Context is everything in modern life. But unfortunately our lives increasingly orbit around social media, which has a tendency to brutally flatten context down to the most immediate visceral reaction (some would say it’s not a bug, it’s a feature). Such was the scene on Sprudge’s Instagram earlier this year when we posted about a Cupertino Farmer’s Market pop-up called Moonwake Coffee, housed inside the back of a Tesla Cybertruck.
The takes came fast and furious. There’s something about the combination of elements here—the Cybertruck of it all, the Cupertino of it all—that encouraged visceral reactions by the hundreds, both for and against the efforts of Moonwake. We are all, each of us, entitled to pop off spicy takes on the internet if so desired, but the absolute worst response went something like, “These people don’t deserve the platform you have.”
We absolutely positively could not disagree more. And there’s so much more to the story of Moonwake than was captured in that first story. We’re thrilled to share more today about Moonwake, a new coffee shop project from founders Ming Wood and Mabel Yeung, set to open later this year in San Jose. The level of thought and intentionality Wood and Yeung are bringing to this project is worth your time, and work like this is what we love about Sprudge as a platform in the first place. Read on and keep an open mind.
The 2024 Build-Outs of Coffee is presented by Ceado and Dona. The 2024 Build-outs of Coffee is sponsored by Pacific Barista Series, La Marzocco, Acaia and Ghirardelli.
As told to Sprudge by Mabel Yeung.
For those who aren’t familiar, will you tell us about your company?
We’re Moonwake Coffee Roasters, started by Ming Wood and Mabel Yeung, based out of San Jose, California. Moonwake was founded in 2020 as a small local coffee roaster, originally from Ming who was an engineer providing coffee experiences in a small coffee club at Tesla to bring a moment to escape from the stress of the tech industry in the California Bay Area.
Moonwake the name was born out of the reflection of the moon on a still body of water which embodied that feeling of peace and reflection that Ming experienced through coffee with friends. We grew primarily in 2023 and 2024 as both the co-founders Mabel and then Ming quit their tech jobs to pursue coffee full time.
We are on a never-ending journey to source and highlight the best coffee producers in the world with a focus on the whole spectrum of what coffee can offer from Nordic style roasting to dark roasts with equal focus on quality and we currently sell our coffee to consumers in many states across the US.
In 2024 we expanded our direct to consumer coffee experience to include a complete Cybertruck powered cafe at a local farmers market, which Ming fabricated the coffee cart, sliding platform, and plumbing from scratch using welding and wood working, providing pour-over to espresso based beverages that are unique and elevated with no sacrifices to quality compared to any cafe. We aim to continue our no-sacrifices approach to our cafe roastery, that we’re building in San Jose that is scheduled to open in Q3 2024.
Ultimately our goal is to provide the best coffee experience in the world, whether it’s from brewing our coffee at home or for us to serve you in person from our Cybertruck or at our future cafe roastery. And in that goal hopefully provide an experience that can take you away from the daily stresses of life to take a moment to reflect and appreciate the beautiful world of coffee just like it did for Ming in those crucial moments in the busy tech office that started this journey.
Can you tell us a bit about the new space?
Our new cafe roastery will be the first physical home base for Moonwake Coffee Roasters, which will allow us to move out of renting roasting time at CoRo Coffee Room in Berkeley and give us a consistent location to our loyal customers we’ve gathered from farmers markets and events.
This space is roughly 2,200 square feet, which will be split into a full service cafe with a back kitchen and a coffee roastery. The goal for this space is to provide a sanctuary from the daily stress of the bay area and provide a multitude of experiences and education in the coffee world. The aesthetic is Japanese garden and Nordic inspired, using lots of wood contrasting with stone and greenery to provide a calming modern and clean feeling. The story of coffees journey will be told in full as the center piece of the shop will be a circular stone bench with coffee trees growing in the center.
Towards the back will be large sliding glass doors which show the compact micro-roastery operation which will prominently show the Loring S7 roaster in full operation on many days of the week. The sliding glass doors may be opened for roastery tours for guests when not in operation.
On one side of our shop, will be seating among custom shaped benches for sitting/relaxing while on the opposite side will e a long curved coffee bar serving a fast lane of espresso based drinks and a slower bar where we aim to provide pre-appointment only coffee tasting experiences to explore the rich world of coffee.
We intentionally designed our shop to represent our brand’s evocation of the moon reflecting on a body of water. The bar and the customer seating areas are reflective elements of each other, both made of curves. The ceiling of the shop was also designed to represent the ripple of the water—it will feature massive wooden panels that will have rippled lines routed to remind you of a drop rippling in water. It will also be made by entirely by Ming (among some other elements).
For customers, the experience will also extend outside to the front entrance as our Cybertruck mobile coffee platform will be there to handle overflow drink orders for a faster turnaround time and for providing samples while people wait on the busiest of days. We hope to use this place to embody the Moonwake philosophy of reflection as a haven to education and highlight the world of specialty coffee.
What’s your approach to coffee?
Our overall approach to coffee is ensuring we deliver uncompromising excellence throughout the entire lifecycle of our coffee service. This starts up the chain in how we work with producers, roast our coffee, down to how we prepare our drinks and serve our customers—realizing that we are all engaging in special moments of sharing and connectedness through it all.
We believe in giving credit to the people who put in the most work and only source and serve single farm/collective coffee while trying to highlight, promote, and work directly with producers whenever possible. This is also demonstrated in how we name our coffees—we name our coffees to the most specific level of detail we can—whether specific origin/region, collective or farm, or the specific producer.
We also believe the best ways to express coffee is specific to each coffee and that the world of coffee has so much to offer both in lighter fruity flavors or darker cocoa and chocolate flavors. This means we will sometimes roast extremely light to what is often referred to as ultralight if the coffee has the nuances like delicate florals that are best presented in that manner, or even more daring, recently roasting a premium Panamanian Creativa Coffee District dynamic cherry coffee to the level of a dark roast to manipulate the funk into a salted caramel while highlighting brilliant notes of cacao with some background orange notes.
We generally split our lines of coffee in cocoa forward, citrus forward, or a premium “nova series” line of coffee to aid our customers in finding a coffee they may prefer more quickly. But ultimately we give equal focus and care to sourcing and roasting our medium to darker roasted cocoa forward coffees as we do the fruitier higher acidity coffees and try to source what is done exceptionally well in both terroir driven coffees with simple processing as well as the fringe of what is currently done in the space of processing forward coffees. Our roasting style is for balance and to bring harmony for what we think is the most exceptional qualities in each specific coffee we source.
In our direct service to customers on bar, we aim to demonstrate the excellence that we receive from our producer partners, to our customers. From our meticulously (almost obsessively) brewed pour-overs, to our espresso-based drinks, we prepare each drink with the same care that the producers take with their coffee harvesting.
We also elevate and combine flavors of the coffees with those inspired by our heritage, not seeking to mask any flavors, but to introduce more complexity. For example, we’ve recently launched a Cafe Chicheme drink which is a homemade ground corn with cream foam on top of an aerated expresso with cinnamon all the while letting the chocolate and cocoa notes of an East Timor coffee from Ducurai village shine through. This drink was originally inspired by our green sourcer who loved having a similar Korean corn based milk drink as a child. We will always still try to keep the coffee in balance with all drinks and make sure it is the star of the show.
While our customers may or may not care to go to the depths of coffee that we choose to, we still seek to deliver the best coffee that we can – in hopes of enabling moments of reflection and introspection – which is what our brand is based on.
Any machines, coffees, special equipment lined up?
We will have a Loring S7 as the primary work horse on the roastery side. On bar, we have a special relationship with Voltage Coffee Supply in that we are installing a new espresso machine every two months on the Cybertruck to evaluate and review on Youtube with Brian Quan. We will be likely keeping one of these machines for the shop which is currently likely to be the Synesso MVP Hydra. We have plans to obtain the new Ground Control brewer to create our concentrates and batch brews as well.
We are also big fans of flash chilling coffee beverages and have previously assembled a glass heat exchanger ourselves which we called the “chillaxer” to rapidly chill pour-overs to turn them into iced pour-overs with no ice dilution. There’s many ideas we have to expand the world of coffee roasting and brewing and we will likely be building devices and equipment for experiences ourselves once we have the shop open.
How is your project considering sustainability?
From the product sustainability side our goal is to bring a spotlight to the lifecycle of coffee with our prominent first view of coffee trees when you enter the shop, to the transparent roastery in the back and the brewed coffee being served on the right. As part of that we aim to highlight the byproducts and waste in these processes and how they can be reused as much as possible. We are currently experimenting with creating paper from spent pour over filters and coffee roasting chaff shredded and pressed. If we can dial in the process this will form the substrate that we print our menus on.
Coffee grounds will also be used in small amounts to fertilize the trees. We have lots of other ideas for reusing burlap coffee sacks and other materials that need more experimentation before implementation. From the human perspective our main goal is to always highlight the producer and farm creating the coffee and by working with them directly to ensure fair prices are paid and to give them direct feedback to help create long lasting relationships that are sustainable.
From a cafe operations perspective, we aim to encourage customers to bring their own mugs/cups as much as possible, utilize locally handmade ceramic cups (made by our artisan friend) and reusable serveware for dine-in, and utilize as many locally sourced fresh ingredients as possible. We are also considering partnering with the Okapi reusable cup program, and having a coffee bag recycling program as well.
What’s your hopeful target opening date/month?
9/30/2024
Are you working with craftspeople, architects, and/or creatives that you’d like to mention?
Yes! The architect and design team we are working with are incredibly talented: Studio BANAA. We also have a great general contractor team leading construction: ACG CONSTRUCTION Inc. And a cabinet maker Ralph Lammers who will be making a lot of the special pieces. Lastly we’d like to thank Ming’s dad David Wood for working with me to build a lot of the other pieces of the shop with our own hands like concrete benches, cabinets, tables, and ceiling features.
Thank you!
The 2024 Build-Outs of Coffee is presented by Ceado and Dona. The 2024 Build-outs of Coffee is sponsored by Pacific Barista Series, La Marzocco, and Ghirardelli.
