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Specialty Coffee Archives - Page 23 of 40 - The Curb Kaimuki

Now Open: Intelligentsia’s New Cafe On The Hollywood Walk Of Fame

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It’s been nearly a decade since Intelligentsia opened a coffee bar in Los Angeles. Since the 2010 opening of the Pasadena location, Intelli has expanded into New York and Boston, they’ve put a training lab in Atlanta, and they have currently building out a new cafe in Austin. But the Chicago-born coffee company is returning to their first home-away-from-home with their now open cafe on Hollywood Blvd.

Opened Thursday, February 21st, the new Intelligentsia outpost is right on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, where thousands of people come each year to step on some of their favorite famous names encased in five-sided polygon. Designed by Standard Architecture, the 38-seat cafe feature 30-foot long coffee bar equipped with a Poursteady pour-over system and custom-painted La Marzocco Linea. The vaulted mosaic ceiling and outdoor wall painting are inspired by the works of Paul De Longpré as an homage to the artist who used to reside where the cafe currently stands.

Along with a rotating selection of sparkling teas on tap—sourced through sister company Kilogram Tea—Intelligentsia has tapped Mr. Holmes Bakehouse to provide their wildly inventive pastries for the Hollywood coffee bar; according to the press release, the new cafe will be” the first outside of [Mr. Holmes] namesake bakeries to offer their brand new savory sandwiches.”

Intelligentsia’s Hollywood cafe is open 6:30am to 7:00pm daily. For more information, visit their official website.

Intelligentsia’s Hollywood coffee bar is located at 6401 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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

All media via Intelligentsia

Disclosure: Intelligentsia is an advertising partner with the Sprudge Media Network. 

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Source: Coffee News

The Coffee Drinker’s Guide To Tijuana, Mexico

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tijuana mexico coffee guide

You can tell a lot about someone by how they react when you suggest going to get a cup of coffee in Tijuana. There are the old “painted donkey and piñata” stereotypers, the “isn’t it dangerous?” types, and the “that sounds like so much fun, when can we go?” people who you want to hang out with. Baja California’s gateway has been welcoming strangers for decades, and just as the USA’s relationship with its neighbor has waxed and waned, so has the attitude of San Diegans to the city which is at once part of home and yet very different. However, Tijuana doesn’t need to be viewed through the lens of San Diego or the United States. It stands alone as a cultural, culinary, and coffee destination. And when you view Tijuana from a chair on a plaza with a delicious cortado, it seems anything but intimidating.

Entering from the US means negotiating the world’s busiest land border at San Ysidro, which—unlike Tijuana—is not showing any signs of becoming more welcoming or interesting. But once you cross into Mexico, the town is easy to negotiate by foot, bike, or ride share. English or Spanish and dollars or pesos are equally accepted at most shops and prices for an espresso drink are in the $2 range.

The Baja wine and food scene has been booming for years, with fine dining at Mision 19 and more affordable (but no less delicious) spots like the Telefonica Gastro Park serving the city’s young, growing, and unsurprisingly not-that-different-from-the US middle class. Unlike much of the wine and food, which requires a drive south, the majority of the speciality coffee shops are focused in the downtown area and serve locals as well as the tourist crowd. Recently, Mexican coffees have been more prominent on the speciality market and most Tijuana roasters tend to source from their home country, which means that a short trip around town can acquaint you with some delicious origins which might not yet have made it to your local roaster.

Coffee shops in Tijuana tend to stay open late, often closing at 8:00 or 10:00pm, and are as much of a “third place” coffee culture as you’ll find anywhere in the US. Expect excellent customer service as the speciality coffee scene is still growing in Tijuana and people—customers and staff alike—are excited about it, meaning your barista or fellow customer might love to hear about your other coffee experiences. Oh and Tijuana gets hot, so don’t sniff at grabbing a cold brew to-go. Most coffee houses offer bottled coffee alongside their regular drink menu.

tijuana mexico coffee guide

Nativo Coffee Community

Armed border guards can be pretty intimidating, which is why I always like to follow the somewhat unwelcoming and officious border experience with a much friendlier one at Nativo. A cold drink in one of Nativo’s signature cactus-shaped Mason jars provides the perfect antidote to the hustle and bustle of “the line” and their outdoor seating makes a great place to sit, grab some wifi, and plan a day in TJ. The shop is just a block away from the new PedWest border crossing, making it a great first stop for a Tijuana coffee crawl, so long as you don’t get there before their 9:00am opening time. On weekends, you can grab a drink and wander around the farmers’ market that takes place outside.

Nativo’s menu mixes espresso classics with more inventive drinks that combine their own coffee with Dr Pepper and orange juice amongst other ingredients that pair surprisingly well with sunshine and succulents. The shop itself isn’t large, but you’re only a short walk from a beach, garden, or plaza that makes for a great setting to linger over your drink and one of their donuts, or the deliciously international avocado bagel. There’s also rarely not a dog on hand for petting, along with frequent dog meet-ups, making this one of my overall favorite coffee spots to go to when I absolutely don’t want to get work done.

Nativo Coffee Community is located at Larroque 271, Empleados Federales, 22010 Tijuana. Follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

 

tijuana mexico coffee guide

Container Coffee

Situated in an old shipping container in Tijuana’s busy and touristy Avenida Revolución, Container’s architecture might be disposable, but the shop bucks the trend of the area by selling something customers will enjoy and come back for rather than throw away when they realize nobody needs a novelty poncho or sombrero.

Container invites customers to take a moment to enjoy their cup of coffee in a part of town that feels like it stops for nobody. Customers pick from several coffees, all sourced from Mexico, and then select a brewing method in consultation with the knowledgeable and friendly baristas. Then it’s time to take the cup on the shop’s patio and while away half an hour watching the carnival of enthusiastic hawkers engaged in their timeless pursuit of relieving hopelessly clueless tourists of a few dollars as local teenagers strut their stuff and sneer at the whole spectacle. Container has plenty of power outlets, but it isn’t the place to bring your laptop—“Av Rev” provides entertainment enough. If you’re on the go, or a manually brewed coffee isn’t for you, there are delicious single origin espresso and milk drinks from a national level competition barista and bottled cold coffee to keep the post-lunch slump at bay if you’re on your way to, or from, the nearby Telefonica Gastro Park.

Container Coffee is located at Av. Revolución 1348, Zona Centro, 22000 Tijuana. Follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

 

tijuana mexico coffee guide

Electric Coffee Roasters

A little further from the hustle of the middle of the city is Electric Coffee Roasters, where everything from the clientele to the Instagram account lets you know that you’re in for a curated speciality coffee experience that merits a short Lyft ride or a longer walk. Situated just across from the Estadio Caliente Xoloitzcuintles, the Electric’s Nuova Simonelli machines, scales, Chemexes and bare wood countertops set the scene for the sort of coffee shop anyone would be glad to have in their neighborhood and a great spot to grab a pick-me-up before a game or concert. It’s definitely a local hangout and not a tourist trap, especially in the afternoons when the small shop’s tables can be hard to lock down while local freelancers and students take advantage of the quiet space and curated soundtrack to work. If you find yourself down by the beach in Playas, there’s a branch there as well and the friendly locals are more than happy to offer coffee, dinner or beach tips (or, at least they were to a Spanish-speaking Englishman with a ridiculously large camera).

There’s a full espresso menu as well as several manual brew options for hot and cold drinks. The baristas also craft custom drinks, combining honey, cinnamon, chocolate, and other local ingredients with their espresso, which is roasted right in house. If you’re grabbing something to go, don’t overlook the delicious bottled cold brew, which has fueled many a drive south to Baja’s incredible surf breaks.

Electric Coffee Roasters is located at Av. Hipódromo 9- A, Hipodromo, 22020 Tijuana. Follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

 

tijuana mexico coffee guide

Caffe Sospeso

Sospeso isn’t a shop you’re likely to bump into on your way to or from the border; it’s in the part of town where suits are more common than sangria-swilling tourists. The shop is more spacious, and local professionals frequently meet here for a coffee and a chat. Meanwhile, local coffee aficionados stop by to sample the variety of roasts, chat with baristas and take home one of the many coffees on offer.

Sospeso is a bigger setup than anything else on this list, complete with TV screens, point-of-sale displays explaining the roasting and harvesting process, and a Kickstarter page to fund their aims to expand north of the border. It’s an operation that turns out phenomenal coffee and really deserves a greater recognition outside of the immediate area. Their online sales program means that even if you’re a long way from TJ, you can now sample their national and international roasts.

This was the only cafe we visited that roasts an international selection of beans. Indeed, the shop’s owner, Alberto Song, is a certified Q grader and a judge at the Cup of Excellence. Sospeso offers Kyoto-style cold brew and bottles of concentrate to-go that look more like the Tequila that you’ll see tourists clutching as they nervously transit US customs. There’s also a brew bar and to-go cups with sleeves that describe the processing method of the coffee you’re drinking.

Caffe Sopreso is located at Joaquín Clausel 10312, Zona Urbana Rio Tijuana. Visit their official website and follow them on FacebookTwitter, and Instagram.

James Stout is a freelance journalist based in San Diego. This is James Stout’s first feature for Sprudge.

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Source: Coffee News

Limited Edition Created Co. + Taylor McManus Sprudge Mugs

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Welcome to Sprudge Shop Spotlights, a new weekend series in which we highlight our very favorite items currently available in the ever-changing, fast-moving, utterly bespoke Sprudge Shop. Now shipping worldwide, featuring unique artist and brand collaborations from around the planet. Enjoy!

We just dropped a limited-edition mug on the Sprudge Shop—a collaboration with Taylor McManus (@tmcmanusillustration) and Created Co. Taylor McManus is an educator and illustrator from the Washington DC/Northern Virginia area.

This drop coincides with Taylor McManus’ @sprudge Instagram takeover where McManus shared beautiful illustrations, portraits, patterns, and products.

Earlier in 2018, McManus designed both Black Coffee event posters:

Mugs are now available at the Sprudge Shop. The crescent-shaped 12oz mugs are $20 and come in red and yellow. Quantities are very limited! Shop now!

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Source: Coffee News

La Marzocco Releases New Espresso At Home Video Series

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When we think about big name coffee professionals, we often imagine them in the shop setting, tinkering away intently on $20,000 machinery most of us only wish to try out at least once in our lives. Rarely do we ever imagine how these real, actual humans make their own real, actual coffee on a daily basis in their own homes. In a new video series released today, La Marzocco is peeling back that curtain. Titled “Espresso At Home,” the quarterly-ish series by La Marzocco Home talks to coffee professionals about their coffee at home and the ritual surrounding it. And it all kicks off with Blue Bottle founder James Freeman.

Working with Los Angeles-based videographer Anthony Diaz—a Regional Emmy winner for The Migrant Kitchen—La Marzocco Home catches up with Freeman in his hyper-clean, minimalist kitchen, home to a Linea Mini, Mazzer Mini, Baratza Sette, Ikawa roaster, Fellow Stagg kettle, and Acaia Pearl scale. It’s basically exactly like the sort of house you’d imagine the very composed James Freeman to live in—consider this a coffee-focused amplification of the NYT profile his house received in 2018.

Over the course of the three-and-a-half minute video, Freeman discusses the importance not just of being able to make good coffee at home, but how the home coffee making ritual came into his life:

My parents were frugal, and they drank horrible coffee, but they were very conscious of their process and their rituals around the horrible coffee. I have an appliance timer on the back of my espresso machine—it turns on about an hour before everybody wakes up. They had that on theirs, too, so there are these odd threads in common about how important it is to have something, like, ready to go… That ritual of having a warmed-up espresso machine waiting for me, making a quick cappuccino before I do basically anything else, including put on pants—that’s been a feature of my life for many years.

The Espresso At Home series is tentatively planning to release new videos on a quarterly basis and will include coffee professionals from the world over. The company already has a few other big names in the works (including at least one very well known coffee producer) but aren’t yet able to officially announce them.



But for the time being, please enjoy James Freeman making a cappuccino and imagine him making it for you, having a chat in his very calming way of speaking. It sounds like a lovely way to spend an afternoon.

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

All media via La Marzocco

Disclosure: La Marzocco and Blue Bottle Coffee are advertising partners with the Sprudge Media Network. 

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Source: Coffee News

Coffee Design: Huckleberry Roasters In Denver, Colorado

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Everyone knows that feeling.

There you are, just a child alone in the world, learning who you really are. You go through the first eight years of your life wearing the same clothes (they’re perfectly nice clothes) and going by your full name, but then.

But then! Then you meet that really cool kid who helps you pick out some rad new clothes. You start going by a nickname—a shortened version of your full name. You’re all like, “Hell yeah, I’m eight years old, and I’m gonna start wearing these clothes and go by my short name now!” You are figuring your shit out, basically. For the first time in you truly feel alive. 

Sprudge readers are already well familiar with Huckleberry Roasters, an eight-year-old coffee roasting company based in Denver, Colorado. But for the very first time let us introduce you to Huck.

Founder and owner Koan Goedman tells us that the folks at Huck “loved our previous bag, designed by Denver homies Studio Mast, but I wanted a change. I felt like I was seeing very similar bag designs (and, even spreading into non-coffee package design) all over the place —lots of blockiness, lots of hard/sharp lines, lots of white. I felt I wanted a big change, and that our guests and partners would trust us to deliver on something wild and crazy and unique.”

It’s a big change, alright, and with it comes a new design identity and approach to packaging that makes them a perfect fit for our ongoing original feature series on Sprudge. Brand name changes are nothing new, but this one—the intentionality behind it, and that dramatic shortening to a single syllable—well, I just had to learn more. And so I sat down digitally to speak with Goedman about the change, the new look, and what’s next for Huck.

When did the coffee package design debut?

It seems like every time we do the “let’s design a new bag” dance, we start learning the steps too late in the process. This go around was a little better than last when we had to deploy some “pardon the interruption” bags to hold us over, but super well planned out it was not….

Basically, the bags arrived, via an overnight plane trip, on a Monday morning in late November, and we were filling them with coffee beans later that day. Exciting, eh?

Who designed the package?

Fun story! One of the first regulars we had at our 4301 Pecos cafe in 2013, was a delightful person by the name of Ross Evertson. In the magical way that coffee shops work, Ross went from being a stranger to a regular to a friend (to all of us, truly). He’s really an exceptional person with passion for dogs, photography, words, intentional design, typography, and smart-assedness—that last one said with love and admiration, of course.

I asked Ross to design something that reflected our company culture, something that reflected a company willing to push the boundaries a bit and something that would truly stand out from what I was seeing on shelves at other shops, Whole Foods, etc.

Ross was down to tackle that challenge with us, and given that he knew me and Huck as well as he did, it was a natural partnership.

What coffee info do you share on the package? What is the motivation behind that?

All the usual stuff!

It should be noted that the coffee label was designed by Lisa Wright of Obsesso Processo. Ross has a grown-up job (wink), and his time was a little tied up towards the end of this project, so Lisa stepped in and up to the plate to walk the new bag project across the finish line in a way that honored Ross’s work, but also breathed some life into the label! Lisa is also intimately aware of all things Huck, so it was pretty easy for her to come in and do some creative work. She’s the best!

On the information front specifically, we trimmed up some of the information from our previous label that we knew, based on some soft polling/inquiring with customers, wasn’t a point of interaction or useful for them. And, at the end of the day, as much as we might want to talk about elevation and varietal, we decided there are better ways to share that information (i.e baristas at a cafe, webstore on the internet)… and simply leave the label to pass along the essentials. So, we share coffee name and region, tasting notes, producer details, processing particulars, and roasted on date.

Most interestingly, I think, Lisa came up with the brilliant way to tie the flowing nature of the bag concept into the label. There is a color coding system that ties back to the three previous versions of retail bags we’ve had, so there’s some very useful continuity and familiarity there. However, not stopping there, Lisa then moved beyond just the color coding by designing these super fun, sorta-abstract region shaped blobs to catch the eye. So, just within the label there are 3-4 opportunities to engage!

Why are the aesthetics in coffee packaging so important?

I think the answer to this will change for different people, but for Huck… it’s a chance to tell our story and, if we’re lucky, we’ve caught the eye of someone unfamiliar with Huck and given them a reason to dig further, ask questions and order some coffee.

Where is the bag manufactured?

Per usual, we worked with Pacific Bags on this bag.

Is the package recyclable/compostable?

The answer to this question is basically the most confusing, long-winded answer of all time. Honestly, I’m still a little confused. It’s probably wisest to say, “go visit Pacific Bag’s website to read about what Biotre is and isn’t!” In reality, I think the legal answer to the question is “no” and we make no claims to recyclability/compostability, but the real-life answer to this might be a “sort of and sometimes, depending where you live and what local laws are.”

How’s that for unsatisfactory?

All I can say is that I’m excited to see Pacific Bag’s 100% compostable Biotre bag, which, rumor has it, is close to being available!

Where is it currently available?

Our shops and the world wide web!

Thank you!

Company: Huckleberry Coffee Roasters
Location: Denver
Country: United States
Designer: Ross Evertson
Design Debut: November 2018

Zachary Carlsen is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Zachary Carlsen on Sprudge.

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Source: Coffee News

Stumptown Coffee Has A Professional Skateboarding Team

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Ahoy there, dean. It’s no secret that Stumptown Coffee loves to gleam the cube. Skateboard culture has long been part of the brand’s aesthetic, and the company even took a few of their pro skater friends to Antigua, Guatemala to shred some Central American gnar for the Sprudgie-nominated short film Flower of Flowers. And now they’re taking the next logical step with their love of skateboarding. (No, I don’t mean setting up a GS/3 at the lip of an empty pool, though that would totally rip and sip.)

Stumptown has announced the creation of a new Skate Team, featuring notable skate legends Chet Childress, Silas Baxter Neal, Nick Boserio, and Elissa Steamer, a fan favorite and legendary playable character in the original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. As a recently certified B Corporation, the Skate Team is “one of the many ways Stumptown invests in their employee culture,” per a press release from the company.

For the inaugural Lords of Stumptown, next month the brand will release Breaking The Crust, a 20-minute short film to showcase the company’s newest—and technically speaking the raddest—venture, a preview of which can be seen below.

The coffee company is also releasing a limited edition cold brew and whole bean coffee, both made of the Colombia El Jordan sourced through fellow B Corp Caravela Coffee. Now available in-store and online, the bag design for the special release coffee was designed by Childress, and $1 of every bag and can sold goes to one of three skateboarding non-profits chosen by Stumptown employees, two of which are female-led. Non-profits slated to receive donation from the Skate Team are Skate Like A Girl, Exposure Skate, and the Harold Hunter Foundation.

For more information on the Skate Team (or maybe even to buy the limited edition Skate Team box set), visit Stumptown’s official website.

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

Disclosure: Stumptown Coffee is an advertising partner with the Sprudge Media Network. 

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Source: Coffee News

Umeko Motoyoshi: The Sprudge Interview

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Umeko Motoyoshi is having a moment.

As VP of Technology at Sudden Coffee, 2018 Sprudgie Award Winner for Outstanding Achievement In The Field of Excellence, and creator of the Rainbow Cupping Spoon Project, you’d be hard pressed to name a more influential and socially active coffee professional in the world today. And now comes CHANGING STRUCTURES, a new event they’ve created in collaboration with the #CoffeeToo project.

Sprudge co-founder Zachary Carlsen caught up with Motoyoshi to learn more about how they got here, and where they’re headed next. From the early genesis of the Rainbow Cupping Spoon—”I wanted to disarm something that scared me”—to global inspirations and new projects, Motoyoshi’s work represents nothing less than a shift in coffee’s traditional power structure. Hundreds of rainbow spoons are now making their way around the planet, in case you had any doubt, and that’s just the start.

For this wide-ranging and candid interview, Carlsen spoke with Motoyoshi digitally from San Francisco.

In the 2018 Sprudgie Awards, you were a finalist in the social media category for @umeshiso_, an honoree for your Rainbow Cupping Spoons, and the winner in the Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence. First I just want to say congratulations, Umeko.

Thank you! I appreciate that so much, and I appreciate Sprudge for creating these awards, and the community for engaging in such a thoughtful and passionate way.

You’re the VP of Technology at Sudden Coffee and also freelance. Tell us how you got there!

As we know, cafe equipment only breaks at the worst possible times. I used to manage cafes, and it felt hard to be at the mercy of a technician’s schedule when steam was shooting out of the espresso machine. I tried apprenticing with an espresso tech, but he kept pressuring me to sleep with him. So I paid out of pocket to take La Marzocco’s technician training course. It was really life-changing for me. I had always loved La Marzocco machines, and learning how to repair them just made me fall deeper in love.

La Marzocco also connected me with Daymond Jordan, who refurbished and modded their machines in Seattle. It felt like a really big deal to have folks from La Marzocco support me in that way—at that time I had never even met a woman espresso tech. I was extremely lucky to apprentice with Daymond, because he truly was a master at his craft. His creativity and passion deeply influenced me, and I carried a mechanical interest throughout every subsequent job in coffee.

So when I ended up at Sudden seven years later, it was a dream job. I jumped in right away with sourcing and designing industrial coffee brewing equipment. Sudden’s founders, Josh and Kalle, were extremely invested in my professional development, and they also gave me a lot of autonomy. They handed me this wild mechanical project, and said, “No one’s ever done this before, but you can figure it out.” So I did, and I kept doing more projects, and eventually I ended up with a VP title.

A few months ago, I started taking on freelance work—mostly writing and mechanical projects. The writing is focused on creating HR policies, manuals, blog posts, and handbooks for coffee companies, and I’m also writing a book this year.

I’m also interested in working with specialty coffee companies who are getting into the RTD space. It can be challenging to find scaled brewing solutions that deliver consistent high quality and shelf stability. And operationally there can be so many challenges, too. But I really believe in RTDs as an important way to make specialty coffee accessible to a new audience. So it’s exciting to me that my work over the past few years puts me into that space in terms of experience.

Over the past month, I’ve been transitioning into full-time freelance work. I’d like to focus on writing, community organizing, building cool coffee science projects, and growing my webshop, Umeshiso. I’m expanding the wholesale part of my business and introducing some fun options like custom engraving.

It is definitely weird to realize that, in a few more weeks, I won’t be at Sudden anymore. I was the first employee, and I can’t begin to express how much it means to me. I know it’s normal to transition, and I am proud of myself for starting my own businesses and being responsive to my own development as a human. But I will miss the team a lot! So it’s a tender time for me right now, with a lot of growth and looking forward, while I honor everything that has brought me to this place.

Your father led tea ceremonies. Where and when? Tell us more about this, and how that influenced your life/career.

My dad’s name was Paul Motoyoshi. He was one of the funniest people I’ve ever met, and one of the smartest, and kindest, and most eccentric. He was born in a US concentration camp during World War II, and after the war there was intense pressure on Japanese Americans to assimilate. But no one on the Japanese side of my family gave two fucks about what they were “supposed” to do. This landed some of them in prison a few times, for protesting different oppressive structures throughout history.

So my dad, coming from Motoyoshi blood, didn’t give a fuck about the pressure to assimilate. I’m very proud of my dad’s accomplishments—he was incredibly hard-working and studious during his childhood, was an Eagle scout and a valedictorian, and got a free ride scholarship to Harvard. And I’m very proud that he did all this while actively engaging in learning about Japanese culture, writing poetry in Japanese, learning Japanese arts and Japanese cooking. He became a Japanese tea ceremony master in his thirties and taught tea throughout his life.

Tea ceremony, and specifically the way that my dad taught it, impacted me tremendously. I learned from him that ritual is sacred and it also is warm, and kind, and should be offered with humility. I learned that something as simple as preparing a hot drink for someone can hold more feeling and meaning than words can express. When there are no words, there is ritual.

So it was kind of destined that I would get into specialty coffee and that I’d pursue it passionately. But I was also heavily influenced by the humor that my dad brought to his teaching. He liked to start his classes all dressed in his beautiful Japanese tea robe, and he’d get up and very sternly tell his students that tea ceremony was incredibly difficult. “It’s very hard, so listen very closely,” he’d say. “You boil water… and then you make tea.” Everyone would burst out laughing, and from there the classes would be very interactive and funny. He was such a great teacher because he made people laugh.

I think it’s so important for us to make specialty coffee welcoming in this way, human and funny and kind and unexpected. It’s no accident that I am my father’s child, and I ended up making specialty instant coffee for a living!

I wanted to talk about your Honoree designation in the Sprudgies “Best New Product” category. Tell us about your glorious rainbow cupping spoons!

Aw man. So, I have cupping trauma. The cupping table can be a huge opportunity for everyone’s insecurities to come out. And some people’s insecurities come out as them being really insistent on their rightness, punishing coffees super severely just to show off, and engaging in a wide range of other macho maneuvers. When I first started attending cuppings, it was usually all white dudes and then me with my little pink pixie cut and bright outfits, and the way they talked about the coffees scared the crap out of me.

It’s so weirdly traumatizing to be told that someone’s ultra specific and arcane tasting notes are empirical fact. Like, that his mouth is basically the same as a liquid chromatography chamber. Throughout my early twenties, I just kept trying to figure this out, because it made no sense to me. Yet I was surrounded by People In Charge who kept insisting that there was only one right way to taste a coffee.

Over time, as I researched and researched and talked with food scientists and chemists, I established for myself, for my own knowing and peace of mind, that flavor is truly subjective. That different people perceive different things in coffee, and scour their own unique bank of sense memories to arrive at a tasting note. That when I said pine, and that white guy with a beard corrected me and said cedar—we both were right, because there is no right.

And then I was mad about it. I was mad that I’d spent so many years having my reality questioned on a daily basis. I wanted to scale the Empire State Building and yell through a megaphone: “Organoleptic perceptions of coffee are not fucking factual!”

Instead of doing that, because it seems slightly unsafe, I decided that I was going to find a rainbow-anodized cupping spoon. I wanted to disarm this thing that had become a source of trauma and anxiety, by bringing my own spoon and my own approach and my own knowing. And my own self.

Last year I had a severe mental breakdown and was diagnosed with Complex PTSD and Bipolar II Disorder. As I recovered, I found a direct supplier of rainbow spoons and established a relationship, and I started mailing spoons out to my friends for free. After I mailed out 75 spoons, I realized I would have to start selling them otherwise I’d go broke. And that is how Umeshiso started.

It’s amazing to me that my cupping trauma and my mental breakdown gave rise to something that has positively impacted people all over the world. Every time someone tells me that their rainbow spoon makes them feel confident at cuppings, I want to cry.

At UK Cup Tasters last year, each competitor was gifted a rainbow spoon. A little girl in attendance became so fascinated with the spoons that she started mimicking the cuppers, pretending to compete. Mat North gifted her a rainbow spoon of her own. It makes me so happy just to be a part of something like that.

There’s so much love for this cupping spoon. I love how they are popping up all over the world. Where have they gone and where are they going next?

I was really, really excited when I was able to get an order through to someone in Iran. It’s so tough to get anything into Iran from the US, so it felt miraculous when the rainbow spoons got through! My customer and I worked together on it, DMing back and forth on Instagram, and it was really exhilarating when the spoons finally made it. It was like, “Fuck our governments. We are just two people who respect and care about each other, and like colorful spoons.”

I also love sending out orders to countries that grow coffee. I’ve sent spoons to Colombia, Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Yunnan region of China, and a few others. My customers in the UK are awesome, and throughout Europe generally. I ship to every country, so there are rainbow spoons out there all over the world.

Antarctica and Africa are the only continents I have yet to ship to, and I feel like Antarctica may not happen anytime soon. If anyone is going to an African country, DM me so I can send you some spoons to bring! And of course, if anyone knows about some cuppings in Antarctica, let me hook it up with rainbows!

You were also a finalist in the social media category. Your account highlights so many voices in coffee (and the world). Tell us about your current initiative for Black History Month.

Every coffee person is their own person, outside of work, and has their own sphere of influence. So I post a lot of things on my Instagram that may seem, on the surface, unrelated to coffee. Because as we grow together in community, as people, we bring what we learn into our work. And we share our progress with friends who work in other fields, and they bring that to their own spheres. This is how we make our industry, and the world, better.

The US has a massive race problem, and I can’t always speak to that solely through the lens of coffee. Sometimes it’s just like, this is important for all of us as people, and it’s up to us to transform our learning into practical application in our work.

I deeply admire Rachel Cargle, a writer and lecturer at Columbia University. On her Instagram this month, she’s posting daily prompts about significant moments, movements, and figures in American Black history. The intent is for white folks and non-black PoC to research the prompt on their own, which is such a wonderful concept. Black history is American history, but in our schools we mostly just learn about white history, from a white perspective.

I am always googling everything—curiosity just runs in my family—and I also love to share about what I learn. So as I follow Rachel Cargle’s prompts, I take screenshots from my research and assemble them into daily Instagram posts. I’ve learned so much from this, and am now hoping to do some similar work for Filipino Heritage month and Native American Heritage month. For someone like Rachel Cargle to post these prompts, and for FREE, is an incredible learning opportunity. So I want to use whatever skillset I have to amplify her work.

So many white folks and non-Black PoC—I am both—are either uninformed or misinformed about Black history. It’s a huge problem! How can I begin to understand today’s racial dynamics, when my “understanding” is built on an ignorance of history? This ignorance is foundational to the continued functioning of racist structures, while the burden of education almost always falls on Black people, the very people who are harmed by these structures.

Rachel Cargle’s project places the emphasis on white folks and non-Black PoC to take charge of their own learning. She is putting in the daily emotional and intellectual labor to make this happen, and she shouldn’t have to. It should be taught in schools. She is incredibly generous for doing this important work, and she deserves all the credit (and all the monetary compensation). If anyone out there is enjoying the posts I’ve made about her prompts, I encourage you to donate to her! Rachel has a Patreon and you can also make a one-time donation at her PayPal.

Name a few people in world who you turn to for inspiration, encouragement.

I’m super introverted but I also really love community. So I connect with people a lot through Instagram and other online platforms, and I’ve ended up in close friendships with people I’ve never met before IRL. These relationships bring me so much joy and strength.

I live on opposite coast from my friend Kristina Jackson, who works at Intelligentsia, and we’re learning Spanish together. I feel so proud of us! The other day my friend Ashley Rodriguez, who lives in Chicago, Venmo’d me $5 and was like “I care about you, go get a coffee!” Like—just really tender and special shit. I never really had that before, and it grew from community organizing and shared belief.

In real life, my best friend Hana Yoshimoto is a constant inspiration. She has more emotional intelligence than anyone I’ve met. I look up to Jenn Chen and Michelle Johnson so much—they were the first people I saw starting bold conversations about race and gender in coffee. For the first time, I felt like I could be myself and honestly represent what I care about. And it made me want to model that for other people, the way Jenn and Michelle modeled it for me.

And my mom is just fucking amazing. Every time we talk, I learn something new about her. And I’ve known her my entire life. A few years ago, she casually mentioned that she used to work for a coffee business in San Francisco, before specialty coffee was even a thing. The shop was focused on selling roasted coffee, with a coffee service aspect was built into it. My mom talked her customers through the different coffees and their flavor profiles, and she’d make them pour-overs so they could taste the coffees before buying. I’d worked in coffee for ten years before my mom told me that.

She is one of the smartest and most curious people I’ve known, she’s completely brilliant. And she is so lowkey about it. She just does her thing and doesn’t really care if other people notice or not. She teaches me so much about critical thinking, about questioning, about building your own path. I am incredibly lucky that my mom is my best friend. I look up to her so much, and she constantly encourages and inspires me.

What are some things you wish you had known when you started your professional journey?

I wish I had known these three things:

  1. You’re good enough. In fact, you’re extra. Anyone who tells you otherwise is mistaken.
  2. No one will give you permission to do what you want to do. Because they won’t understand it. So you will have to do it without permission.
  3. Informed, supported, and encouraged communities are the most effective means of decentralizing power.

Do you have a favorite book, piece of art, music composition?

I continually turn to Emergent Strategy, by Adrienne Maree Brown. In biology, emergence describes how collective properties arise from smaller individual parts. “Emergent Strategy” examines, with joy and Rihanna references, radical movements past and present – through an emergent lens.

Here’s a poem from the book, that I have saved as the wallpaper on my phone:

i am not afraid
of what i came here to do
i’m made of stardust
we are not afraid
of what we’re called now to do
we’re all made of god

Adrienne’s work is an affirmation and an inspiration. My understanding of the book shifts each time I read it, and I still do not fully understand any part of it. At the same time, I understand it in my body.

And my favorite movie is Spice World.

You won the Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence Sprudgie Award in 2018. Tell us what that means for you.

To me, it means that the work I’ve been a part of has created positive impact. It means that the connection I feel with my community is real, and the values we share are important. It felt like a huge, overwhelming honor—one of my role models, Michelle Johnson, won this award in 2016, and I look up to her so much. When I voted for Michelle in 2016, and again in 2018, I voted because she is a phenomenal human being and I believe in her, and I see her continually create new possibility in our industry. The Sprudgies have become such an amazing vehicle for change, as the community continues to expand what and whom we celebrate, and why.

The 2018 nominee list was like an A-Team of people who 1. I idolize and 2. Hold identities that, in the past, would have meant them getting passed over, not rightfully acknowledged. So I want to recognize Sprudge for creating the only awards in coffee (I think!) that are given by popular vote. Because it allows our community to bolster new faces and new names who perhaps wouldn’t have been recognized by The Establishment. So thank you!

Tell us more about Changing Structures and the genesis of this incredible project.

When I stepped off the cafe floor in 2016, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I was sick of getting paid low wages for extremely skilled work, I was sick of having to put up with harassment from customers, I was sick of the way that asymmetrical power informed every aspect of my experience as a worker. I loved coffee, and I loved service, and through every job I held in coffee I also worked regular floor shifts (because I loved it). But it had been 10 years and I just couldn’t deal with being treated like I was disposable.

It was a great privilege to be able to step off the floor when I couldn’t take it anymore. And when I benefit from privilege, I feel it’s my responsibility to work toward dismantling the structure that allows me that privilege, while denying it to others. There are so many people who work in coffee, who are brilliant, and sensitive, and creative, and who care so deeply about coffee and about the human community. It’s a travesty when they are overlooked and excluded from important conversations—conversations that would benefit from their perspectives. So I envisioned CHANGING STRUCTURES, an interactive panel event, as a direct response to that.

Each panelist has come up against a structure in coffee that didn’t serve them, and didn’t serve their community, and they built an alternative. We want this to be both a how-to and an invitation. We want everyone in our community to know that they are important, and they are needed, that no one is disposable, that everyone has a valuable perspective to bring to the table.

I am so thankful for my co-organizer, Molly Flynn, who founded #coffeetoo. We’ve worked together to make CHANGING STRUCTURES an intentionally welcoming space. Events can be overwhelming for a lot of folks—I often feel intimidated and out of place at them—so we wanted to create the kind of hospitality that many of our guests provide in their cafes.

Someone will be at the door to greet you, thank you for coming, and orient you in the space; to point out the Liberty cocktail bar, the refreshments, where to sit.

We’ll hand out a zine, laid out by Kat Melheim of Coffee People Zine, for guests to read if they’re feeling more introverted, and to take with them for inspiration on our next steps as a community. There’s a section in the zine for notes, and we’ll even have little pink pencils!

We’re also doing a raffle giveaway to benefit #coffeetoo, and we went all out with the prizes. In addition to Umeshiso spoons and other swag, Fellow is contributing an entire matte black EKG and Acaia donated a GOLD Pearl. Which I didn’t even know was a thing! We really wanted the giveaway to be amazing for our guests and our sponsors came through in a major way!

We’ll hear from Radhika Kapur, founder of Third Culture Coffee in Bellevue. Her menu features exquisitely prepared coffee drinks from all over the world, breaking from the US-centric idea that good coffee can only be an espresso, or a light-roasted SO pour-over taken black. The story of her travel and meticulous research is incredible.

We also will hear from Ian Williams, who founded Deadstock Coffee in Portland. A former shoe designer for Nike, Ian combined his love of sneakerhead culture with a passion for specialty coffee. This pairing, combined with a diverse team of baristas, creates a space that feels like home for a wide demographic of guests, especially Black folks and other people of color, who did not previously feel welcomed in many cafes.

Laura Perry, founder of LÜNA Coffee in Vancouver, BC, will share about her path as she shifts conversations about the cost of green coffee. As a green buyer, she continually identifies and creates alternatives to exploitative colonial structures, and has build a completely unique coffee sourcing protocol for her business.

CHANGING STRUCTURES is an invitation to anyone and everyone whose voice hasn’t been heard yet. We want our guests to leave feeling empowered and a part of something, and with tools and stories and examples. And this isn’t just a kumbaya thing—our industry is facing urgent existential crises and we need all hands on deck. There are so many people entering coffee today who are passionate and brilliant and driven, and as an industry we can’t afford to keep excluding them from important conversations. Fuck that.

We’re saying, “Let’s be a part of this together. Here are our stories and our ideas. We want to hear yours.”

You do such a wonderful service shining a light on people and projects in the world. Who is making coffee more wonderful right now?

Thank you! I’m just trying to grow my platform so that more people can stand on it. To be honest, I don’t know how to start answering this question because there are SO MANY PEOPLE making coffee a better place.

And it’s easy for me to name people who are thought of as leaders, but leaders are nothing without community. Our community, in this little part of the world, is working so hard and working together, and supporting one another, boosting each other’s work, earnestly and actively engaged in learning, each unique person bringing their perspective to the table.

I am proudest to be a part of a community, and this community specifically. In a lot of ways, we’re a hot mess, but we are working so hard to change for the better. We’re working so hard to grow. And in other ways, we’re really leading other industries. Most cafes on the west coast now have gender-neutral bathrooms, as an example. And taking a wide view of the industry as a whole. Specialty coffee is the only industry *founded* on the idea that we should pay MORE for raw materials. Because it’s just fucking fair.

So I mean this in complete and total sincerity, not as a cop-out, not as a woo-woo moment: when we work together, as a global community, to improve each other’s lives, we make coffee more wonderful.

Thank you so much for your time!

Thank you!

Changing Structures happens Thursday, February 21st in Seattle. More information here. 

Oatly is the presenting sponsor of the 10th Annual Sprudgie Awards.

Zachary Carlsen is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Zachary Carlsen on Sprudge. 

The post Umeko Motoyoshi: The Sprudge Interview appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

JAB Holdings Are Heading Towards A Coffee IPO

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You soon may be able to own stock in in some of the biggest names in American specialty coffee. As reported by NASDAQ, the Luxembourg-based investment firm JAB Holding Co. intends to take their line of coffee businesses public in the not-too-distant future.

The firm’s holding currently include pioneerng third wave coffee brands Stumptown Coffee and Intelligentsia, longtime baby boomer mainstay Peet’s, and £4 hummus titans Pret A Manger (only to name a few). JAB’s coffee-based portfolio, collectively known as Acorn Holdings hit a total of $19 billion in sales last year, per Reuters. Included in this portfolio is Tully’s Coffee, Van Houtte, and the entire Keurig Dr. Pepper roster.

Bringing Acorn to market is step one in a two-part plan to take many of JAB’s assets public, as per NASDAQ; the next phase will be to offer the also-coffee-heavy restaurant portion of their holdings, which includes Pret A Manger, Panera Bread, Einstein Bros, Caribou, and Espresso House.

According to a statement from the company, “JAB has a very successful global Coffee and Beverages platform in Acorn, and we are envisioning taking it public in the next two-three years.” The statement continues, “A public listing would be in line with JAB’s long-term philosophy to bring leading global consumer businesses to the public markets. However, we have not made any decision to trigger an IPO process now.”

So get your ducats in order, y’all. The next phase of the third wave mergers and acquisitions game shall soon come to pass: the first* major third wave IPO.

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

Top image via the Michigan Chronicle

Disclosure: Intelligentsia Coffee and Stumptown Coffee are advertisers on the Sprudge Media Network. 

*Ed. note—To our knowledge this will be the first major third wave IPO. If you are, however, aware of a legit previous example of a third wave coffee IPO please contact us and we will amend this post. “Ahoy there dean” try-hard nonsense does not count.

The post JAB Holdings Are Heading Towards A Coffee IPO appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Red Bay Coffee: Building For The Future In Oakland (And Beyond)

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red bay coffee california

red bay coffee california

Red Bay Coffee founder Keba Konte first got into coffee as a way to promote his art. But in the 13 years since then, he’s found, and showed countless others, that coffee is not only the perfect setting for art, it’s the perfect way to build community and create opportunity. Now Red Bay are planning an expansion across the country in 2019 to Philadelphia, all the while continuing to push the boundaries of what the coffee industry can be, and whom it can be for.

Konte, who had previously founded Guerrilla Cafe in North Berkeley and Chasing Lions Cafe in San Francisco, has been making coffee news for some time by using entrepreneurship to challenge the status quo. His third and most ambitious coffee venture, Red Bay, started out in 2014 as a micro-roastery in the garage under Konte’s Fruitvale home (aka the Coffee Dojo). From there it grew into a roastery and event space in a converted factory just a few blocks from Fruitvale Station; a Kickstarter-funded cafe followed shortly after, made from a modified shipping container in uptown Oakland.

red bay coffee oakland california

Photo by Amir Saadiq.

With Red Bay, Konte has incorporated a profit-sharing into the business model and is generally going bigger than any of his previous ventures. Through running a roastery as well as cafes, he’s been able to explore the impacts that business can have on the sourcing side of the coffee value chain. “I got into coffee as a way to create a platform not only for my artwork but for my life’s work: being creative, organizing community, and trying to push my community forward,” says Konte. While coffee was originally a doorway into this mission, Konte found even more behind the door than he had initially anticipated. “I really got turned on by all the possibilities of impact, of being able to build teams, and the power and impact of sourcing.”

One of Konte’s guiding goals is to bring more equity to members of the coffee supply chain from its most underserved groups, particularly people of color and women. “Most often, black and brown people are either picking the coffee cherries, handing off a cup, or sweeping,” Konte tells Sprudge. “So our mission has really been to fill in some of the career positions in the supply chain, from sourcing, roasting, and quality control, all the way to marketing, equipment, and software. This industry goes so deep.”

red bay coffee oakland california

Keba Konte and Jessica Moncada. Photo by Amir Saadiq.

In making that mission a reality, Red Bay also works to make sure their hiring pool includes candidates who have previously been incarcerated. “One of the things that keeps me inspired is that we’ve introduced a lot of people to coffee who really never saw coffee as an opportunity for a career,” says Konte. “A lot of people—not just second chance employees but also a lot of other black and brown professionals—really haven’t had the chance to think about how many technical and professional opportunities are spread through the value chain of coffee.”

Another way Red Bay has worked to engage its community is through its events. The Red Bay roastery doubles as an events space and boasts a constant roster of innovative and accessible events and event series. The events, which range from breakfast popups to concert residencies to magazine releases to panel discussions to self-care festivals, are all coordinated by Jessica Moncada, who, in addition to her background as a wedding planner, is Konte’s daughter. “We try to do a mix of everything so everyone in the community can feel included,” says Moncada. “As a wedding planner, I worked with very specific people around their very specific visions, but when creating community events, you have to have the whole community in mind and reach out to people, and encourage them to reach out to you.”

red bay coffee california

Some of Red Bay’s most successful events have been in direct response to community excitement; for instance, after the release of the film Black Panther in 2018, the space hosted a panel on black futurism. “I just noticed that people loved to talk about the movie,” Moncada tells Sprudge. “So we had the panel, and then we put four chairs in the middle of the room and opened it up so that everyone could take turns sharing and starting new conversations. It’s hard to have a group conversation with 80 people, but somehow it worked.”

The company has had expansion in the works for a long time, and Konte and crew are excited to see Philadelphia get its first container cafe, which Red Bay expects to be open in the summer of 2019. After a string of racist incidents at Starbucks went viral in late 2018 and led the company to shut down its stores for racial bias training, Red Bay’s long-term expansion plans felt even more timely. “Expansion is not just a reaction to Starbucks, but the timing of what happened there and what’s happening all over the country definitely makes it feel a little more urgent,” says Moncada. “What we want to do is put less focus on Starbucks and what they’re doing to solve their problems and just give people alternatives.”

red bay coffee california

red bay coffee oakland california

Photo by Amir Saadiq.

It’s certainly timely but also not entirely surprising that Philadelphia, the location that the Red Bay crew had planned as the first point of East Coast expansion, acted as a flashpoint for a larger conversation about anti-blackness in specialty coffee. “The African American community in the Philadelphia area is both larger and much more underserved than that of the Bay Area,” says Konte. “I think there’s a tremendous market opportunity to be found in serving and engaging that community as well as other communities along the East Coast.”

They’re currently hiring, and Konte is excited about the talent they’ve already brought on in the area. While the coffee box should open this year, Konte also plans to open a Philadelphia roastery and event space in 2019. After that, they plan to open in New York and build coffee boxes along the HBCU line.

As the company approaches their five-year anniversary and preps for expansion, Konte is grateful they’ve been able to have an impact on the specialty coffee community, their local community, and the larger business community. “Surviving five years in business is not easy. I give props to all the small business owners and entrepreneurs out there who really start out undercapitalized, much like we did. We’ve been able to build a working model that shows that creating a socially aware brand can really be a huge competitive advantage. It’s a huge win to be able to show that doing good things in the world can also mean good business.”

Running a business is hard, and Konte looks for inspiration not only in the impact Red Bay has had on their community and the individuals that comprise it, but also in his daily cup. “Sometimes what inspires me day to day is just the simple pleasure of having a great cup of coffee,” reflects Konte. “The more you know about everything it takes to make great coffee from seed to cup and all the ways it could go wrong at every step, the more you know not to take it for granted.”

Red Bay Coffee has multiple locations in Oakland and one soon to open in Philadelphia. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

RJ Joseph (@RJ_Sproseph) is a Sprudge staff writer, publisher of The Knockbox, and coffee professional based in the Bay Area. Read more RJ Joseph on Sprudge Media Network.

Photos by Evan Gilman unless otherwise noted.

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Source: Coffee News

Changing Structures Challenges You To Rethink Coffee

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For as young and fairly progressive as the specialty coffee industry can be, it often finds itself stuck in more traditional modes of thinking. The current structure of the today’s coffee industry—who can have what jobs (and how difficult it is to get them), who cafes are marketed towards, and who even gets to feel comfortable in a given space—can inherently act as its own gatekeeper, preventing new ideas from talented individuals from ever seeing the light of day. But through concerted, intentional efforts put forth by many in the specialty coffee world, these paradigms are changing.

One such effort is taking place this Thursday, February 21st at Broadcast Coffee in Seattle. Presented by #CoffeeToo and Sprudgie Award winner Umeko Motoyoshi, Changing Structures is a panel discussion featuring voices in the industry who are providing alternatives to coffee’s old way of thinking.

Led by Motoyoshi, the panel will include “coffee professionals who are creating new alternatives to outdated structures through community-focused work,” including Ian Williams of Deadstock Coffee, Radhika Kapur of Third Culture Coffee (featured here as part of Sprudge’s Build-Outs of Summer series), and Laura Perr of LÜNA Coffee. Topics will range from “creating nontraditional cafe spaces to building a value chain around the true cost of coffee production.”

“Too often, too many people’s voices are unheard because of the identities they hold, or their job title. CHANGING STRUCTURES is about saying fuck that. We all are important, and we all have a unique and valuable perspective to bring to the table,” Motoyoshi states. “Our speakers are all people who have shifted structures in coffee that did not serve the community. And they are all people who are incredibly kind, and encouraging, and focused on making whatever resources they have accessible to others. Each speaker will describe their story and how they got to where they are, with a focus on empowering our guests and welcoming them to open dialogue.”

All attendees are welcome to free food and beverages—including vegan, gluten-free, and non-alcoholic options—as well as a zine made for the event by Coffee People’s Kat Melheim. Guests can also take part in a raffle featuring prizes from Fellow, Acaia, Oatly, and others. Proceeds of the raffle go to benefit #CoffeeToo.

Changing Structures is open to all and is free to attend, though the organizers have a suggested donation of $5 (also to go to #CoffeeToo). It all kicks off at 7:00pm this Thursday at Broadcast Coffee. For more information or to RSVP, visit Changing Structures’ Facebook event page.

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

Top image via Changing Structures promotional poster by Chris Hulsizer.

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Source: Coffee News