
As reported by Eater SF, Paramo Coffee Roasters has now opened its first flagship cafรฉ in Embarcadero Place in San Franciscoย today.ย The company, founded byย noted roaster Gabriel Boscana and Highwire Coffee Roasters’ Robert Mires, will serve coffees sourced and roasted by the pair. According to Boscana, Paramo will attempt to set itself apart from other cafes in the Bay Area by putting a strong emphasis on service.
All signs point to Paramo being a leader in the exciting crop of new roaster / retailers opening in America in 2014, and that end, our Bay Area staff writer Leif Havenย sat down with Mr. Boscana for an expansive, fascinating interview all about his new venture. Boscana is a coffee industry veteran, having worked with Bay Area roasters likeย Ecco, Intelligentsia Coffee, andย Sightglass, which means he’s got heaps to say about the current state–and future–of great coffee in California and beyond. (Cleveland, anyone?)
Leif Haven: Tell me about the first Paramo location.
Gabriel Boscana: Thereโs tons of foot traffic. In terms of density, itโs great. Itโs a different way to picking a space. Itโs a place that a lot of people come through, but they might not be aware of whatโs actually around them. We want to become a destination within a place that already has a lot of traffic rather a place that nobody knows about and having to be a beacon.
Itโs the reverse of the usual cafรฉ being the avant garde of a changing neighborhood.
Exactly. So for the first cafรฉ that was the focus. We want high foot traffic because it allows us to change minds very quickly. All these folks coming out of their offices for lunch, theyโre going to want coffee. The average person whoโs not into super coffee stuff wants to drink coffee right before work, and they want quick service, nice service, and a really good cup of coffee. Not very many shops do that or serve that customer. The every day joe deserves to get a good cup of coffee quickly with out any fuss and without a huge conversation unless they want that to happen. That was our ethos from the beginning.
You want to serve an accessible cup of coffee.
Yeah. Buying really good green coffee is not difficult. If youโre a good cupper and you are able to form good relationships with people you can find good green coffee. What is difficult is finding good green coffee, good roasting, good service, in an environment that doesnโt intimidate people. I think we have a long way to go.
So part of the mission is to not intimidate people.
Itโs so easy in the Bay Area especially to intimidate people, and alienate people. Iโve been in coffee for a long time and Iโve seen trends happen and I think thereโs room for someone to be a super kind and generous person who truly cares about customers vs. caring about showing how much they know. Thatโs a very different experience from a customerโs perspective. If youโre doing a workshop, if people sign up for that, thatโs greatโฆ
A workshop is a very different interaction because someoneโs asking to be taught rather than served.
Right, so thatโs our basic mission, to give people a good cup of coffee. The other part that I think is really awesome, is that we want to make contributions to a charity, depending on where each store is. We are not wholesale focusedโweโre very retail focusedโand wherever we open a store weโre going to find out what is the best charity to give to, not just sign a check, but pay baristas a dayโs work to go and volunteer somewhere.
It sounds like Paramo is looking to grow rapidly?
We hope that it goes well enough that we can do it! [laughs] We hope to open one or two stores a year. Thatโs the hope, small scale, meaningful, but a for real profitable business, because if we canโt do that we canโt take care of our employees. We all come from a background where thatโs really important. The employee, that person thatโs serving your coffee is so important, and that theyโre happy and motivated and excited about what theyโre doing is so important. Being a barista is a really tough job and we want to develop strong communities in each store. I think people jump around from project to project because thereโs something theyโre not getting from their employer; weโre hoping we can make something thatโs profitable so we can offer bonuses, benefits, and things that keep people stoked about working for us.
Itโs the Bay Areaโitโs almost impossible to make a living hereโso if we can keep people motivated in a place that they can stick around for a long time, thatโs a goal.
What does your team look like now?
Robert Myers from Highwire is a co-founder. This project is mostly envisioned by myself and Nicole Prior on the retail end. Robert is co-founder and mostly in the role of advisor. Nicole Prior will be the manager and she is both a Flying Goat and Sightglass veteran. Weโre small and scrappy.
Youโre doing all the roasting?
Iโm doing all the sourcing, roasting, bagging, and delivery.
Youโre the whole production department. How are you doing the sourcing?
I did a lot of traveling with both Intelligentsia and Sightglass, and thereโs a huge advantage to traveling because you get a face-to-face connection with that person, but I do not think itโs necessary. If you know who to call, you can buy good coffee wherever you are.
Thereโs a lot of great green coffee imported here in the Bay Area.
Itโs probably the best group of people to buy coffee from in a concentrated area, and thatโs their gig, thatโs what they do. Unless youโre getting really big, you would really just be traveling to solidify relationships.
Whatโs the end game of this one or two shop a year growth model?
I donโt think weโve really thought that far. Weโre just hoping we can do this one store and then reorganize and figure out where we can go next. As a group weโre very pragmatic people, and we talk about how it would really be awesome to have a store here or have a store here, but our end game is really to pay baristas a living wage, to retain people for a long time, and to provide upward mobility. I donโt think there is an end game.
We hope that this works. I think it will. We want a few shops, and out of necessity, if you donโt do wholesale, you canโt just open one shop and survive. So the reason we decided not to do wholesale is that there are plenty of good wholesale providers here. We donโt feel that we need to get in there and we really want to control the product and the experience. Wholesale and retail are literally two separate businesses youโre trying to run. We think that itโs challenging enough to maintain a voice in your own shops without putting your coffee in someone elseโs hands.
If someone approached you and said โI really want to have your coffee in my multi-roaster shopโ you would say probably not?
Probably not. I would say grocery is a safe bet. You can put out a good product and make yourself accessible to lots of people. But I think thereโs enough wholesale in the Bay Area. Maybe if someone had a really compelling project and they were really clear about what they wanted and we were really clear about what we wantedโฆ maybe we would consider it. But wholesale is an entirely separate business that we donโt have the structure for or the interest in right now.
Do you see markets other than the Bay Area as potential locations for Paramo?
I have a very different fantasy from the folks I work with. I would love to open up in Cleveland, and people would be like, โAre you crazy?โ I love Cleveland. Or Philadelphia. I like the idea of opening up in not the number one cities, but the scrappy ugly duckling cities, because thatโs where Iโm from. I came to the United States from Puerto Rico when I was eight, and I grew up in upstate New York. Upstate New York is like the Midwest. So thatโs kind of my fantasy.
One of the reasons I was asking about end game of Paramo, is that the metric of success in the start up worldโand even in the coffee worldโis that you grow the company and then you sell it. How do you feel about that?โจโจ
In a perfect world thatโd be amazing, to build something that you love, and they sell it off and you can do other projects. Itโs almost exponential. Think about like what [Stumptown founder] Duane Sorenson has done; he loves restaurants, so he started opening restaurants. It gives you financial freedom to do cool things. I donโt think itโs a bad thing. I canโt imagine doing anything else, so I canโt think of what it would be like to hand the keys over. But I say that because weโre not even open yet.
Itโs easy to see selling out as a bad thing but it can help you take care of your employees or do things like expand to Cleveland. [Laughs] They would fire me before I could do that for sure. Iโve never seen it as a bad thing. The romanticism of โOh, but those are your dreams,โ itโs up to the person who started it to make the decisionโobviously it effects a lot of people, but itโs a personal choice. Weโve painted the cafรฉ as this left wing, radical thing, but you have to make a profit to surviveโthe way that you do that can be positiveโbut you have to make money. Thereโs a ton of people involved in your success, so if youโre not making money youโre letting a lot of people down.
But right now, weโre just trying to be humble, and nice.
Letโs get back to the shop itself.
Itโs small. Itโs about 450 square feet. Thereโs two doors; you enter through one, and exit through the other. Itโs a dream, there wonโt be any crazy bottle necks. Three or four people behind the bar with a really simple menu. Never more than 5 single origin coffees available as beans,ย and dripย coffee made on Curtis batch brewers. Weโre trying to reflect the reality of that space and that is that we have to move coffee very fast. Weโll be doing a spectrum of truly different coffees. Weโre not going to have four Ethiopian coffees at the same time. Weโre not going to have dark roasts, but weโre going to have different coffees that embody different things to different people. Never more than five offerings at a time.
Do you have coffees lined up already?
I do. Iโm waiting for fresh cup Ethiopias to land, but thatโs it. I have a Rwanda, a Colombia, a Java–itโs been a long time since I roasted a Java, and itโs really goodโa Guatemala, and a Sumatra. I might not be the biggest fan of it, but itโs pretty decent, and I know there will be a huge market for it. We have to be a little bit flexible.
For us, even if itโs not my favorite on the menu, at least Iโll know that Iโll have at least one coffee on the menu for everyone. If that sells really well and it helps me afford the ability to buy other really awesome coffees or to do something special for the staff, thatโs a no brainer.
Isnโt that better than turning a customer away, or losing their business?
Right. And itโs not like Iโm buying a whatever Sumatra, Iโm buying a Sumatra from OLAM, and they own mills in Sumatra, and they do microlots, theyโre amazing. They do really good work. Even if itโs not a profile that I personally love, thereโs a place for it.
Iโm hoping that I can rotate coffees only four or five times a year, but itโs hard to gauge right now. Iโm a pretty conservative buyer, and I would rather run out of a coffee at its peak than serve a coffee until itโs dead. I will buy less than I think I know because I know I can always call up an importer and say what do you have thatโs good right now. Iโll find something.
Leif Haven (@LeifHaven) is a Sprudge.com staff writer based in Oakland. Read moreย Leif Haven on Sprudge.ย