LAX-SYD: G&B Coffee To Invade Sydney For Week-Long Residency

Starting Monday, March 24th, Kyle Glanville and Charles Babinski will be hosting a series of events at Paramount Coffee Project in Sydney. For more we turn to our Melbourne staff writer Eileen P. Kenny, who will be in Sydney to cover and participate in these upcoming events. Buy your tickets here now.

Specialty coffee is a unique industry–from the little corner coffee shops to the giant companies that have been around for years, there is a friendly community of baristas, café owners, and green importing companies that seems to be connected all over the world. One perfect example of the closeness and enthusiasm of this community is The Paramount Coffee Project, an innovative cafe concept located in Sydney’s beautiful inner city suburb of Surry Hills, spearheaded by Russell Beard of Surry Hills roaster Reuben Hills and Mark Dundon of Seven Seeds coffee roasters in Melbourne.

In November of last year, PCP brought out the lovely Klaus Thomsen and Peter Dupont of The Coffee Collective in Copenhagen to run the coffee program and to bring their unique Danish charm to our Australian soils (which you can read more about here on Sprudge). When I travelled to Sydney to cover the event, Mark Dundon hinted that they had lofty goals for the future, involving bringing some yet-to-be-named American coffee professionals over. Mr Dundon is a man of his word, and in less than two weeks Kyle Glanville and Charles Babinski of Go Get ‘Em Tiger and G&B will be in Sydney running the PCP bar.

Mssrs. Glanville & Babinski bring quite a wealth of experience with them–Kyle Glanville was previously Vice President of Strategy and Retail at Intelligentsia Coffee, a former board member of Coffee Common, and the 2008 US Barista Championship winner; Charles Babinski worked as a trainer at Intelligentsia, was the 2nd place winner in the 2013 USBC, and just won the 2014 SW Regional Barista Competition. Both are widely admired by coffee professionals around the world.

glanville-baby-babinski — Mr. Glanville and Mr Babinksi.

I spoke to Dylan Johnson of PCP about the reasons they chose to bring G&B in all the way from Los Angeles for a residency in Sydney:

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“The first is their achievements, skill and knowledge of coffee—not only in regards to methods and extractions etc, but also coffee retail, hospitality, and their structuring of a successful specialty coffee business model. For the PCP team, we expect them to really challenge our approach, how we do things, and why… and for customers we expect that they’ll present a very unique coffee experience. We think that G&B have a lot to offer across the spectrum, from coffee geek to a regular customer, so we want to reach a broader market.”

The duo’s residency will be a busy one. The team at Paramount Coffee Project have put together an impressive array of highly informative workshops, and they expect spots to go quickly. Check out the schedule of events and grab tickets below:

PCP Retail Panel with G&B
Monday March 24, 6:30pm, $40

An opportunity to discuss developing retail models within the specialty coffee industry–panelists will include Kyle Glanville and Charles Babinski to give the US perspective, alongside PCP’s Dylan Johnson and Mark Dundon and Eileen P. Kenny from Sprudge.com and Birds of Unusual Vitality. The discussion will be driven by audience members, so come with all the questions/theories that you have about specialty coffee’s front-of-house and its progression (and anything else for that matter).

G&B Coffee Workshop
Wednesday March 26, 6pm, $165

This workshop will be a chance to get into the business minds of Glanville and Babinski, talking through the processes within their cafes and their decision-making processes. This will be an interactive session, involving cupping, filters, and automation – they’ll also walk through their frameworks for selecting the best coffees for a cafe, structuring workspaces, and designing coffee bars for consistency and quality control. The chance to get an in-depth look into such a successful business & service model is a rare occasion, so make the most of it.

Friday Night Fight Night
Friday March 28, 6:30pm, $20 competitor/$10 spectator

Forget your fancy latte-art-pouring and coffee-brewing competitions, here we have the competition to beat all competitions–the inaugural Rapid-Fire Triangulation!! Here’s the lowdown: each competitor will be given three cups of coffee, two the same, one different–the fastest to correctly identify the odd one out continues through the rounds to eventually have the opportunity to face off against the two very qualified G&B fellows. Expect spillages, heckling, some super caffeinated folks, and an enjoyable evening.

Meet & Greet with G&B
Saturday March 29, 6pm, $10

A final soiree to finish off G&B’s week at Paramount Coffee, this is a chance to hang out with Kyle & Charles and the broader coffee community for an evening of relaxed drinks and discussion.

All events held at Paramount Coffee Project, 80 Commonwealth St, Surry Hills, Sydney.

Can’t decide which event to go to, well, why not just go to them all? The Paramount Coffee Project have got you with their multi-event pass so that you can revel in all the glory that G&B will be bringing to Sydney that week.

Eileen P. Kenny (@EileenPK) is a Sprudge.com staff writer in Melbourne, and the author of Birds Of Unusual Vitality, speciality coffee’s premiere interview publication. Read more Eileen P. Kenny here.