Welcome to Podcast Week on Sprudge! The Sprudge Podcast Network is the coffee world’s largest, first, and frankly best audio hub dedicated to original podcast content. Throughout this week you are invited to explore the wide world of podcasts on Sprudge, available now streaming wherever podcasts are found, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitchr, Podbay, and more.
Welcome to another spotlight feature here on Podcast Week, where each day we’re highlighting a different podcast series on the Sprudge Podcast Network. Today’s focus is Cascara, a globe-traveling tour of unique and distinct coffee scenes around the world, curated by your host, Cydni Patterson. Patterson is a coffee professional based out of Durham, North Carolina, and in each episode of Cascara, she’s taking listeners to a new city around the world, talking to locals about what makes their coffee community unique, and showing us, as she puts it, “what’s really brewing in coffee scenes around the world.”
If you’re missing the excitement and discovery of travel during these COVID times, this show is like a roundtrip flight for your ears. It’s a trip around the world in a cup of coffee, with Cydni Patterson as your guide.
So far the show has focused on Durham, North Carolina, interviewing Areli Barrera de Grodski, founder of Little Waves Coffee Roasters and Cocoa Cinnamonalong with Black & White Coffee Roasters founders Lem Butler and Kyle Ramage; Indianapolis, Indiana, interviewing coffee professional Gya Torres; San Francisco, California, interviewing Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters co-founder (and Your Korean Dad social media star) Nichola Cho; and New York City, interviewing Espresso State of Mind co-founder Joseph Gonzalez.
Every episode of the show has been a highlight—let’s dive in and explore them now, as we get pumped for upcoming shows (expect an international focus!) and much more to come.
Episode One: Raleigh-Durham
In the first episode, Patterson takes us to the Raleigh-Durham region of North Carolina. There she interviews Areli Barrera de Grodski, founder of Little Waves Coffee Roasters and Cocoa Cinnamon along with Black & White Coffee Roasters founders Lem Butler and Kyle Ramage. “I believe each specialty coffee scene extracts energy and takes on the characteristics of the communities that they’re in,” says Patterson, “and the Raleigh-Durham coffee scene is a wonderful example of that. It’s surrounded by universities and there’s a vibrant art scene. There’s a history of activism and it’s all located in this beautiful landscape.”
Episode Two: Indianapolis
This episode features Indianapolis-based coffee professional Gya Torres of Foundation Coffee Company to talk about their work fighting food insecurity in their community.
“Foundation coffee is partnered with the Patachou Foundation,” Patterson explains, “and they serve delicious coffee while helping distribute over 2000 afterschool meals to children in the Indianapolis public school system.”
Episode Three: San Francisco
“The specialty coffee industry is such a unique industry to be a part of,” says host Cydni Patterson, “we have access to many of the key players that built the foundation of the coffee industry as we know it today. Nick Cho is definitely one of those key players. And when you have access to such a wealth of institutional knowledge, you get a greater understanding of where we are as a field today, and you get help navigating the next practical steps that we can take to take us to where we want to be as a field tomorrow.”
Episode Four: New York City
“I am so honored to have been able to chat with a leader in one of the most expansive coffee communities in the world, New York City,” says Patterson, “with a little under 5,000 shops serving around eight million people, this coffee community is home to a multitude of sub-communities. How do you even maintain community during a period where the safest thing you can do is isolate?”
“Listen and laugh with us as I pick his brain on how he and the Espresso State of Mind crew have managed to extract the dopest elements that the New York coffee scene has to offer while keeping his community caffeinated enough to keep pushing for a safer tomorrow.”
Explore every episode of Cascara right here on our podcast series hub.
Cascara is available now via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or load it up on your favorite podcast platform using this RSS link. Subscribe, like, rate, and review Cascara on Apple Podcasts.
Check out all of the Sprudge Podcast Networks show here. Interested in sponsoring a Sprudge podcast? Get in touch!
Cascara is sponsored by Seattle Coffee Gear.
