coffee on premises. It lucked into a used Ambex YM10 from Augie’s Coffee, sliding just under restrictions that would have required air quality bureau approval. A BUNN grinds for FETCO-fueled batch brews and pour-overs. For its espresso drinks, Black Ring uses a Mahlkönig K30 and La Marzocco Linea Classic, the latter another hand-me-down purchased from nearby Steelhead Coffee.

First-rate equipment at second-hand prices. More bricks in this bootstrapped build-out.

Add them to those bricks adorning Black Ring’s interior walls. Simpkins, who designed Black Ring’s cafe, decided to expose that underlying bit of character in the century-old building to create a friendly, inviting spot that could also seat lots of people. It’s narrow, open design features a short countertop at the coffee bar and a thin, sturdy counter traversing the opposite wall, where customers can hang out as they drink the popular honey-oat latte (tasting notes: honey-nut cheerios).

The roaster is closed off in its own room. For now. Although Simpkins allows customers to watch, she typically roasts in solitude. When I come in one Sunday morning to watch, she is zoned in. It almost looks therapeutic.

Food partners rotate. Simpkins prefers local Long Beach suppliers, like Colossus Bread, which has no permanent home, calling itself a “community-supported bakery.” She’s also fond of Rye Goods out of Tustin, California, a company that mills its own grains and has a certified commercial kitchen in a garage. Black Ring hosts art shows in the shop, with the showcase artist, bands, and food trucks, turning the venue into a community space.

All of these little black coffee rings, they leave their mark.

Fritz Nelson is a freelance journalist based in Long Beach, CA. This is Fritz Nelson’s first feature for Sprudge Media Network. 

The post In Long Beach, Black Ring Coffee Bootstraps Its Way To Success appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Wheel of acquisitions, turn turn turn. Reuters reports that Italian coffee company Lavazza has purchased Mars Drinks, the coffee arm of Mars Inc. Known more for their candy—M&M’s, Snickers, Skittles, Starburst, etc—Mars has agreed to sell their coffee businesses for a reported $650 million.

According to Reuters, Lavazza is hoping the purchase will increase their global presence, particularly in “office coffee service (OCS) and vending machine segments,” where Mars owned leading brands Flavia and Klinx systems.

“This acquisition strengthens Lavazza’s position in the OCS and vending segments, which offer considerable opportunities for growth and development,” said Antonio Baravalle, Lavazza CEO.

The purchase from Mars comes hot on the heels of Lavazza’s July acquisition of Blue Pod Coffee in Australia, a move that helped the Italian company eclipse 2 billion euros in revenue. The deal is expected to be in effect by the end of the year, with Lavazza acquiring “Mars’ coffee businesses in North America, Canada, Japan and in Europe, including its production plants in Britain and North America.”

Generally speaking, the newest acquisition has little effect on specialty coffee. Office coffee is still gonna be office coffee. You’re still going to need to bring your own coffee and AeroPress to your desk to get a halfway decent midday cup. The only real difference for you is that you’ll now be subject to whomever is pouring themselves a cup of office coffee—and undoubtedly loading it up with powdered creamer and artificial sweeteners—ranting about how the coffee used to be better.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

The post Lavazza Acquires Coffee Division Of Mars Incorporated appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Cancer sucks. A lot. And the fight against it makes allies of us all.

That’s why Department of Brewology and Sprudge are teaming up for the entire month of October to support cancer research. The “Make Coffee Stronger Than Cancer” campaign is an effort to activate the coffee community to raise awareness and charitable funds about an issue that not only deeply affects coffee professionals, but many loved ones around us all. No matter who you are reading this, cancer has touched your life in some way—and so let’s all stand up together and fight back.

How it works: We’re inviting any coffee-related business (or any business for that matter!) to join us in raising funds during the month of October for a cancer charity of their choice. Our recommended organization is the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, but you can raise funds for a local or national charity of your choice, based on what speaks to you and your community.

Fill out this brief form to let us know who you are and what organization you will be supporting, and we’ll keep a running list of partners and a link to their supported cause. Additionally, Department of Brewology has created a campaign poster that they will be providing the image of for supporting partners, who can display their involvement to their patrons. Sprudge + Brewology will be featuring participating cafes across our platforms over the month of October, so sign up, raise funds, and get featured!

We see this campaign as the latest extension of our bi-annual Night of 1000 Pours initiative, activating the coffee community for charitable good works. On behalf of everyone at Sprudge and Department of Brewology, we’re honored to continue efforts to use the coffee community as a force for philanthropy for issues that deeply affect us all, and appreciate your support on this journey.

—Sprudge Media Network + Department of Brewology

The post Join Sprudge + Department Of Brewology To Fight Cancer In October appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Black Coffee is back.

The original live event from creative director Michelle Johnson (The Chocolate Barista, Sprudge) returns for two exclusive engagements on the American east coast, happening in NYC on October 15th and Washington DC on October 19th.

Exploring the intersection of race and coffee culture, Black Coffee takes the form of a lively on-stage panel discussion—a dialogue that centers the voices and experiences of Black coffee professionals and enthusiasts alike, all with unique perspectives that span intersectional identities and roles on the retail end of the coffee chain. The program launched earlier this year in Portland, Oregon, and you can watch a full video presentation of that evening right here.

On Monday, October 15th Black Coffee is in Manhattan at the Classic Stage Company (136 East 13th) in an evening sponsored by La Marzocco USA, Revelator Coffee, Oatly, Everyman Espresso, and Oren’s Coffee Co. This conversation is hosted by Michelle Johnson, with co-hosts Tymika Lawrence (Genuine Origin) and Ezra Baker (Oren’s Coffee Co.). Panelists include Lem Butler (Black & White Roasters), Kristina Hollie (Intelligentsia), Winston Thomas (Barista Champion of South Africa/Urnex Ambassador), and Candice Madison (Irving Farm).

Buy tickets now for Black Coffee NYC. Sales benefit Brownsville Community Culinary Center.

Black Coffee PDX (left to right, bottom to top) Zael Ogwaro (Never Coffee), Michelle Johnson (The Chocolate Barista), Ian Williams (Deadstock Coffee), Adam JacksonBey (The Potter’s House), D’Onna Stubblefield (Icon Coffee), Cameron Heath (Revelator Coffee Company), Gio Fillari (Coffee Feed PDX) and Ezra Baker (Oren’s Coffee Co). Photo by Shaunté Glover for Sprudge.

On Friday, October 19th Black Coffee is in Washington DC at The Line Hotel (1770 Euclid St NW) in an evening sponsored by La Marzocco, Oatly, Revelator Coffee, and The Line Hotel. This conversation is again hosted by creative director Michelle Johnson, with co-host Adam JacksonBey (The Potter’s House/Barista Guild of America). Panelists include Aisha Pew (Dovecote Cafe), Candy Schibli (Southeastern Roastery), Reggie Elliott (Foreign National), Victoria Smith (The Cup We All Race 4), and Donte Gardner (Vigilante Coffee Company).

Buy tickets now for Black Coffee DC. Sales benefit Collective Action for Safe Spaces. 

Poster art by Taylor McManus. 

Read Michelle Johnson’s original statement of intent for Black Coffee. 

All Black Coffee coverage on Sprudge. 

The post Black Coffee Is Coming To New York City And Washington DC appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Dayglow Coffee could only exist in Los Angeles. Opened in Silverlake on Sunset Boulevard in late 2017, the cafe from Tohm Ifergan, formerly of Portola Coffee Roasters in nearby Costa Mesa, is a neon-bright beacon not so unlike the city itself. A multi-roaster that sources coffees from some of the world’s most notable roasteries, Dayglow is, like LA, at once itself and a component of its parts.  

Ifergan founded the shop to not only provide customers with unique coffees but a side of information as well. Its interior has a clean aesthetic, with the seating and bar arranged in such a way as to encourage customers to interact with baristas as much as with each other, facilitating conversations about individual coffees, their roasteries, and means to prepare them at home.

Tohm Ifergan of Dayglow Coffee

Dayglow’s menu is intended to be simple and approachable, whether you’re familiar with specialty coffee or not. It’s divided into 10 different categories, written in relative plain-speak: espresso, milk, sweetened, signature, tea, filter, handbrew, tonic, funk, and cold coffee. 

Ifergan’s experience crafting coffee cocktails is on full display here. One recent run of Signature Series menu items were all named after Wes Anderson movies, and included the Hotel Chevalier, which combined distilled coffee, fresh lime, and coconut cream, all garnished with mint and grated nutmeg. Another option, the Darjeeling Limited, was a mixture of distilled juniper berries, Tanzanian coffee from King State Coffee Roasters, Darjeeling tea, tonic, thyme, and sweet lime. Having a director’s cut menu is quintessentially Ifergan.

The Hotel Chevalier

In addition to the Signature Series, at any given time Dayglow carries coffees from between 10 and 20 roasters, half international and half domestic. Ifergan and his staff blind-cup samples to determine their specific offerings for the week, and stock their shelves and online marketplace with a dizzying variety of options as well. 

They have a robust coffee subscription program that allows customers to sample from the Dayglow stable of roasters, and offers varying tiers depending on how much coffee you go through each month. And these are the coffees you want. They’ve already featured the likes of Koppi Coffee Roasters, The Barn Coffee Roasters, Little Wolf Coffee, Color Coffee Roasters,  The Coffee Collective, Drop Coffee Roasters, Hex Coffee, and Madcap Coffee Roasters, to name only a few. 

But subscribers have access to more than just amazing coffees. Instead, subscribing to Dayglow gives access to in-house training videos, brewing blogs, and a community on Dayglow’s website who share educational materials on topics ranging from coffee-specific brewing methods to theories on extraction and much more. Dayglow’s online presence feels more like a publication than a marketplace and acts as both a library for home-brewers as well as a feedback medium for Ifergan and Dayglow’s use. By sourcing the opinions of their community, Dayglow can alter their menu, brewing techniques, and coffee selection to suit customer taste.

This kind of customer feedback loop is second nature for Ifergan, who built his success at Portola’s Theorem bar on direct interactions between himself and the people he served. Tasting his coffee there was to have an experience in your taste in coffee, but Theorem itself was intimate and dark and comprised of a handful of seats, a black bar, and a sliding glass door.

Dayglow is an evolution of that experience. One that embraces the city it calls home, holds its doors wide open, and lets the light rush in.

David Palazuelos is a freelance contributor. This is David Palazuelos’ first article for Sprudge.

The post More Is More: LA’s Dayglow Coffee Maxes Out The Multi-Roaster Cafe appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

In a recent Chicago Tribune article reporter Nick Kindelsperger and Ipsento Coffee founding partner Tim Taylor visit an undisclosed diner to once and for all determine the objective quality of diner coffee. Using a refractometer, National Coffee Association and Specialty Coffee Association TDS recommendations, and some “[scribbled] down equations,” Kindelsperger and Taylor determine that diner coffee is weak—powerful weak—and terrible. And they couldn’t be any more wrong.

The thing is, they aren’t wrong. By all quantifiable specialty standards, even at their most generous, diner coffee just doesn’t measure up. But I’ll be DAMNED if I let anyone besmirch the good name of diner coffee. Yes, according to specialty coffee rubrics it isn’t as good as specialty coffee, but doesn’t quite seem like a fair test, now does it? According to the Zac scale, none of you jabronies are as Zac as I am, so I must be better, right? No? Sounds like an unfair “test” everyone who isn’t me is doomed to fail at, you say? I never thought of it that way.

And here are some more “facts” for you: diner coffee has brought more people into specialty coffee than any specialty coffee has, maybe all specialty coffee combined. And when I say diner coffee, I mean specifically the stuff that has sat on the heating element for at least two hours, served at 3:00am in an 24-hour greasy spoon where everyone still smokes inside—including the grizzled septuagenarian server with the heart of gold—even though it’s waaaaaay illegal, the sort of place where you leave you smelling like death and with a stomach ache from drinking at least eight cups of coffee. THAT is diner coffee. And if you want to get really real about which is “better,” the number of times diner coffee has met or exceeded my expectations far FAR FAR exceeds that of specialty coffee.

There is a whole generation of coffee professionals—of which I consider myself one, assuming coffee journalism falls under the coffee professional umbrella—for whom drinking diner coffee was “being into coffee.” That was our starting point. It wasn’t Instagrammable eight-tier tulips or being a barista because it was now the “cool” job, or hell, even because your favorite shop home makes their own vanilla syrup for their lattes. It was diner coffee. Burnt, crusty, loaded with more and more cream and sugar as the night progressed to gird the stomach, diner coffee. Mwah. Perfection.

I weep for the next wave of coffee professionals, whose introduction to the whole show are shops that close at 7:00pm. Coffee doesn’t stop when the sun goes down. For many, that’s when it all gets started. Yeah, maybe we all have that a-ha! moment with a natural that really turned us on to specialty coffee, but you know what started that whole journey? It was probably a cup of blueberry flavored coffee at the “fancy” diner, the one with like 20 different options that you could mix and match and everyone had a “favorite,” probably a blend of no less than three different flavors. Half vanilla, quarter Irish cream, quarter cinnamon, and juuuuust a splash of hazelnut for me.

I understand the point of the article. Kindelsprenger and Taylor are trying to show the “coffee is just coffee” crowd that there is, in fact, a difference between pre-ground commodity grade coffee and specialty coffee, and to do so in a quantifiable and scientifically repeatable way. It’s a laudable goal and I don’t begrudge them for it. But once you start calling diner coffee “terrible,” well, now we have a problem. So just remember, if specialty coffee is seeing more devotees than ever before, it’s because it is standing on the shoulders of giants.

You’re not as tall as you think you are.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

Image © Adobe Stock

The post In Defense Of Diner Coffee appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Though the cafe celebrated it’s one year anniversary on September 18, the story of Sump Coffee’s arrival in Nashville started more than three years ago. Their involvement in the striking oneC1TY development was, according to owner Scott Carey, a case of “dumb luck.” The developers mentioned the idea of including a coffee shop in the complex to Gerard Craft of Italian eatery Pastaria, who opened his own location within the development. Craft suggested Sump as a candidate, and a representative was dispatched to St. Louis to check out the brand and the coffee. They liked it, and hands were shaken.

But the coffee climate in Nashville changed a lot in the intervening years. New cafe after new cafe opened, leading Carey to question more closely how his cafe should fit into the growing community.

“The market here is very mature and so we have to ask ourselves what are we doing? Who are we? And how do we communicate that to people?” says Carey. And like many business owners have found before him, even the best-tested practices don’t always translate city to city.

Sump owner Scott Carey

At first, Carey expected that what worked in St. Louis would also work in Nashville. “But that’s not what the market wants or what the location is dictating,” admitted Carey after Sump Nashville’s first year. Though Carey tried to bring the “slow bar” mindset of his St. Louis location to Tennessee, demand forced new methods. His team has had to quickly adapt in ways they hadn’t previously planned—like implementing a Ground Control II batch brewer. Other issues, like finding a consistent quality milk supplier, have taken time to perfect. However, just as the cafe has changed over the course of the year, so has its surrounding neighborhood.

As the area has thrived, Sump Nashville has come to draw an early-morning crowd of commuter-regulars—hence the batch brew. This part of Midtown Nashville has drawn restaurants and grocers that are themselves magnets, allowing Sump to fit right in as a coffee destination. “How we’re thinking about the model and how we’re thinking about the coffee goes hand in glove with how this part of the city is growing,” Carey says.

To that end, a stage has recently been added to a grassy area just outside Sump’s doors for live music, movie screenings, and other events. And in the coffee-specific realm, Sump hosts brewing classes and other coffee events, like open sessions for customers to bring in coffee from any roaster and learn how to brew it better. “We don’t sell a finished product,” Carey says. “We have to do a better job, without being pedantic, of providing accessibility and a doorway to go home and have a good experience.”

Functionality and volume were at the heart of the equipment choices for the Nashville location. They eschewed the Slayer espresso machine that is used in St. Louis for a Kees van der Westen Spirit, which boasts volumetric programming capabilities. This promotes consistency while freeing the barista up to engage with the customer. A Poursteady automated pour-over coffee machine fits this mindset as well. “If you’re manually brewing, you can’t really create that engagement,” says Carey. “It’s more like being a sommelier. They don’t make the wine, but they know a lot about it. So their goal is more engagement.”

Opening a shop five hours southeast from his original location brought about unseen challenges and insights, Carey says, but he appreciates the challenge. “It adds so much depth to how I think about the coffee and the business that I didn’t have before,” he says. These insights, although hard-earned, have been rewarding. He’s committed to the two existing Sump locations, but still has his eyes to the future. “The goal is just to figure it out, and if we get this figured out, I’d like to open up in another market.”

For now, Carey is focusing on what’s already in front of him and learning everything he can. “Opening here has definitely broadened my worldview and caused me to reevaluate some thinking and maybe some of the absolutes I have.”

“It’s still an exploration,” he says. “Maybe I was more naïve than I thought… but I think sometimes being naïve and not completely digesting all the details allows you to do something risky. And now I’m figuring out what that means.”

Josh Rank is a freelance contributor based in Nashville. This is Josh Rank’s first article for Sprudge.

The post New City, New Problems: St. Louis’ Sump Coffee Finds A Home In Nashville appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

We are less than a month away from the return of the New York Coffee Masters, descending upon the Metropolitan Pavilion as part of the New York Coffee Festival October 12th through 14th. With just a few more weeks until festivities begin, Allegra Events has announced the 16 baristas who will be competing to take over the throne currently held by 2017 NY Coffee Masters champ Erika Vonie, who returns to the event this year as an emcee alongside Lem Butler (Black & White Coffee) and Jordan Michelman (Sprudge).

The 2018 New York Coffee Masters lineup reads like 2018 London Coffee Masters 2.0; there are a total of four competitors returning to give the 2018 title another crack: Janis Podins of The Coffee Collective (Latvia), Jaya Chingen of Press Coffee Roasters (UK), Wissem Ben Rahim of Ben Rahim (Germany), and semi-finalist Cole Torode of Rosso Coffee Roasters (Canada). Add in returning New York Coffee Masters competitors Varvara Stukalo of Coffeemania (Russia), Karley Jane Webb of Soul Work Coffee Roasters (USA), and Reef Bessette of The Coffee Movement (USA), as well as returning London Coffee Masters vet Remy Molina of Café Barakah (Coasta Rica) and you’ve got a recipe for fireworks.

Overall, 10 different countries are being represented at the 2018 New York Coffee Masters, competing on a clutch of hot gear from sponsors Slayer, Hario, Mahlkonig, and many more. And this year’s batch of judges is a coffee industry who’s who, with returning Head Judge Anne Lunell (Koppi) joined by Michelle Johnson (The Chocolate Barista, Sprudge), Kris Schackman (Five Elephant), Tymika Lawrence (Genuine Origin), and David Donde (Truth Coffee).

For a full list of competitors and to see their application videos, visit the 2018 New York Coffee Masters official website. Get ready, y’all, it’s about to get wild.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

Top image via New York Coffee Masters

Sprudge Media Network is partnered with the 2018 New York Coffee Festival. 

The post Announcing The 2018 New York Coffee Masters Competitors appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News