Copy from SCAA:

How can specialty coffee craft a more compelling story and reach broad audiences? At Symposium 2012, we explored this question and examined what information is getting through, what’s getting lost, and what stories are yet to be told. With insights from several influential writers who each follow trends in specialty coffee, Nicholas Cho of Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters hosts as we explore trends, off-messages, and opportunities.

In this session, What’s Cool About Coffee: Media Perspectives on Engaging and Expanding Interest, we welcome Julie Wolfson, a Freelance Writer, Oliver Strand, Food Writer, and Melissa Allison, Business Reporter as panelists.

This video segment includes a preface from Cho along with video interviews conducted with the panelists prior to this event. Additional videos will be made available in the coming days with the on-site interviews conducted with the panel at Symposium 2012 in Portland, OR.

Erin Meister wrote about watching the panel live for Sprudge in April:

The tables were turned – and turned hard! – on a crowd of coffee people in a lunch coma the afternoon of Day 2, with a twofer of flipped philosophy on media and consumer perspectives of coffee, and a game-changing argument about improving and redefining the retail experience.

The first, a panel moderated by Wrecking Ball Roaster’s Nick Cho, comprised three prominent voices in the outside-coffee world: Seattle Times columnist Melissa Allison, Cool Hunting blogger Julie Wolfson, and the omni-contributive Oliver Strand. As writers at the mercy of cranky editors, rapid-fire deadlines, and superfickle consumer trends, what do these three media taste-makers think are the important stories to tell in coffee, from the angle of reader interest?

“The ‘artisinal food’ movement has taken hold of everybody,” Wolfson offered, speaking to Cool Hunting’s drive toward finding the hippest new spot, the most eye-catching new package, and the visual story behind the coffee and its place in a person’s individual design and lifestyle landscape. “More and more I hear people shifting their conversations from food and cocktails to ‘Where are you drinking coffee?’ and ‘Where is the best coffee?’”

Meanwhile, Allison spoke to the difficulties she faces as a business writer in a city that derives a significant amount of its economic health and growth from the coffee industry: “I’m used to writing for a business reader. When I write about Starbucks, I feel like the traditional business readers are getting what they want. But the independent coffeehouse customers and baristas… That’s a different story.”

“The coffee’s fun, but the coffee industry seems to be unhappy being told that coffee’s fun,” Strand said, laying a gentle smackdown on the sometimes blinding self-importance that specialty coffee industry insiders can exude when insisting that our “stories” be told in infinite, intimate detail.

“The [specialty coffee] industry has taken what is a very complicated product and made it more complicated. Most other industries take complicated products and make them simpler in terms of perception, in terms of understanding.”

Despite himself, Strand even drew comparisons between coffee and wine: “Wine is incredibly complicated, but it tastes great, and the story and narrative is very easy.” He would go on to say: “I think the wine analogy is a horrible idea and a terrible mistake [in coffee],” because of the imprecise use of a largely misappropriated vocabulary that it encourages. “The best wine is better than the best coffee, and you’re never going to match it. It’s never going to happen. So use your own words. Cheese isn’t trying to be like ‘cow wine,’ it has its own language.”

The post SCAA Symposium Video Asks: What’s Cool About Coffee? appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Many of us in specialty coffee have been interviewed or otherwise covered by the mainstream media. Local or national, print or online, there’s been growing engagement by the media with specialty coffee. In this session, we’ll turn the tables on the press and ask them some questions: What interests you and your audience about specialty coffee? How does specialty coffee fit in to your other coverage? What negative elements have you and your readership noticed about the specialty coffee industry?

Our panelists are:
Julie Wolfson, Freelance Writer, Cool Hunting, Tubefilter, KCBSLA, KCET Food
Oliver Strand, Food Writer, New York Times, GQ, Bon Appétit (and other publications)
Melissa Allison, Business Reporter, Seattle Times
Moderator: Nicholas Cho, Co-Owner, Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters

In addition to our panel, we’ll hear from both industry folks and others in the press, notably from Bon Appetit Magazine, the New York Times Magazine, and GQ Magazine.

Registration is still open to attend the 2012 SCAA Symposium, held April 18th and 19th at the Hilton Executive Tower in Portland.

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An interview with the boys is running over on Cool Hunting:

The inevitable question, where did the name Handsome come from?

Wells: We went around and around about names for more than two months. Basically our whole aesthetic and philosophy is about way back when, when things were made by hand. Things were quality, a recall to the days of really cool equipment like sewing machines. I was thinking about old bread ovens because I like baking. One morning I was half asleep in bed and it hit me, Handsome Coffee. We are Handsome Coffee Roasters. I texted Chris: “Handsome Coffee Roasters?” He texted back “expletive… yes!”

A glowing feature on the fellows from LA Times coffee wonk Tien Nguyen:

The layout of the entire shop, Owens says, is intended to have a specific “line of sight.” From the coffee bar, you can look straight into the roasting room, then straight into the back of the house, where the green beans are stored. If your mind’s eye goes even further, you might even travel back to see the farms where the coffee grows.

But that’s just all in the subconscious. If it registers and you want to “nerd out” about coffee, the Handsome crew are happy to oblige.

Daily Candy LA is jumping on the Handsome man-wagon:

They source the highest-quality, seasonal small batches from across the globe and roast them in-house with a vintage craft roaster (situated behind a glass partition for your viewing pleasure). A pared-down menu (espresso, espresso with milk, brewed coffee) deftly showcases the finished product.

It would be impossible for Taste Terminal to be more all-over it, going on to feature Handsome’s NYC expansion plans:

Early 2012, the Handsome boys will be opening their second location in the heart of Wall Street, round the corner from the New York Stock Exchange. The location will be officially named Handsome Coffee Roasters at Demi Monde, located at 90 Broad Street. Expect the same drink offerings as the L.A. location.

Grub Street is not to be outdone, though come on guys, pick up the word count:

. A wood-heavy glass box of a space sports a central bar of white tile, along with a Probat roaster, communal tables, and swashbuckling cups. Vaulting it above the typically hyped new gourmet coffee shop, an ongoing deal finds any bag of beans, even at the top-of-the-line, available for just seventeen bucks until the grand debut.

Sinosoul offers a photo-and-bodily-function-forward look at the new space:

The space is extremely “Four Barrel”-esque, and that’s a beautiful, beautiful thing. Just like Four Barrel, the Probat is decidedly “right there” in the room with you. You see it when you’re ordering, you see it when you’re sipping lattes, you don’t see it when you use the handsome bathrooms (sorry, I had to, just once).

And of course there’s been every-other-monthly features in BMag and a feature quite similar to this one ran earlier today on Dear Coffee, I Love You. All of which to say: Handsome Coffee Roasters, your cafe is truly stunning, that coffee of yours (that we’ve tried so far) is bangin’, your recent hires are choice, and your NYC space sounds intriguing. But more than anything else, you Handsomes have distinguished yourselves as perhaps the greatest coffee marketeers in extra-specialty coffee history. And that’s really great for our industry.

In all sincerity, congratulations, sorry we couldn’t make it, and we’ll see you soon.

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