Quality-focused retail has been seeing a huge boom in entrepreneurship recently, with tons of new shops opening all over the country, and many more established brands looking to expand or having already expanded their operations. Most interesting for me though is the increasing entrepreneurial viability of quality-focused ventures outside the retail sector.

In my design round-up article I discussed the impressive success relative new-comer Bonavita has had in responding to customer demand and rapidly bringing new products to market. The Modbar system, subject of such explosive excitement at the show, was developed under an agile start-up model, backed by big name investors like La Marzocco and Marco. Though not shrouded in the same secrecy, this hardware start-up approach is also being pursued by two different brewers, the Alpha Dominche Steampunk and the Blossom One. It’s now been about a year since the big reveal for both these brewers, and so I decided to check in with them and see how the process of getting to market is going for them.

I had a chance to check out the Alpha Dominche Steampunk at last year’s SCAA, and was left with a positive impression of the technology but worries about cup quality and usability. It made me happy, then, when my talk with Alpha Dominche started off with them talking about how they had addressed each of those concerns. They’ve clearly been taking people’s criticism to heart. In the last year AD has produced three interchangeable metal filters with various hole sizes, as well as paper filters, allowing the ability to target an increased range of cup body and clarity. They’ve also introduced a new piston that is much lighter and easier to maneuver and provides gentler agitation. Khristian Bombeck, the lead designer, said that they initially created a machine that was as manual as possible, but based on roaster feedback they’ve made the system more automated. Internally, they’ve made the system easier to service with a very cool, easily-removable boiler and electronics system. They also introduced a new version that mounts the boiler under the counter, leaving just the brew chambers attractively mounted above.

Alpha Dominche has obviously been reacting to customer feedback in a flexible and responsive way, and I think it will pay off well for them. They’ve spent the last year growing the company to three times its original number of employees, setting up distribution relationships and getting ready to go into full production right after SCAA. The machines just launched nationally at Verve Coffee Roasters, La Colombe Torrefaction, Portola Coffee Lab’s Seventh Tea Bar, and Nobrow Coffee Werks.

Blossom also had a busy year, going from two to five employees, working to initiate distribution relationships and taking their brewer from early prototype to a more final product. Though they were still making coffee on their Dev2 prototype devices at the show, they had a very pretty final physical design on display that was just waiting on some internal finishing touches.

Jeremy Kuempel of Blossom says that in the last year he’s been really focusing on coffee brew science, learning everything he can from the community and working on ways to bring that knowledge to a wider audience. In this pursuit, he sees the Blossom as a “Porsche 911” that really lets you hone in on the effect of temperature as a variable. Compared to Alpha Dominche’s full launch, the Blossom is clearly a bit further away from market, but it sounds like they are making good progress finalizing their design and setting up manufacturing.

Talking to attendees about Alpha Dominche and Blossom, a lot of people questioned the idea of a $10k+ brewer. To be honest, I too am a little skeptical of our industry’s current ability to support two competing brewers at that price point. But regardless, it says big things about the growth of the quality-focused coffee sector that people are even trying for that market, and I’ll be interested to see where brewing equipment like the Steampunk and Blossom wind up out in the wild – top end cafes, sure, but maybe QC labs as well, or curious home users with money to spend.

Modbar, Baratza, Bonavita, Breville, and Alpha Dominche all launched new high-end quality-focused products on the SCAA show-floor this year. With the new Linea and Swift, La Marzocco showed serious interest in making their quality innovations accessible to a wider swath of the market. Unic and Stella diCaffee had a strong showing at their Barista Nation Satellite Cafe with their Stella DCL. Nuova Simonelli demonstrated an increased interest in positioning their products for the high-end customer with their Mythos modifications and the upcoming Aurelia physical refresh, rumored to include a sleeker, lower profile.

A focus on absolute premium quality and presentation used to be seen as the purview of a relative lunatic fringe in the industry, but the explosion of new entrepreneurial activity targeting this market at SCAA 2013 shows that this segment is increasingly becoming big business. We here at Sprudge are obviously big believers in the importance of an increasing focus on quality and the potential it has to create a more sustainable, vibrant community of coffee producers, consumers and professionals. SCAA 2013 was packed full of information, attended by pretty much everyone I wanted to see. The energy and excitement going on in quality coffee right now is literally amazing, in that I am amazed by it. Here’s hoping that the raft of new products on display are a good indication of this industry’s continued potential for growth.

Photography by James Hanna for Sprudge.com.

The post Alex Bernson’s SCAA 2013 Tech Wrap Up appeared first on Sprudge.com.

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.

For more on Ging’s presentation we turn to Erin Meister, who covered the 2012 SCAA Symposium event for Sprudge.com:

“SCAA deputy executive director Tracy Ging served up a slice of honest humble pie with a presentation about the motivations, behaviors, and perceptions of the specialty-coffee customer base, reminding us that for the average consumer, coffee is all about heart. Sparkly hearts, to be exact – just like the ones found on myriad collages depicting “What Specialty Coffee Means to Me” created by focus-group participants in the coffee-driven markets of Los Angeles and Portland, OR.

“The people who drink [specialty coffee] have the capacity to love it deeply,” Ging said in response to the groups’ collected results. “Something happens over a great cup of coffee that’s different than when you’re just grabbing a cup of caffeine.”

Ging reminded the attendees that while our customers do have a healthy curiosity about what they’re drinking and how we make that magic happen, they don’t want to be beaten over the head with it: In fact, many of them sound like they kind of need a big ol’ barista bear hug.

“They want a love affair, and we’re giving them altitude and rainfall statistics,” she said. Not every detail, and not at every moment. And hey, flash a smile every once in a while, okay?”

How does this perspective make you feel? Sound off in the comments below!

The post SCAA Symposium: “Understanding The Consumer” appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Like a proverbial preteen caught snooping through the parental dresser drawers, I felt a vague kind of almost nervous out-of-placeness throughout my experience at Symposium 2012. Don’t get me wrong, I had a wonderful time, I learned, I tweeted, and I basked in the glow of an assembly of coffee pioneers, geniuses, and powerbrokers. Perhaps that latter point is why I felt a bit on the outside looking in: Or, at the very least, a little lonely.

Because of either subject matter or expense (or both), the standard programming at Symposium appeals to and attracts a pretty specific crowd. Namely, the Big Decision Makers in Specialty Coffee. Role call: Coffee roasters, cafe owners, brand managers, green-bean importers, producers, and a myriad of folks whose titles comprise strings of capital letters (CEOs, LLCs, BFDs).

This is, of course, a good thing. It’s important and advantageous to use the natural gathering point of SCAA as a way to bring together power brokers and discuss industry-wide strategy. Our industry makes the most of this time once a year to put some valuable heads together in the same room, where they can troubleshoot our collective issues. This year’s program reminded me of a TED conference, right down to the Coffee Common-esque multiroaster, multibarista coffee service during breaks. And not just for the coffee, but for the undeniable fact that Symposium 2012 took place behind a kind of velvet rope. (Velvet jute bag?)

Just like at TED, Big Issues were certainly discussed, and with great, impassioned, and inspiring fervor: How do we make specialty coffee more sustainable? How do we launch a counterstrike against increasingly-ubiquitous K-cups, and the pervasive allure of their perceived convenience? What is to be done about vanishing coffee lands, about diminished yields, about food crisis at origin?

But when the speakers exhausted themselves and the crowd was dismissed for recess, whom did we all ask for information about the actual coffees being served? The baristas in the lobby, outside the lecture hall.

A lot of arm-waving goes into these conversations, and it’s pivotal that we as an industry get riled up enough about them to do something to effectively push back. But who among those in the auditorium, behind the closed doors, is going to spread that message among coffee consumers? The importers? The roasters?

The barista is the parish priest to the industry archbishops gathered at Symposium. It is the barista who’s in the pulpit of the cafe every day, preaching the good and dirty word of specialty coffee to any and everybody who will listen. And it is unfortunately, in my mind, the barista who is unintentionally kept at bay at events like this, relegated instead to spectating at the coffee-making competitions and on the trade-show floor. Not that baristas don’t love showmanship and free samples, but I feel as though there’s tremendous value to be added to future Symposiums by including those voices – and those perspectives – in the main room.

There is an argument to be made for active barista inclusiveness at Symposium, so what would it take to make it happen? Would some kind of scholarship program, like this year’s geared toward incentivizing producers work to encourage accessibility to baristas? What about a discount rate for larger companies sending 3 or more baristas to the event? A discount for part-time volunteer service? A Hunger Games-esque national lottery, where prized free tickets to Symposium 2013 are given away to eligible SCAA member shops? Or would a panel discussion that includes a greater diversity of voices do the trick?

(Also, while I’m got the conch: Perhaps we could recruit more women from within the industry to participate next year? Most of the female voices on that stage – with the notable and incredibly valuable exception of SCAA deputy executive director Tracy Ging – were culled from the worlds of cheese, third-party strategy consulting, food advocacy, and journalism. Surely if women like Asnakech Thomas, Ethiopia’s sole female coffee miller & exporter, are impressive enough to talk about, talking with them would have even greater impact?)

That said, this is meant to be a gentle criticism of Symposium, and one that is born from recognition of its values. I bring up my desire for increased barista inclusion because I think it’s a shame to see the thought-provoking and valuable dialogues of Symposium restricted by a kind of intellectual fire wall, when they could be igniting across every branch of our industry. A great sermon is hard to embody and empower when it’s delivered in a vacuum.

Archbishops, gather your parish priests. Give them your great message, and send them out into the world armed with the knowledge, passion, and caffeine it takes to start making a difference to consumers. Consider the many memes of Symposium 2012: the difficulties faced by those who grow wonder at origin; a renewed and revitalized focus on service; and the need for enduring partnerships to exist between coffee producers and buyers. For these issues and more, you’ll find those kids in the hall serving coffee to be among the most powerful, faithful advocates. Can I get an Amen?

Sprudge.com contributor Erin Meister also writes for The Nervous Cook and Serious Eats, and is a customer relations representative for Counter Culture Coffee. This concludes her week-long #symp2012 coverage.

More from Meister on Symp2012:

Day 1, Part One
Day 1, Part Two
Day 2, Part One
Day 2, Part Two

The post Erin Meister: Symposium In Requiem appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Let’s review: Collaboration, volatility, and innovation are on everybody’s minds here in Portland, OR, and SCAA Symposium 2012 seeks to address those concerns with real and sustainable solutions that can be implemented across the supply chain.

…except we haven’t really come up with them yet.

“We don’t need magical silver bullets,” said Counter Culture co-owner and former SCAA president Peter Giuliano, whom most people in the room wouldn’t figure for much of a shootin’ man. (Double guns, though? Maybe.) “Magical solutions are only needed to kill big, scary problems. What we have are ordinary problems, and what we need are ordinary solutions.”

Ordinary solutions, thankfully, can come from ordinary people doing ordinary things: Like trying to make coffee farms more efficient, which is what presenter Chris Jordan of Dormans advocated by pointing to the fact that “Costa Rica produces twice the coffee on half the amount of land as Kenya,” to the tune of over 163 million trees on 68,000 hectares, as opposed to the African origin’s nearly 152 million trees on 135,500 hectares. Taking climate, processing, soil health, and variety into consideration (among the myriad other things that go into a successful harvest), is there a feasible way to make Kenya as productive and efficient as a place like Costa Rica? Is that a magic bullet or a regular one?

To NUCOFFEE marketing manager Daniel Friedlander, the not-so-magic bullet we need is more commitment to the balance between transparency (what producers want) and traceability (what roasters and consumers want) between the growing sector and the wholesale/retail sector. Players in the industry need to “think outside of the box and see that when we balance traceability and transparency, there are limitless possibilities for value creation… The most important step(ed: is that a glint of silver?)is to create the initiative to [create that balance]” through a model based on collaboration and integration instead of competition. “Collaboration and transparency will strengthen the coffee chain,” he insisted. (What was that that just whizzed by? Are we shooting at werewolves? This is like an awesome, caffeinated action movie all of a sudden!)

Ordinary people creating extraordinary (and financially sound) relationships are the weapon of choice for Craig Holt of Atlas Coffee Importers: “Good intentions aren’t going to cut it,” he said. “You need to pay more than the other buyers are going to pay for that coffee… It has to be in the growers’ best financial interest to sell to you.”

But the healthiest relationships have a true and deep personal element beyond but including the “big foam check”: There’s a need for “substantial investment of time and energy.”

“I’ve always treated business relationships as extensions of our communities,” Holt continued. “By doing business, we’re becoming part of each other’s future. [And] I’m not talking about ‘Kumbaya’ and drum circles…” (Not that we don’t all love a good drum circle. At Camp Pull-A-Shot, perhaps?)

Continuing what felt like a Scout’s pledge to “Kumbaya” our way into significant systemic improvements, Liam Brody of Root Capital suggested that in order to build resiliency in the value chain, specialty coffee players “need to come together like peanut butter and jelly” and become “pathologically collaborative” (hashtag that!) to combat serious threats to producer-buyer relationships, such as fuel and oil prices, erratic weather, currency fluctuation, market speculation, food prices… And he sees investment at origin as the means to that end, and the way to bring about real and lasting change by allowing growers to make financial and technological inroads toward higher quality and more predictable, sustainable yields.

Do less bad; do more good – that’s the final word on the day’s presentations, a directive by Imaginals innovations strategist Maggie De Pree. “Enroll changemakers both big and small,” she said, “and include your customers in the decision to drive change related to those issues.”

Sounds great, and we’ll get right on it, right after we finish this basket-weaving project. We’re trying to get our Silver Bullet badge before we leave Portland…

Erin Meister is our newest contributor. She writes for The Nervous Cook and Serious Eats, and is a customer relations representative for Counter Culture Coffee. Enjoy her#symp2012 coverage all week long.

The post Symposium 2012: Meister’s Final Word On Day One 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.

The post Mainstream Media Perspectives appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Oh, and we almost forgot Sarah Lugaric! She walked us through the world of “Coffee Ball”, a global game with Premier leagues, hat tricks and rabid, octopus-flinging fans around the world. Sarah shared a TED-Ready vision with the audience, a simple set of goals that can help us all advance the march of coffee capitalism and score bicycle-flip ESPN highlight goals in the game of Coffee Ball: share a vision! Be open and transparent! Have clear metrics for success! And always, always look fabulous!

There are heated and fascinating group discussions going on as we speak, before the group reconvenes to view a closing video segment by your very own Sprudge.com audio-visual department. Stay tuned, won’t you?

The post Symposium Day 2: Pre-Lunch Wrap-Up, Presented Post-Lunch appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Up first, Rick Peyser of Green Mountain, who reflects on the people of Nicaragua who struggle from month to month with food shortages. He poses the problem like this: aside from the humanitarian concerns, which are significant, hunger causes a migration in families away from the coffee industry – hunger at origin means “we are building our house on a shakey foundation”. Rick’s speech was a lead-up to a world premiere of the short film “After The Harvest”, narrated by Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon, and featuring the starvation and plight of families who grow coffee in Nicaragua. You can learn more about the project at www.aftertheharvest.org, and educate yourself on the opportunities this industry has to affect change at origin and differentiate coffee from its status as a mere commodity. This morning’s presentation was a real and palpable articulation of the serious issue of hunger at origin, and we encourage you to check out the project at the link above.

Problem solving was the modus operandi for the rest of this morning, which included presentations from Sarah Beubien on the SCAA’s Sustainability Tracking And Reporting Tool (START), which you can learn more about at the SCAA expo booth. Andrew Sargaent of HRNS blew our minds and stole our hearts with his evocative powerpoint slides, including a farmer’s pyramid, the phenomenology of problem diagnosis, and a call for creating effective projects that can be implemented into public policy. Last, we heard from David Browning of TechnoServe, who insists that “solutions don’t have to be complicated”, and used the Japanese automotive model to illustrate how effective problem solving can close even the biggest differential gap.

More speakers coming soon! Follow along the Symposium with constant tweets @nickcho! See you at lunch!

The post Symposium Day 2: Mo’ Coffee Money, Mo’ Coffee Problems appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Kim Elena Bullock, Counter Culture Coffee Green Buyer:

“Does quality equal sustainability? What happens when people demand certification?” And what exactly happened at those good ol’ Good Food Awards a few months back? Kim weighs in with some heavy opinions on what happens when suppliers, green buyers, roasters and baristas are allowed to make excuses for unsustainable practices. (Hint: she thinks the end result is something close to fraud.)

“As an industry, we’ve proven ourselves willing to invest in quality – every time we have a dollar to spend, we spend it on quality.”

Does this mean we’re throwing sustainability down the proverbial rabbit hole? A thought provoking ten minutes from Kim.

Dr. Shawn Steiman, Scientist and Consultant at Coffea

In a rapid-fire staccato performance, Dr. Steiman more or less de-balls the standard cupping forms and evaluation terminology used to grade coffees. He calls the current model “inflexible” and “subjective”, and goes on to suggest the coffee community ought to get rid of the 100 point system all together and rate everything instead on acidity, body and sweetness. “Who is the arbiter of quality?” – who indeed?

Dr. Tim Schilling (Redux)

Round two of Dr. Tim, in which he challenges the status quo, calls out your taste descriptors (“Key lime! Cherry coke!”), and makes a case for marrying sensory and scientific methods for accurately defining quality. “Every point in the value chain needs to agree on a set of qualifications”.

Peter Giuliano, SCAA President and Counter Culture Coffee Co-Owner

Peter G makes a compelling statement on the fundamental specialness of coffee’s place in human culture, by walking us through the Ethiopian coffee ceremony, coffee consumption in the palaces of Vienna, and the fast food-ification of coffee service in America. As always, his is an engaging, immensely knowledgeable presence, and watching him address a group of 400 is a pleasure indeed.

A Round-Up Round-Up:

Brazil’s Dr. Flavio Borem makes a bold vote for genetic modification. (“There is a chasm that separates quality and sustainability, and technology can bridge that gap.”) Arturo Aguierre, the maestro of El Injerto, cuts a dashing figure on stage while talking about terroir, education and investment on his family’s farm. Price Peterson longs for a world where “there will be those who prefer Pacamara, those who delight in Geisha, and those who insist on nothing but Kenya SL-28″, Jose Francisco Pereira presents a number of videos from origin, including hulling, screening and cupping, and Christie Thorns brings it on home the hard way in a lengthy producer panel discussion.

We’ll be back fresh and frisky tomorrow morning to bring you more EXCLUSIVE coverage of the SCAA Symposium!

The post Symposium 2011: Afternoon Recap, Afternoon Delight appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Listen to it here!

Special thanks to SCAA’s Tracy Ging, who permitted us to publish this speech.

The post Symposium 2011: James Hoffmann’s Speech Leaked! appeared first on Sprudge.com.