Whither the multiroaster?
That paragon of speciality coffee retail models, once so in vogue, has been struck a major blow today as Go Get Em Tiger—the fast-expanding coffee bar brand from Kyle Glanville and Charles Babinski—have announced the upcoming launch of their own coffee roasting brand. After five years spent championing the multiroaster model, GGET’s own brand of coffee will become the exclusive offering served at GGET cafes across Southern California—a transition that happens “next week,” according to Kyle Glanville. The duo also own G&B Coffee, a coffee bar in the downtown Los Angeles’ Grand Central Market.
The brand’s roaster expansion dovetails with a successful round of private micro-investment and the acquisition of a new brand headquarters, a sprawling 16,000-square-foot building containing a production HQ and offices in Vernon, a neighboring industrial city just south of the LA Arts District.
After five years in business helping grow and innovate the Los Angeles coffee scene, some jitters today should be expected. “Aside from it being nerve-wracking, I think this all feels like the validation of a process that we’ve really tried to honor,” Glanville tells Sprudge. “We feel nervous because we’ve truly put so much time into learning how to be good at this, and teaching ourselves for the first time what our own voice sounds like.”
But growth and expansion has always been the dream for Glanville and Babinski, a dream that has long included—by virtue of necessity—transitioning to the roaster-retailer model. “We’ve always known that we would end up roasting if our company did well, ” Glanville says. “It’s been a real pleasure and joy to be able to buy really awesome coffees from other really awesome roasters, but ultimately there’s this sense of passiveness that we’ve learned is not really who we are. We make all of our own shit—our own chai, our own pastries, our own almond milk—and this feels like a moment of validation for how our perspectives have matured.”
Glanville and Babinski announced the move last night in a personal Medium post, authored by Glanville:
After all this time, we are launching our roasting to the public because we finally feel ready to fill those shoes. Respectfully, we believe time and attention have sharpened our skills to match those of any other roaster in North America, and the fact that we will be vertically integrated means we have the tools to express what we appreciate in a great coffee. For us, roasting is an opportunity to amplify a great coffee’s natural sweetness while magnifying all of the complex character intrinsic to the bean. We’re thrilled to deliver our vision of great coffee roasting and perhaps to begin to define what LA’s coffee identity can be while we’re at it.
First fruits of the roasting project can be sampled as part of the new GGET Coffee Club, a subscription service featuring “education, events, a text message service for troubleshooting your brews, behind-the-scenes access, and a lot more.” Full service launches later this fall, but for now there’s early subscriber access for friends and family (and Sprudge readers)—$100 for 5 coffees delivered anywhere in the United States, with new shipments every other week. International subscribers can inquire about shipping and availability via the GGET text line—1-323-YAA-GGET—or by emailing hello@gget.com.
Read the full Medium post here.
All Glanville & Babinski coverage on Sprudge.
Jordan Michelman is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Jordan Michelman on Sprudge.
