308: Good Coffee with James Hoffmann, Nigel Price, James Freeman

27:45Like Starbucks is one of the biggest roasters in the world. And yet Nestle roasts a bunch of coffee for them. And you're like, what? Why does this happen? This makes no sense. You can roast your own coffee, Starbucks. You've got all the facilities all over the world. But somehow Nestle can do it cheaper or theoretically, for whatever they think good is, better. I don't know. It's just fascinating. We'll let you tap into that reporting piece because I think I'd love to find out the answer. And I'm not going to spoil the winner of that test. And I'll link to it again in the show notes to see which one won.

28:19I think that's amazing. Let's get into – let's talk about espresso. Okay, like a lot of complicated thoughts. We talked about this with Jimmy Butler, with Ashley Rodriguez and Jeff Watson. Many in coffee, and especially coffee, have a love-hate relationship with espresso. So first question to me is how the fuck do you taste espresso? I don't understand it personally. How do you mean? Where do you find the challenge? It's just it's overwhelmingly intense. Yeah, I don't find a structural nuance with the coffee out of that when it's pressurized and brewed that way. I just I find it. I know bad espresso.

28:59and it goes back to your absence of blemishes and absence of how pure coffee tastes better, I just can't wrap my head around what a good espresso tastes like. So I think one of the annoying and persistent myths of coffee is that espresso, if you don't drink it quickly, it dies. And that's just not true. If you drink espresso really hot or pretty fresh, it's so hot that it's actually much harder to taste the nuance in it anyway. and that's good news if the espresso isn't like perfect because it's too hot to taste some of the imperfections but if you let espresso cool down a little bit it gets way easier to taste and generally what i'm chasing with espresso is this you know slightly nebulous term but like balance right like i want i want a little bit of everything going on there i want a little bit of acidity but not dominant acidity i want a little bit of bitterness but not dominant bitterness i want some sweetness playing in the middle there.

29:55I want nice texture. And if I get all of those things, generally I'm happy. And any additional flavors, any kind of character that comes from the coffee itself is a benefit, is a bonus. It's just enjoyable to me. But good espresso is hard to do well because you're just working at these very high concentrations. It's high concentrations of coffee solubles, but also high concentrations of acid as well. So it's really easy for espresso to just be unpleasantly dominantly sour. And that's just no fun in my book. Yeah, I think you write about the confusion between bitter and sour with espresso and how that sour, we perceive as sour, can be sometimes prized.

30:39But unfortunately, it's not. It's not great experience-wise to have an overly sour shot of espresso. Not at all. And I think for a lot of people, they'll sip it. They'll be like, I don't like that. There is a dominant attacking taste it's coffee what's wrong with coffee usually oh it's usually bitter and so they're like oh this coffee is too bitter and and for years it's drove baristas you know crazy because we had said as an industry if you get too much acidity you've under extracted it and if you get too much bitterness you've over extracted the coffee and there's loads of people being like this espresso is too bitter it's too bitter it's too bitter and they're like how is this how am i over extracting this coffee it's not brewing too slow and the truth was they were just doing the opposite and so it's it's frustrating feedback to get, which is like, this coffee's too bitter.

31:24And you kind of want to be like, well, do you mean the sides of my tongue tingle and my mouth is watering and I'm sort of, it's been a bit like biting into the side of a lemon. They're like, oh yeah, no, that's it, that's it. And you're like, great, that is sourness. And that's the problem that you have right now. We'll fix the espresso or whatever. But like, yeah, it is a confusing thing. And then to add another layer, let's just go there. Because when we talk about espresso, we're talking about shots out of the machine, just on the counter. But most people, when you're thinking about espresso, it's you're adding milk, you're adding dairy, or you're adding non-dairy, and you're adding something that absolutely erases any of the items we're talking about the last five minutes, which is the flavor profiles of a shot.

32:05How do you square that away? And I think the big complication is that that is where bars make their money, is from these drinks that we, of course, love. We love cortados, we love lattes, we love a cappuccino before nine. It's part of our culture. But when you're thinking about tasting coffee, which you write about extensively, it complicates matters. For sure. I mean, to do, to kind of really understand the inherent value of a more interesting coffee, once you've put four, six, eight ounces of milk on top, yeah, it's impossible. But from my point of view, I'm back to like, I need you to value this thing.

32:40I need you to enjoy it that little bit more. That's back to where you, you know, it gets easier to push the angle of like, isn't this sweet? Don't you have a load of flavor, but not too much bitterness? Isn't this all of these good things? And I think for people who don't yet want to drink black coffee, I don't want to tell them that what they're doing is wrong because that ends our relationship, right? That ends, there's no future conversation. If I've been like, hey, that thing that you really like, that we have sold you and taken your money for, that's wrong. That's the incorrect way to do this.

33:13you rightly would call me an ass and would not wish to come back to my coffee shop so i have to you know however i'm going to do this i have to make you curious that's the that's the the pathway for me when you're like okay i'm you know what is the deal with all of these different coffees or what is the deal with this coffee that you're selling over here and or why did i get this you know guest coffee that made my cappuccino taste like blueberries like what what happened here i need a question because once you ask me a question you're fair game and we can have an interesting conversation we can but i have to leave you curious and so i'm totally on board with with milk into coffee uh and i'm let's be honest milk is genuinely sweet fat does create a really nice texture foamed milk is really enjoyable to drink when it's done right that is hedonically a delightful thing.

34:06Like a really great cappuccino is a very enjoyable experience. And I can't deny that. It's not the sort of the transparency of flavor that you would get from drinking black coffee, but I can't deny it's as close to dessert as is socially acceptable first thing in the morning. You know, and so if you enjoy it, if it's valuable to you, I think we're winning. If I can make you curious, even better. Love it, James. Thank you for sharing all that, because I think you definitely democratize it once again in the way that takes that like coffee snob, snobbery out of the equation, which I think a lot of people associate when we talk about coffee, about snobbery and about milk.

34:45I mean, whenever I mess up a handbrew and I over extract and it just tastes bad, I just add a little milk and it makes it better. It just makes, it fixes it. And I love it. I love adding milk to coffee sometimes. So I'm with you. A question about flavored coffees. I feel like there is a bit of a rising tide towards moving, especially coffee, moving towards flavored coffees. Ironically or not, but I just feel people are talking about hazelnut coffee for whatever reason. Are you observing this at all? This is, and this is said with no sort of subtext or anything else, I feel like a distinctly North American thing.

35:26I do not in the UK or Europe, there's just never really been a thing. Like we've never just, I'm sure it is available, but it's never in coffee shops. It's never really in grocery stores. So I don't really ever see flavored coffees. I think specialty is kind of going about it in this really interesting way where you're starting to see some producers infuse things into the green raw coffee, which is somehow, you know, which is kind of interesting, mostly because it's a way for a producer to make more money rather than someone down the line making more money and generally speaking I'm pro-producers making more money whenever they can.

36:04But I feel like we're still mostly in a space where people either want coffee to be cheap and then kind of tempered, the kind of the badness tempered by sugar or potentially flavorings or people want coffee to be as coffee as possible and that's about transparency of flavor, of terroir, all of that kind of stuff. So I haven't seen that the same way. Well, to your point about flavored coffees, I think it is truly North American and I grew up going to a place called Gloria Jean's Coffee Beans in the mall and like hazelnut coffee in like 1995 was like my first coffee and my God, I loved it. I loved hazelnut coffee.

36:45I've never had like a, I've had a bag, I've smelled it. I've never just had someone serve me flavored coffee my whole life. I probably should do that at some point. James, I mean, if you're ever in New York, I'm just going to hand deliver a, you know, a bag and hand brew you some hazelnut coffee. All right. There's, I think I know some chefs who, who actually talk about it, like, like in between services, just loving, and they call it shit coffee, but like loving just a hazelnut and milk. It's almost like its own food group. Yeah. I could see it being like a whole other thing. like and i feel like coffee has space for whole other things like i don't mind a frappuccino i think they can be a good time people get you know upset about them but i'm like no no it's like a lot of sugar and whatever in a cup but it's a nice time uh and so yeah like you know i i think my problem ends up being intellectually when it's a way to justify buying cheaper more exploitative coffee and that, you know, like, and then adding value to it away from origin.

37:48That's when, you know, part of me gets a little less comfortable with it. But again, if people are having a good time, I can work with that. A few more questions, broad question. How do we as a culture get more people to pay attention to specialty coffee? Is it through celebrity? I mean, we get the George Clooney push button bullshit, but we also get guys like Jimmy Butler, um, who are doing, um, amazing work with their own like he has this company big face and like it's changing the way a lot of people who maybe haven't thought about the younger generation thinking about especially coffee can you point to any other examples of the way coffee is quote-unquote going mainstream in an interesting way yeah i think there's been a uh i think the most obvious kind of coffee brand in the u.s would probably be chamberlain coffee which is emma chamberlain who's kind of transcended from being a sort of massive youtuber into someone kind of doing vogue's red carpet questions at the met gala yeah uh and chamberlain coffee's been really interesting as a kind of way to see how a younger generation wants to see itself reflected in the coffee it drinks right like um in loads of different cultures you've seen the kind of push pull of like uh i think japan is a good example so like the the sort of the the big rise of specialty coffee in Japan was all centered around espresso because hand-drip coffee was how your parents made it.

39:14And there was this pushback of like, I'm not them. I'm different to them. I'm not going to make coffee like them. Coffee's still a massive part of my life, but it's going to be different. And you know, here we've seen, I feel like cold brew has been a big part of that transition where like just normalizing drinking loads of coffee all the time, which obviously I'm on board with, but I feel like the brands and the look and the kind of conversations about how coffee tastes are why you pick this over that, that is sort of changing to reflect the generations drinking it. And I think that's interesting.

39:45I think coffee has seemed to be an easy influencer brand opportunity. I think there's kind of a few big YouTubers who've launched kind of coffee brands now. And I guess there's an ecosystem out there to kind of roast coffee and put it in packages that with their face on or whatever, to make that relatively easy to do and in a world obsessed with recurring revenue, then of course coffee makes sense. It's something people drink every day. And so if you, as a YouTuber or an internet celebrity or celebrity or whatever you want to be, can find a way into people's homes every single day, then you can actually build a business, you know, that way rather than trying to sell a hoodie or a t-shirt or that kind of stuff.

40:27So yeah, I think coffee's been interesting as a vehicle for that. And I think we'll see more and more and more of it. yeah and it's not all bad i mean i love that you're saying i mean there's all this white space in this industry that you care so deeply about and this opportunity to to grow appreciation be it through ready to drink um coffees through influencers on tiktok i mean even even that can't be that bad it's getting people away from folders not to pick on that brand but or chock full of nuts or these brands that maybe aren't giving a shit about sourcing the way that we hope they would maybe this ready to drink brand will actually give the farmer a little bit of spotlight like jimmy butler has right that would be that would be good i think the tricky bit is that you know you can't care about everything right like you can't there's too many things in the world it's all too interesting and so you you don't have enough attention or care to care about everything and if we say specialty is only successful when people deeply care about it then we massively limit the audience because you know people care deeply about cars or shoes or a bunch of other hobbies that they have right like this you know i'm not obsessive about every single thing that i eat drink buy whatever else i can't do it my brain breaks um but if we can make uh if we can make coffee a positive part of your day that that is worth the time and attention that you do give it that gives us a chance to be a sustainable industry and so yeah however we get there.

41:53I'm kind of open to that. Love that, James. This is just why I think we all just love your point of view and your perspective. You always have a great high level thought like that. So thank you very much. I'm gushing a little bit, but I just really love coffee so much. And I love the way you talk about it. And you're such an amazing supporter of the industry. I just love it. That's very kind of you. Thank you. James, we asked all guests in the Taste podcast, if you could write a cookbook or food culture book without the burden of time, meaning you have no crushing deadline or the burden of budget meaning you have unlimited money to make this project happen what would that book be?

42:31I'm torn between would my project be a coffee project or would it just be another kind of fascination of mine? I'd love to hear the latter I'd love to hear the latter if I may probe you and push you in that direction I think it was Dan Barber said that American cuisine is ultimately damned by it's destroyed by plenty like it never had to work hard for flavor it never it always had the choicest cuts right there was always plenty and you take like a lot of french cooking is born out of well we have a little bit of this pig left over how do we make it good and i and you know there's a lot of um culinary history around okay we don't have much to work with here let's work a little harder let's be a little cleverer in how we do this but i don't really know with i'm kind of fascinated by that um but i don't really know what the the cookbook of that is i guess the the most surprising ways to make terrible things delicious ah terrible things being terrible uh like the awful the bits through to just like difficult vegetables or you know what i mean like as a species we have a long history of being like this is awful but i'm not going to give up you know what i mean i'm going to keep going i'm going to work this out i'm going to do all like olives like i don't know how we got to olives i probably should learn that one day but i've eaten an olive tree which no one should ever do because that's one of the worst things you can ever do i didn't know i was young i was naive yeah i just learned i liked olives i was like there's an olive tree and i was like how did we how did we work out how to make olives good why do we keep persisting i don't know this i'm fascinated by the persistence so many like um baking recipes fall apart if you don't hit a really specific ratio how how did we work out that why do we keep trying yeah after so many collapsed souffles why was someone like no no no this should work with no good reason to think that it would they persisted and i i think that's that's the the history of persistence in the face of failure is really interesting to me in in cooking 18th century france did not have tiktok did not have distraction they could they could focus it's the belief that some way you're going to get to good And you're like, why would you think that?

44:41Why would you think one day a souffle will happen? But then it does. And you're like, that was amazing. Well done. James Hoffman, thank you for joining the Taste Podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed my time.

44:59Nigel Price, welcome to the Taste Podcast. I'm glad you have me. This is amazing. Thanks. I'm so happy to have you here. We've talked a while, and I interviewed you for the Monday interview a couple years ago. And you're a cool guy. You are an incredible coffee professional, and we're going to talk about that. Appreciate that. I'm trying anyway. You're beyond trying. Let me ask you from the jump. What coffees have you had today? Let's go over. We're recording this at around noon, midweek. What have you had? Today I had a started day with a Mexican natural that was roasted by black and white roasters in North Carolina.

45:39They're kind of like our anchor roaster. I mean, as you know, we are multi-roaster. And I was almost late because I was going to brew another cup to take with me because it was just so good. I mean, I love what I do. And so you've had one cup of drip coffee today. Just one, yeah. No espresso. No espresso. Very telling. We'll get to that. I love – I'll share mine. I had some Yes Please. I took the bus early, so I had an early at a V60 Yes Please blend. Wow. Okay. At home. So I homebrewed that, which I love. I love Yes Please. Those guys out in L.A. They're doing good work, yeah. Definitely. Shout out to Tonks and Sumi.

46:20Those guys are great. And then I came to the city and I went to Irving Farm. They have a little cafe near us and decent. Not bad. They do the job. Gets the job done. We were just talking off mic about the lack of real multi-roaster cafes in Midtown where we're recording. Do you want to just explain what drip is? Drip coffee makers. I want to call it its property because I love that. No, it's cool because like coffee makers is like great. So what is a multi-roaster coffee maker? What do you do? Primarily is sourcing or curating may be too complicated of a term for it, but it's like putting together roasters from literally around the world that we love.

47:05And I say we because I do this in conjunction with a lot of the baristas that we hire. I mean, some of these guys can talk circles around me in terms of coffee, which is I think an important part of our concept as well because a lot of the people that work for us aren't just baristas. Most of the, I want to say most of the recs we get are from the other baristas. So to answer your question, it's pretty much curating an experience for guests who may not want to pay a ton of money in shipping to order coffee from one, two, or half a dozen different roasters around the world. They can come and pretty much grab anything off the shelf, and it's going to be good depends on how adventurous they are.

47:52Yeah. And then the drip name is telling because you're a coffee bar and shop and store. You sell espresso. You can get a cortado. Great. But what does drip mean to you? Drip primarily is, put it this way, if I could have designed a shop the way I wanted to and I didn't need to make any money to pay rent, It would just be maybe a half a dozen of just pour over, like pour over funnels and we would just dial in a different coffee every day and really curate the experience per coffee, per guest. That model is not – it's probably not the most profitable in terms of making money. But that's – I don't want to jump ahead too far, but pretty much the concept for Drip was based around the pour-over bar or the slow bar as some people may call it.

48:52And that is pretty much our focus. Financially, that may make up 10 percent of the business because like you said, you cannot just sell. You're selling some cold brew. Yeah. A lot of cold brews and oat lattes. Yeah, yeah, O-Lattes. But let's get into what a drip coffee experience is, a hand brewing, you can call it pour over. I've spoken a lot about it on the show, and if you've been listening to the Taste Podcast, you know I'm a big supporter of that style of coffee. But for you, Nigel, let's talk about what that does. What does a pour over do that maybe espresso and cold brew doesn't? You know, I'll go back to my first experience with a pour over.

49:35prior to that I've had coffee and often you'd pick up the bag and it'll you'll you'll read the tasting notes and it'll say raspberries or chocolate or bergamot exactly um and I always thought that was fodder and I thought it was more like a marketing thing you know it looks good on a bag the first time I had a pour over that was like properly dialed in meaning someone developed the recipe for it, it blew my mind. I think on the bag it said blueberries and it may have actually, no, maybe it's like citrus notes or something like that. But I could not believe that coffee could taste like that. And that was kind of the rabbit hole that I've been going down ever since.

50:23Yeah, I'm still amazed. Even if we go into the different ways that coffee is being produced now in terms of anaerobics and natural processed coffees. These roasters are killing it. I don't think they still fully understand what's happening with the coffee, but the coffee they're producing is just amazing. It's pretty cool that you point that out because there's the process, which is done by the coffee company, the roaster. There's agriculture, which is done by the farm in places like Guatemala and Ethiopia. And then there's the end, which is you, the multi roaster cafe who's actually manipulating and dialing.

51:01I want to talk to you about dialing because that's a kind of jargony term that baristas use, but it's super, super important. Explain what you're doing when you say you're dialing a pour over for that day, like for tomorrow, Thursday, you'll be dialing coffees at your four locations in New York City. What will you be doing? Right. I think what a lot of people don't realize is specifically people who drink coffee more of a passive approach, is that coffee is a living thing. I mean, literally, it changes within a day or two. The profiles can change, which is why you have to quote-unquote dial it in or develop a recipe for it.

51:42It's basically the same way a chef would add a little extra salt to a meal just to kind of punch up the flavors. It could be something as simple as adjusting the grind for the beans or the temperature of the water, the amount of beans you use per cup. These things seem, if you watch a barista, it would almost seem like second nature to watch him make a cup of coffee, but it takes years to perfect, to be able to, similar to espresso, but to be able to diagnose what the coffee needs in terms of those things to dial it in to get a good recipe. In real time. So on that day. Exactly. Given the humidity, given how long ago it was roasted.

52:29Exactly. And then let's talk a little bit about the actual cupping of coffees, because I feel you do that as well, which is how you buy coffees, which is different from dialing. You're getting pitched coffees all the time. What does that mean? You know, which is probably it makes it a lot easier to choose coffees now because we have a lot of roasters who just like send us stuff. We dedicate at least at least one day a week to kind of just see what we got. And like I said, baristas will almost always kind of bring what they quote unquote think are their favorites in terms of developing a pour over menu for each of the shops.

53:07And it's I would love to say it's extremely scientific. terrific well thought out plan but it's really just brewing coffee and then we just all kind of sit around and taste it because you just I mean it's you're not going to dial it in everybody has like a set recipe or starting point for when you make a pour over coffee even if you're making your coffee at home you have a starting point and you'll taste it and say oh next time maybe I'll tighten up the grinds a bit or the water was extraction time extraction time like Like the water doesn't need to be that hot. I would love to say we have like this set process in which we do this, but it's kind of just a more ad hoc approach.

53:56Listen, Nigel, that's why I like coffee. That's why as a food person, as someone who writes cookbooks, I connect with coffee so much because of that. Because if you're talking about recipe development, there's no science when looking at a bunch of different styles of cookie. if you're doing like a cookie recipe or if you're sitting in a restaurant and you're part of a culinary team and you're talking about a salad dressing, you know, there's no math there really. I mean it's about taste and flavor. I spent years in coffee trying to figure out why I didn't have the palate this person had or why I didn't see what they saw and I just come to realize that, oh, maybe they're just baking it Or maybe they're just – I'm almost certain the individuals that I respect in coffee will never give you like a concrete this is how it should taste.

54:45This is how you should approach it. And I just adopted that style. I love it. And there's so many people who will have certainty in coffee. Yeah. Yeah. Let's go back. Speaking of your past, you weren't always working in coffee. I'd love to hear about where you work professionally and then this 10-year period of working in coffee that has led you to open Drip Coffee Makers. Well, I'll go even further back. Great. I mean, I would love to say I had a career path, but when I was younger, we're talking like high school, going into college, my mindset was I just need to make money. I probably just threw a dart at a board and said, what is going to pay me the most?

55:27Right. You grew up in New York City. I grew up in New York City. Actually, like in borderline Queens, Long Island. But I always worked in Manhattan or went to university in Manhattan. I don't know why it took so long for me to get. I mean, I live in Brooklyn now, but I should have moved closer to Manhattan a long, long time ago. But that said, I studied economics. The last place I landed, I was at JPMorgan Chase for about six, seven years. But even halfway through, I knew that finance wasn't going to be my end-all, be-all. And this is me in my mid-20s, early 30s. I just kind of – I would look around at the guys that I worked with and just did not want to be that when I was 45, 50 years old.

56:15What was the characteristic? Were they just like uninspired? Were they stressed? Uninspired? Literally every quarter, everybody was kind of worried if they had a job or not. We worked – this is a pretty ridiculous title. But it was – I was the global credit research analyst assistant. They actually wrote that on a card. But basically it was maybe like a dozen of us younger kids. We would get there at 5.36 in the morning and do the research for the actual analysts who would stroll in at like 9, 9.30. And then walk our research across the street to the like equities and just say this is what I think.

56:57Pitch it, present it. Yeah. What an interesting job, I'd say the least. But I mean, and initially I loved it because, you know, you made a pretty decent amount of money for somebody in their 20s. But I just think once you get to a certain place where you kind of buy the things you want to buy and you go to a place you want to go, it's just not fulfilling. And another surprising tale is I didn't really even drink a ton of coffee back then. I just I couldn't even understand why people drank it. It just. Right. But I was never exposed to good coffee. I don't even think the term specialty coffee was a thing back then.

57:34They were still talking about coffee in terms of waves. In terms of the main lexicon. I mean, I think like Intelligentsia in 97 when they launched and Blue Bottle later. Those guys were doing it. But yeah, it wasn't part of our lexicon. Definitely not. But I did love cafes and I loved cafe culture. And, you know, I kind of was already thinking in terms of I will probably move in that direction if I ever had a career change. Cafes. Cafes, yeah. Like the hospitality industry. Exactly. Yeah. And I kind of got my wish when around 2007, 2008, when the mortgage-backed securities thing was happening.

58:15And we were training people in Mumbai, India to basically do our job. We had a team of maybe, I don't know, 30 people. But the salaries for those 30 people could basically sustain an entire, like, office building in Mumbai. which, you know, makes business sense. But anyway, I was given the opportunity to either move to another department or, you know, they gave me a couple of dollars and was like, you know, you can just leave, you know, severance package. And I chose the severance. But I was working on a business plan for about two years prior to that. So you business plan to open a cafe, but you weren't into coffee per se.

58:55You just like the hospitality industry. No, I wasn't into coffee. it was probably would have leaned more towards tea. Yeah, that's right. And coffee would be more of a necessity because people just didn't think it made sense to open like a shop to focus on tea, which in hindsight, they were absolutely right. Yeah, tea is always going to be in the margins. It's a wonderful beverage, great to talk about, but in terms of at least in North America, it's not as popular. But once I started working in shops, And I naively thought, you know, I'd work in a shop, I'd work in a coffee shop for about a couple of months and then open my own shop.

59:34Yeah, of course. It was that easy. Yeah. Just, you know, I was more concerned with the record play I was going to buy. So for the vinyl I'm going to listen to in a cafe than the equipment or the coffee itself. Yeah. And I quickly learned that that was the fantasy I had going on just was not reality. And then I also had to cope with the fact that now I'm making a fraction of what I made financially. So trying to sustain this lifestyle that I had and did I want to even sustain a lifestyle? So it ended up me scaling back a lot. And yeah, a lot happened during that time. So you started taking jobs at cafes and learning the ropes and you went in seemingly to like learn how to like set up a shop.

1:00:18But then you clearly fell in love with coffee at some point. What kind of places were you working at? And, like, what were these awakenings about coffee? It was a place. I think they're still around, actually. And I'm almost certain he hired me because he also worked at JPMorgan Chase. And his brother, I believe, worked for Salman Smith Barney. A shop, Cafe 1668. I think they have two locations now. Yeah. That was the first time I worked in a shop with an actual coffee professional. and not the owners, the baristas that worked there. And these guys really opened my mind in terms of profiles and flavor notes and even the equipment that they were brewing on.

1:01:03It really just kind of blew my mind to the point where I probably got fired from that job because I just could not contain my excitement in terms of like, you know, your priorities should have been dealing with customers. Wait, you were fired? Yeah, I was either. You were canned. I was totally, I would spend all my time just brewing coffee and trying different coffees and neglecting customer service. That's so funny. Were they roasting their own or were they outsourcing? They were definitely outsourcing. I think they played with the idea of roasting, but that quickly dissipated. Who were they buying from at that point?

1:01:38It's a company called Plowshare, which I actually think they actually have a standalone shop now too. But they were supplying for them and Joe, Joe Coffee, before they started roasting their own. Absolute legends in the game, Joe Coffee. When will the pro shop come back? I don't think it's coming back. I don't either. Not to disclose too much information, but I know some people who know some people. Yeah, well, it was such a treasure. And it was one of those multi-roaster cafes that we were talking about before they started roasting their own, where you could go in, roll in and buy coffees from around the globe on this beautiful shelf.

1:02:18And talk to people who knew exactly what they were doing, which, I mean, it's a little more familiar now, but back then it was nonexistent. So let's fast forward to the point where you realized that, you know, drip is a thing. And how did you open? Because you didn't open with the traditional brick and mortar. You had a different model. Yeah. You did. It's cool. Yeah, I spent maybe eight or nine years making my rounds. That's great. Sorry, not to understate that. That's a long time. You went in thinking three months. You came out nine years. You worked at some cool spots. Yeah, and ironically, even to this day, I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing still.

1:02:56I think it's just so many variables. I mean, I may know a little more than the novice, but I still feel like, you know, there's still a lot to learn. But we started with that. I wanted to do like a coffee cart and do like pop ups. It's not a super high and high investment risk risk wise. And I was still in a state where I didn't know if this concept was even going to work. Would people hang around for pour overs? the only good one benefit of going to school for finance and like economics and things like that is that I learned a little bit about marketing and branding and stuff like that so I did realize that you it doesn't matter how great your product is you have to get in front of people you have to you launched the gram pretty early yeah I would imagine I would imagine you had the drip gram which is a must follow great stuff there it's um it's one of those things that you just have to do.

1:03:55But back to my point, I still didn't know if the pour over model was going to work 100 percent. And I wanted to get in front of people and talk directly to people and make coffee while, you know, looking directly at them and just really get a feel for if the ramp up for people waiting for their lattes in the early 90s, you know, people, it seems weird now, but that was a that was a pretty big deal that somebody's going to, one, wait three or four minutes for a cup of coffee and then pay$4 for it. Yeah, yeah. And the pop-ups we did, it got to a point where the spot in front of Brooklyn Museum, like as customers that I still talk to on a regular basis, we're like the relationships that I developed just by making people coffee, you know, It really solidified the idea that this could work.

1:04:51Let me ask you this. So you'd roll up to the Brooklyn Museum with this cart, and what were you selling? Were you doing only pour-overs, or was there some urn coffee? Initially, it was only pour-over. Wow. And then because it was like in the middle of summer, we eventually had like a little cold brew pot, cold brew dispenser. But no, no urns. I was very adamant about no batch brew coffee. Yep. I know some would disagree, but I really don't believe you can dial in a whole batch of coffee consistently. You may, you know, you may trap lightning in a bottle a couple of times, but I just, it's about consistency.

1:05:33I agree. I just don't think that, I don't want to sound like I'm a complete proponent because we do have batch brewers in all the shops, which ironically didn't happen until like a month before we were going to open because I was still on the fence if it was necessary. But also don't – I didn't want to exclude. That's the key. Yeah. Because that's the dance because you don't want to be the guy who gets the headline who says, you know, blank coffee roaster doesn't want you to put milk in your coffee. You know, that happened with – I mean Blue Bottle happened. It happened with some other guys. You need to be inclusive, but obviously you're not a huge fan of batch brewing.

1:06:11Like, you got to offer it. You got to offer it. And honestly, the batch brewing, especially at Bushwick, was a gateway. Yeah. Because we would batch brew, like, you know, we had a standard Colombian coffee. But then on occasion, I would, like, batch brew some coffee that was, I didn't think was good enough to get on the pour-over menu, but was still pretty good. And if we had a lot of it, I would make batches of it. And it was a gateway for a lot of people who came in and thought they knew what coffee was. I mean, that's pretty much how I got into it, you know, just tasting something different.

1:06:43Let me ask you about back at the museum days when you were just doing the cart. You said you were trying to find out what your customers wanted. What were you learning when you were serving these coffees one at a time? I think the main thing I learned is that if people perceive value in what you're doing, and not even necessarily the end product or what you're doing for them, But if they perceive value in the service that you're providing, they will wait. I think a lot of people initially stopped just out of curiosity. But like I said, I still have a lot of customers from those, like I call them my OGs.

1:07:25I still have customers from, you know, that, you know, still reach out to me now talking about that coffee coffee that they had on the corner in the summer. We play with the idea of doing it, you know, like doing some pop-ups there. But I think now it's a little, might be a little saturated over there. Yeah. Do you do any catering at all? Do you ever like roll into events? Because like, where am I going to find this cart? Because I've actually personally never, only been in your shops. I've never seen the cart out. I'm going to get, I'm going to be more vocal about it. I mean, we do do a lot of pop-ups, but it's almost always kind of the day of.

1:08:00I'll like take a picture on Instagram and be like, oh, we're here. But I do want to make that more of a focal point of the brand because it was the origins of it. A good friend of mine, he took some pictures that we're going to actually use when we finally get a website up and going. Because I do want to tell that story, that side of the story. I think that's lost on a lot of folks who just found Drip. But if it wasn't for that, we wouldn't be here. Yeah. So now this day, right now you have four locations, Soho, Williamsburg, Bushwick and Brooklyn Heights, which is near and dear to me. That's in the Clark Street subway station up in Brooklyn Heights, right by the promenade.

1:08:45That's where we met. We met there. I rolled in. I had a bunch of coffees. I used to live in Carroll Gardens, not far. And then we did that interview. But man, it's in a subway station. Tough spot to open a shop. Tough spot. Tough spot, but even before I was into coffee, I never comprehended why someone just didn't open just a regular coffee shop there. Definitely. I mean, you may or may not know this, but that spot went through so many iterations. I mean, before us, I think right before us was like a guy making Cuban sandwiches. Me personally, I don't know if I would eat that kind of food in a train station, but I was like, just sell coffee, you know.

1:09:26It's doing well? It's doing well now. Went through a lot of changes in that spot. But it's, I know you're not supposed to pick favorites, but that's probably my favorite spot. No way, outside of Bushwick from the original. I love Bushwick for what it was and what it spawned, but that spot is just, I think it's just so indicative of something that you'd find in New York. Yeah, only in New York. I mean, the Clark Street Station is a one-of-a-kind station. It's got that Mozart, you know, architecture above it. And it's got this incredible neighborhood vibe. And Brooklyn Heights is its own community.

1:10:06Yeah. I mean, that was our first expansion after Bushwick. And I was kind of nervous about this spot. But then as soon as we got there, it was just the trail end of COVID. Then they closed the train station for like almost eight, nine months. Oh, my gosh, that. So, I mean, I knew going in it was going to be a slow ramp up. So I kind of prepared for that. But now it's like I can't keep up over there. I love to hear that. It's the one I always go back to. Okay, for our listeners, I'd like to walk us into one of your locations because I want to paint the picture of what you're doing there between you've got your espresso, your drip, and you've got your shelf.

1:10:44Take us through what's happening when you walk up to a drip because it's honestly very unique. And to me, it speaks to me in such a great way. It's, if you bought a book, and I bought a couple that's like, how to open a coffee shop. Yeah. They literally all have a similar layout. They'll tell you where to put the menus, you know, the flow. And it's designed basically to get customers in and out as quickly as possible. The Pour Roval Bar is prominent. That's probably the first thing you see when you walk through the doors in any of the shops because I want folks to know that this is not – one, it's not a typical coffee shop and we're not just here for the act of commerce.

1:11:31This is kind of your spot. Yeah. This is – especially at Bushwick. I mean some people literally took that very literal. Like it's definitely like the neighborhood spot. Yeah. I intentionally don't have menus on the wall. I didn't want it to be just a place of commerce. The only way to spark those conversations is to kind of engage. If you want something, you can look the barista in the eye and just ask them for it. And so far it's working. And like you said, it is unique and it's one of those things where it's in the beginning you're like, Like, is this going to work because you're, like, literally doing the opposite of what you should be doing if you want a, quote, unquote, successful coffee shop?

1:12:16You're breaking many rules. Yeah. You're bottlenecking, which pisses people off. But with the exception of Soho, which I feel like is a more kind of, like, people do want to kind of grab and go. But even there, I think it's hard to predict what people want. But I truly believe that most people don't want what everybody thinks they want. and they may not even know they want to not rush back to work. Maybe they need this two-, three-, four-minute conversation over this pour-over. And, I mean, there's no way to scientifically prove the ROI on, you know, intentionally creating a bottleneck at a pour-over bar, but I truly believe that that's why we're still hanging around.

1:13:00And if you go to Asia and Europe, you know, the cafe experience is slower. It's intentional. and I think a lot of American coffee stores are the opposite. Yeah. And I would never say, actually on a few of the sandwich boards, specifically the one at Soho, that's like the slogan. Even on the webpage, the landing page we have is kind of slow down and have coffee. Yeah. Which is the antithesis of what, you know, the purpose of getting a cup of coffee is. And again, it goes back to, I feel like people have heard that term like, oh, I got to grab my coffee and run. But I don't know. I don't think most people want to grab their coffee and run.

1:13:41Definitely not. And the coffee concierge is growing. I have to say, too, it might sound a little precious in our conversation, but, man, your aesthetic is rad. Like matte black everywhere. Drip is a great logo. The serif is there. It's a serif font. And it just has a real energy and vibe. I think that really goes back to the brand that we created. because it's almost embarrassing to say now, but the actual logo was supposed to be like a placeholder. Like I just picked that font and I was going to send it to like a graphic designer and say, I want the logo to look and feel like this. And I just never got it to the graphic designer.

1:14:22And then when we had the cart made, I sent it to the guy to put it on the cart. And then once it was there, I was like, now I have to own it. But like you said, I don't know. It just works. Yeah. It's a really nice font. Yeah. Okay. Back to the taking us through what a drip situation, what a drip location looks like. You've got your espresso machine. We'll get to that because I have a question about that. But then you've got your shelf. And I think that's really important to note. Dayglo in LA is another place that does this really well. You've got the shelf and it's not your product. You're not roasting coffee to be clear.

1:14:56You have no, you know, probot in the back. You don't have like this like big roaster. And no desire to do that at all. And that's amazing. Personally, I love walking to multi-roasters because what's on that shelf right now? Let's get into some of the coffees that you're selling. When you're walking in, you're looking at all these different bags. They're different. Yeah. And they're different not because it's what we bought and what we have to sell. They're different because out of all the coffees that are currently available, we feel like these are the best. that in the next couple of months that the world has to offer.

1:15:34And as corny as that sounds, it was one of those things that in my mind I wish I had 10 or 15 years ago. There's places on the West Coast, I think, Barista. That's actually the name of the shop. They did. I think he moved away from it a little bit. But I got inspiration from people like that that was doing it back then. And I think I wanted to make the focal point of Drip a little less about the coffee shop and more about the coffee itself. Yeah. And which is why we kind of chose to – and it may have been a bit serendipitous as well. I'm going to back up to the cardigan. And when I used to reach out to roasters and I'll say, hey, you know, clearly I'm not going to buy, you know, 50 or 100 pounds of this stuff.

1:16:35I just want enough to get through a weekend or so. There were a few that were kind of like, I'm not going to sell you 12 bags of coffee or even less than that. But there were a couple who were like very like excited about it. and immediately, you know, obviously, you know, I would go all over social media and say, this is what we're doing. This is where we are. And eventually it got to a point where people would call us and say, hey, you know, I'd like to send you some coffee if you, you know, if you're looking for a roaster for the next time you do a pop-up. A great point because there is some cachet getting on the shelf at a drip.

1:17:14Yeah. You talked about black and white. I've seen East One there. I've seen, I've seen Fritz from Korea, which we've talked about off mic. I love those guys. I've seen those guys. Brady Wine. Yeah, Brady Wine. Brandy Wine. Brandy Wine's dope, man. Maryland, right? It's not the world. Delaware. Delaware. Yeah. Sorry. Delaware. Yeah. And again, they're another roaster that found us. Yep. You know, then once we had them on the shelf, then people are like, oh, yeah, I've heard. And that's another thing. I'm so amazed how initially I thought it was like a niche thing for people who are really into coffee.

1:17:52But the umbrella, it's a really, it casts a wide net coffee. It really does. I'm surprised at how many people are really into like specialty coffee. Do you think it has something to do with the price point? The entry point is low for a luxury good because we're talking about luxury goods here. This is luxury coffee when you're paying 18 to 23 to 50 even a bag. Still is pretty low. It is low, but I do think the industry in general needs to do a better job of explaining that, you know, people are getting these coffees at a bargain because a lot of them really should cost a lot more in terms of especially if you want to make sure that everybody's being treated fairly.

1:18:34A lot of people, you know, they have these elaborate write-ups on their web page and they talk about how they're taking care of farmers and stuff like that. But there's very few roasters who are very adamant about where they buy their coffee and making sure that the money is going back to the people who are actually producing it. And until people start shining a light on that and making it make business sense, because unfortunately it does have to make business sense.

1:19:06Yeah, I think the price of coffee, because some of our coffees, we on occasion have some bags that are like 50, 60 bucks. Yeah. And even then I don't have a problem, like people don't have a problem paying for it because even at 50 or 60 bucks, That's still a bargain for like a rare geisha that's probably only going to be available for a couple of weeks. A couple of excellent rare geisha that you're selling three ounces for 40 and it's a bargain. And just to echo conversations we've had on the show with Nicely Able, with Jeff Watts, with Akira Okudo. I'm just name dropping my friends in coffee, but they've all been on the show.

1:19:43They all agree with me, which is like – and Nigel, you, that coffee is too cheap. We need to pay more for coffee for a lot of reasons, but it really goes back to where we're getting it. We're getting it from places very far away that many times have some human rights violations. There's issues within these regions. And if you work with the right people who pay the right amount, you've got to charge it back. And to add another layer of complexity, you have a lot of coffee shops that are doing the bare minimum in terms of where they source their coffee. So the consumer is unable to distinguish between a drip and the bodega or the coffee shop on the corner in the neighborhood.

1:20:31The term specialty coffee is not something that's known to the average coffee consumer. So the industry has a bit of work to do in terms of educating. I once was at a coffee show and there was a gentleman who sells cold brew and it's a namesake. And I'm not going to say his name, but it's a namesake. And I asked him straight up if he'd ever been to a coffee farm, if he'd ever met a coffee farmer. And he said no. And this is somebody who sells a namesake product. And when I asked him about some sourcing details and pretty basic things, he kind of didn't know what to say. Now, that seems common in coffee, unfortunately.

1:21:11Sadly, sadly. And if I was to, if I did start Drip three months after I left J.P. Morgan, I probably would have that same approach because it would just be numbers. I didn't even take into consideration the people that are going to be working for me because I just approached it from I buy widgets at X, I sell them at Y. Yeah. And my profit margin. And that was pretty much it. And I think anybody who approaches – who gets into this industry or any industry really and if your bottom line is the only thing you're concerned with, then you could care less. Like why would I go to a farm? I just want to buy these beans for as cheaply as I can buy them and sell them for as much as I can charge.

1:21:57It's literally commodity coffee. They sell it by the weight on a market that's based in London and there's no tasting of the coffee. It's commodity coffee. It's like commodity anything. Let's go to the espresso machine. So that's the third element of your cafe. And I think that's a very interesting topic. You make money from espresso. We love espresso. Who doesn't love cortado or latte flat white? Iced. Oat. But if you talk to coffee professionals, many don't love it because you're doing some things. One is you're just kind of taking the flavor profiles, the beauty out of the coffee and making it into something that's very kind of uniform.

1:22:41Nigel, I have to ask you, what do you think about espresso? I think espresso is gross. No, I'm just kidding. Ah, that's funny. Just kidding. I'll cut out the just kidding. Just kidding. But, you know, anyone who drinks a cup of espresso and was like, oh, my God, this is delicious, is either deluding themselves or they're trying to get one over on you because I don't think anybody drinks espresso because it's delicious. Facts. I don't care how skilled you are on the bar at Pull & Shots. Even some of the single origin coffees, because we almost always have a guest espresso, I mean, they're exciting.

1:23:21Like right now we have an espresso blend that's actually cut with a cinnamon process, perfect for the holidays. and it's like a hint of cinnamon and even that on its own just as a shot of espresso is still not the greatest. No. Which is why milk drinks are such a big draw. You cut it with something and I think if you have a nice crema on a shot and you really want a fast coffee experience, there's better. I mean, you know when it's bad. You're literally at the Starbucks cafe in your hotel lobby and you're getting a shot there. You're braving an eye. I wouldn't even attempt it. Yeah. It's got to – but you make money from espresso.

1:24:03Yeah. That's full disclosure. Probably like 80, 85 percent of the business is the espresso machine. I mean I love the fact that people can come and get a pour over. And I love the fact that numbers have gone up dramatically over the past couple of years to the point where that's – most people, that's their regular drink now. They'll come in and look at the list and pick something and say, I'm going to have a pour over. That almost became a common part of the coffee experience for a lot of folks. Who made me a couple of years ago? Probably not. But that said, that is kind of why we do put an emphasis on having the best espresso machine you can buy.

1:24:47Keeping it tuned so that it is running because it is unfortunately the crux of the business. Yeah, and you've got to make sure that your baristas know what they're doing. But there's wonderful baristas always available, it seems. We've been really lucky with that. I don't think I've put out one help wanted ad. Everybody, they'll reach out and they're like, hey, I've worked at this place. I would love to work for Drip. Well, it's a credit to you. I mean, your reputation in the industry is extremely strong as a great boss and also somebody who knows what you're talking about and sells great coffee.

1:25:25There's like a combination there. So, Nigel, credit to you. I've talked to many in the industry, and we all admire you. Appreciate it. I think I just had a lot of really crappy bosses, so I just do the opposite. I love to hear that. Can we shout out a few more coffees, like companies that you like that maybe are going to be on your shelves? Who do we have now? Brandywine, Barnes. is coming. What's that? Barn? Barn. They roast in Berlin. Yeah. Jeremy Roaster. They may have one other shop in the city that carries them, but I don't know if they do pour-overs. Fritz is on the way, finally. Who else is there?

1:26:05So you are getting some coffee from overseas. Yeah, some overseas stuff. I slowed down a bit only because a part of me felt a little guilty about ordering these coffees and having them shipped across the world when And, you know, it's a company called Resident. They roast in Gainesville, Florida, which seems so weird to me, but amazing coffee. There's a lot of roasters right here. Methodical, South Carolina. Yeah. Yeah, actually, I think I need a place in order for them as well. Yeah, Methodical's great. I've had their coffees. But there's so many, like, amazing roasters here. but oftentimes I'll get samples from places and I'm like, okay, I got to have that.

1:26:51Camber? You ever mess with them? Camber, yeah, a couple months ago. Yeah, in this passing fall we had Camber. Yeah, out in Bellingham. Love those guys. Great, delicious coffee. And to me, I don't know, maybe I just was unaware or I was oblivious to it, but I had no idea there was this many roasters stateside. I mean, for years, a lot of, it's a company called Manhattan. I think they roast in Copenhagen. Not to be confusing. Yeah, exactly. But those names were always thrown around in specialty coffee. Oh, those guys over there are doing it the best. But there's some roasters right here in the U.S.

1:27:32Have you had big face? I had Jimmy Butler on the show, basketball star. He does big face. You know, a buddy of mine, Juan, just joined a team. I think this is his first week. I think he works directly with Jimmy Butler. I think that's like his go-to guy. You'll like call him to do some work. Full disclosure, I initially kind of backed away from it because I just thought it was some guy with money who can afford to do all these things. Thought the same. Yeah. But he is like the real deal, which is good because I think going back to what the industry needs, I think the industry needs more evangelists like that, people who are like really vocal about coffee not just being this commodified product that, you know, you can get on a corner.

1:28:24It's amazing. I'm going to link to that episode in the show notes or my conversation with Jimmy Butler. Jimmy Butler represents a real coffee nerd. And there's no A-list. There's no B-list. There's no C-list celebrity that I know of who's that vocal about coffee. So, yes, he's an athlete, and you think athletes do things for weird reasons. But, man, I think what he's doing is remarkable, and more people need to talk about it, that he actually is valuing coffee and making it cool. Yeah, and, you know, it's – anytime someone lends their celebrity to something like this, it's a win-win. It really is.

1:29:01Where do you want to take drip? I mean, this question's big. We're wrapping up. I'd love to know, are you thinking expansion beyond New York? Are you thinking about dialing the four locations you have? Yeah, I think after COVID, we were pretty excited about the offers we were getting and pretty much said yes to everything, which is why we went from one to four shops in the span of two years. Wow. That said, that was done with no infrastructure. It's just been me kind of, you know, like I mentioned before, just me keeping all the plates spinning. In the immediate future, I'd like to really just dial in what we currently got working.

1:29:47there are some things in the works that I don't want to talk about now only because they may or may not happen but any expansion from this point would be almost at a glacial pace because it has to make business sense it can't just be expansion for the sake of expansion I think a lot of my peers who did have that kind of growth aren't around anymore because I think they were they were expanding for the wrong reasons. I don't want to speculate of what their reasons were, but I think if you're just growing for the sake of growing and not because you feel you have something to offer that no one else is offering, I think a lot of times your message gets muddled.

1:30:32Great point. I think it's really important to note that sometimes expansion isn't a good thing and sometimes you need to dial back. Nigel, we asked all guests in the Taste Podcast if you could write a cookbook or food culture book. Without the burden of time, meaning you have no deadline, or the burden of budget, meaning you have all the money in the world to write this book, what would that book be? Don't laugh, but it would probably be For the Love of Pasta, something weird like that. Yeah, do it. I would totally get my Stanley Tucci on. I do need to broaden my cooking horizons, but I feel like I make pastas on the menu at home a lot more than their family would probably want it to be.

1:31:13Pasta is a beautiful thing, Nigel. I literally, I just started actually making, like, making my own dough and making my own pasta, which is a game changer. You're rolling out. Yeah. Like Nona style. Nice. I mean, your book was pretty inspiring. Oh, sweet. Thanks. That's kind of you. Yeah, we did feature some pasta in Food IQ. Well, Nigel Price, thank you for joining the Taste Podcast. Thanks for the invitation. This is amazing. Well, I mean, the work you're doing, again, anytime you add a megaphone to these qualities, it's a good thing. Oh, well, I appreciate it, and I will continue to drink your amazing coffees.

1:31:51Thank you so much. Thank you.

1:32:01James Freeman, welcome to This Is Taste. Thanks for having me, Matt. I'm really excited to see you. I interviewed you about maybe 10 years ago, 14 years ago. I don't know. Time is different. X number of years ago. There's only pre-COVID and post-COVID. I agree. And it was when you were releasing your book with 10 Speed. And I just love that book so much. It really was a pioneering book that merged recipes with coffee, intelligence, with like essay writing. Yeah. It was fun. I love the collaborators. Caitlin did the food section and all her head notes are so fun and smart. And then as is her way.

1:32:36She's very rigorous about testing. So they are easy to make. They're very good to make. Clay, the photographer, he really did a lot with structure of the book. He was the one that came up with like grow, roast, drink, eat. And then there was Tara Duggan, such a good journalist. And she did a lot of the grow, like just the expository writing about coffee origins. and then it was a good eye, a careful eye on my ebullience in terms of writing. You mean your wordiness? Guilty. Yeah. And then I just sort of had fun writing about these subjective feelings about coffee. Like what does it feel like to roast coffee?

1:33:24It's like it's your book and then God in a cup or God in the cup. I feel like both of those books really informed me as a coffee drinker and they were just really pioneering books. That's nice to hear. No, James, I wanted to have you in. I have so many questions. Coffee's a real micro theme here, and we love talking to all sorts of folks. You just got back from Japan about a month ago. I did. I did. I came back. I always get round-trip tickets, you know? I mean, why? Damn, I know. So tell me a little bit about what you're doing there. And I know our mutual friend Kira Akudo said I should ask you about Kyoto and what you were doing in Kyoto and what the heck you were roasting and doing.

1:33:58Yeah, yeah, yeah. Akira. Great guy. Shout out to Akira. Exactly. Exactly. He says what I think. It's kind of thrilling to hang out with him. Yes, Kyoto. So to step back, I have been only kind of tangentially involved with Blue Bottle Coffee since the Nestle transaction, you know, going from sort of influence without authority now to kind of like leaning into the power of my own insignificance, which has been oddly freeing. So what happened is before COVID, I was in Japan and Korea, and I had just been to the Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Nakameguro. You know, 20 ,000 square feet, beautiful, got untold millions, billions of yen.

1:34:49And that's the pinnacle experience of Starbucks, right? And it's big, it's glamorous, it's gaudy, it's got a pizzeria, it's got cocktail bars, you know. That's a pinnacle experience. So on the way back home on that long flight, I was just sort of interrogating that concept within myself. Like what is the pinnacle experience? What might the pinnacle experience for Blue Bottle Coffee be? What would I say that the pinnacle experience ought to be? Because back in the day when I opened cafes, like they were very, very thoughtful and autobiographical. And I chose those to be the pinnacle experience.

1:35:27Cafes in San Francisco, in New York City. Yeah, anywhere. Yeah. You know, but that phase was over. And so, like, okay, well, Howard needs 20 ,000 square feet in pizzeria for his pinnacle experience. I really need 400 square feet and a record player for my pinnacle experience. I want, like, small room, modest, beautiful. And I want all focus to be on the coffees, the extraction of the coffees, every little moment, every little— Let me jump in and ask you. Yeah, jump in. Espresso machine? Are we doing a drip setup? Are we doing siphon? What's the setup? Well, the thing in Tokyo is basically none of the above.

1:36:06None of the above. So I came back and I was like filled with enthusiasm for this idea, blithely thinking that this enthusiasm would translate into action within the company. And it translated into meetings is what it translated into. And then, you know, and then COVID. So I have a certain amount of compassion for the people running the company quite well through COVID. That's not easy. Nobody was laid off. That was admirable. Oh, cool. So maybe it was going to be a cafe, a permanent cafe in Los Angeles. Maybe not. So design, design, meeting, meeting, nothing happened. And then this idea, then it kind of sunk.

1:36:50You know, and I was a little bit sad about that because like I was, I wanted what I wanted. Like that was my story, Blue Bottle. Yeah, you had the record player picked out. Yeah. You had the records picked out probably. Are we talking like post-punk? No, Matt. You're a clarinet player by trade, so is it classical? No, I mean a little bit. I wanted, I was, you know, very inspired by Daibo's Cafe and Daibo's book. Do you ever read the Daibo Coffee Manual? There's a beautiful letter press. It's like 35 pages long. My favorite book on coffee, Nahoko Press. I think he's out of print, but maybe not.

1:37:25And he talks about the records he liked. He liked, you know, Bill Evans a lot. He liked Keith Jarrett, the Cone Concert, which was surprising to me, a little bit hippie for Mr. Diveau. That's amazing. There's a great shop in Seoul that had Keith Jarrett on all the time. Yeah. That's cool. It's a good—Keith Jarrett definitely fits with coffee. Sorry to interrupt. No, no, no, no. It's fun to talk about records. Yeah. So, yeah, what I learned long ago was I cannot be responsible for 100 % of the playlist. So the idea was like collaborate. And actually to speed up the narrative, the very second day I was in Tokyo, I went with a few colleagues, dear colleagues at Blue Bottle and we went record shopping for this thing.

1:38:10So it was my input and my friends. So you're saying this thing and this thing is potentially this 400 square foot box coffee shop in Kyoto that you're working on opening? No, it opened. It is like it opened. It's open. What's it called? Well, it used to be open. It's temporary. Everything's temporary. Yeah. You know, every cafe is a pop up, right? This lasted for about six weeks. Oh, so, OK. And you were at the bar and pulling shots. No, no, no. So it's in the first Blue Bottle Kyoto Cafe near Nansanji Temple. It's this perfect room upstairs that seats four people. And there's a table. Joe Nagasaki designed it, but it's in 100-year-old machia.

1:38:54There's a table, some Bertoia chairs, and there's a little bit of infrastructure right outside the room. And so what my colleague Benjamin Brewer and I, over the years of COVID and after, came up with these ways of making coffee that I don't think have been made. I don't want to sound grandiose, but it was very unusual ways of making coffee. I love this. Please say more. Okay. Because there isn't a lot of innovation on the drink side. I mean, that's unfair. Let me strike that because there is a lot of innovation, but we don't really, as consumers, see it everywhere because it's so specialized.

1:39:29Right. Right. I wouldn't call this innovation. I would call this simplification. Okay. Great call. That's what I would call it. So we ended up with these courses, four or five courses, and a couple little sweet bites to eat in between a couple of the courses. And the first course was just this little refreshing sort of cascara yuzu, little soda. Wonderful. It's beautiful. My mouth is smacking thinking about that. And then we had a tasting course of three coffees to taste that you could taste at the same time. And it was super fun coming up with these coffees. One was a very famous farm in Panama, Finca Debra.

1:40:13Yeah. A gesha, a very beautiful gesha from them. One was a keemalat from Yemen, the very first place coffee was produced as agriculture. I mean, obviously, it arose naturally in Ethiopia, but it was agriculture in Yemen. And then the other was a coffee from Fringe in Goleta in California. So we had basically a 500-year-old growing region and a 20-year-old growing region. And people that this lot from Fringe, F-R-I-N-J, was a nine-pound lot. It was an extraordinary lot. James Hoffman and I talked about that lot on his episode, and I'll link to the show notes with James. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wonderful to hear about California-grown coffees.

1:40:56I mean, holy cow. And Jay Ruski is doing great work. The coffee is beautifully detailed. There's a wide range of, like, you know, California is expensive. So California coffee is going to be expensive. But it goes from expensive to sort of eye-watering based on, you know, the lots and— So, James, let me ask you just, in U.S. dollars, what is the cost of this tasting, these flights? And I ask because, you know, tell me first. I think, you know, like sort of the freedom of being a line item in a marketing budget means I don't have to care. Yeah, totally. But I think it's around 75 bucks. Oh, my gosh.

1:41:34It's just remarkable. And this is we'll talk about the value of coffee. To get truly the most exceptional coffees in the world, and this is something I've talked about on the show, for only for$75. It's of anything is incredible. Right. To get a$75 bottle of wine at a kind of a mediocre Italian restaurant in Manhattan means it's kind of sad. Yeah. And you're getting this exceptional from three distinct growing regions roasted. And were they all done drip, hand brewed? Yes and no. So Benjamin Brewer had this idea of separating the extraction from the filtration. What a name, by the way. Just got to say.

1:42:12Guy and coffee with the name Brewer. I know. I know. And his initials are BB. Yeah. So, yeah, he had this idea. And also it worked as theater too. So we had two – imagine three very thin, elegant glass cylinders with about 250 milliliters of water in them, hot water. And then we just dusted about eight or ten grams of these extraordinary coffees on top very gently. And then you got this snow globe going that you could just watch, you know, listen to Bill Evans or whoever. Miles came later. Bill Evans, there was a Ryuchi Sakamoto record that one of the team picked that was beautiful with this chorus.

1:42:50Just like it really underscored sonically what you were seeing. And so that was also, that extraction was very flexible. Two to four minutes, just let it snow globe down. And then filter it. Benjamin had his favorite filter paper just in a Hario dripper just because it fit. Like a standard V6C. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the dripper geography didn't matter. It was more about the paper. So let's talk about paper. I know, sorry, listener, we'll get this to be short. Filter paper is super interesting. How do you have a favorite filter paper? Oh, because, you know, you just have to be deep, deep nerd. But also it's like it's not subtle.

1:43:29When you taste the difference. Oh, I agree. It's not subtle. Oh, I know. Yeah. Trust me. So you can suck on paper towels. You can lick cardboard or you can have something really beautiful and refreshing. That you don't taste that paper pulp. Backing up. You started roasting coffees at a farmer's market while you were working as a professional clarinet player in San Francisco. Actually, I stopped clarinet playing and then started. So there was no overlap. But you essentially were selling coffees at a farmer's market. I'd like to get for our listeners a little sense of that time when you're selling it out of these markets.

1:44:03And the second part quickly is when you exited the company and you've just illustrated how you're still involved but on a kind of peripheral level. How was the feeling when you sold your company to Nestle? Oh, geez. Okay. Let's take the first question first, and then I'll take the second question second, and then I'll go, like, lie down for a couple minutes. I know. I know. This is therapeutic, but I just have always wondered because I think I met you last before you sold. So let's go. Right. That was a long time ago. A long time ago. Yeah. Coffee at the farmer's market. It was a, in retrospect, it was a great time to start with coffee.

1:44:38And it was great for a lot of reasons because it was, you know, people would tell me like, why are you starting a coffee company? It's so saturated. And what they meant was, first of all, I loved that metaphor, saturated, as it applied to coffee. And then it's like, oh, because there's Pete's and Starbucks. And obviously nobody will make things that are any different from or better than those two companies. It still is a mentality today, by the way. Oh, that's interesting. For many of the public. But anyways. So blissfully unaware of the general mentality of the public. It's kind of nice to be sheltered in the citrus orchards of Ojai, California.

1:45:17Yeah, but I just want, like always for me, I wanted to make what I wanted to drink and see. I wanted to make a cafe that I wanted to go to. So I would make that cafe. And then people would come. And that was great. I wanted to drink coffee that I wasn't seeing or I wasn't drinking. And so that's why I chose the roast profiles that I roasted because I just wanted that thing. You wanted to taste the coffee. You wanted roast profiles that actually illustrated the agriculture and not over-roasting into a quote-unquote dark or quote-unquote French roast. Yeah. I mean, yes and no. Yes and no. I mean, this, this, I think what you say is what a lot of coffee professionals also say and think and believe that they, and only they, have some privileged insight into what a coffee actually is.

1:46:07It's like, um. I love it. Way to slap, smack me down. I love that shit, James. You did that in such a nice way. Oh, thank you. I love it. I appreciate, uh, no snobbery zone here. So let's. Oh yeah. No, no, and I'm not calling you a snob because I think this is an interesting and important point is like we have a subjective insight into what we think coffee should be. Just like somebody roasting at Pete's has a subjective insight into what he or she thinks coffee should be, right? And whose subjective insight is more valuable, whose is more interesting, that's not for me to say. I know which one I prefer.

1:46:43I know which one I'd rather drink. I had an amazing gesha at La Cabra, an espresso just now, which could mean after my Hayes Valley espresso, why I'm talking so very fast. I think there's a way to slow down the speed on Spotify or something like that. As an aside, before we started recording, I walked over to the 55th and 6th Avenue location, which is right by our office. And I go there maybe once or twice a month. I like it. It's in my rotation. And I see you on the street. You just see each other randomly. And then you were heading there as well. You had never been to that location. No, no, no.

1:47:17It's just amazing. Like I walk in, I literally think about you every time I walk in. Oh, that's sweet. Well, because you're the brand and I love the brand and I'm a big fan of Blue Bottle. But then we went there and you had a Hayes Valley. Right. Yeah. That's what I do when I go to a Blue Bottle shop, have a Hayes Valley espresso. That's fun. It's like talk about Proustie and like this taste memory, right? Yeah. It's deep. So you're at the farmer's market. You're roasting at a profile that you liked. Yeah, that intended to be lighter than the surrounding. you know, the semi-sphere of coffee roasted at that time.

1:47:47Yeah. And because I just liked what I liked. I liked these tastes that I thought were very interesting. I had been a hobby roaster before. And a lot of time, you know, what brought me to the farmer's market was this insight like, whoa, coffee is fresh food. At the time I was roasting, I've said this story a lot, but there's literally no place I could go in the Bay Area where I could get a coffee, coffee beans that I knew when they were roasted. Nowhere. The date stamp. It's remarkable to think about a time like that. And it wasn't that long ago. No, we're not talking about— 20 years. Yeah, a lot has changed.

1:48:22It's a brand new industry. Yeah. We have to remind everyone, this is such a brand new industry when you think about all the food culture in the world. This is a very young industry, and you're roasting with a lighter roast, and you're opening a cafe that is probably doing some things a little differently than other cafes. What do you—describe those early cafes. Oh, yeah. I mean, just at the farmer's market. It was crazy. It was nuts. It's like I'm going to prepare every coffee to order. Yeah. You know, I didn't invent that. You know, Monmouth coffee came up with the 70s and even before. Intelligentsia was hand brewing, I'm sure, in Chicago in 97.

1:48:56Probably. Yeah, probably. They, you know, Japan in the 70s. The whole notion that this third wave I feel like is such a misguided attempt to privilege our particular moment in coffee above all others that I don't particularly agree with that term. But, yes, I was going to be the crazy guy at the farmer's market with big kettles of boiling water making coffee to order one at a time. I was going to pull shots to order and I had like little bits – little steam pitchers. And if it was macchiato, I would steam milk to order in a little pitcher and latte in a bigger pitcher at that time in San Francisco.

1:49:38I would call it like the sourdough bread starter approach to making steaming milk because they would have these giant milk steamers. And then they'd keep adding milk on top. And it's like Solora method for wine. Right. When did the first milk hit the bottom of that pitcher? And then just like the sound, the sonic environment, the scream of this re-steamed milk being steamed like 500 degrees, you know, that was very unpleasant sonic environment to be in too. So we tended to steam milk at a lower temperature so it would be maximally sweet. Pulled shots to order very slow, you know, a lot of coffee in the portafilter, slow extraction to develop this sweetness, which is kind of, you know, thought of as being old fashioned now.

1:50:28A little bit. But when you talk about sweetness and as a reminder, you know, sweetness isn't necessarily the addition of sugar or sucrose. Because it's actually flavor profile in coffee that I consider just interesting. It's when coffee deviates from the burned or blah to like something else. And that's what sweetness is to me. Yeah, there's actually very little sugar in roasted coffee. So this word that people use, that coffee professionals use, sweetness, I think it should be used more specifically among coffee-educated people who've done a lot of cuffing. Because I think it's misguided to use the word sweetness when you're talking to the general public.

1:51:05because it is in fact not sweet. You got to have a little fruit acidity. That's why I had to clarify because I think it's confusing. I'm glad you did. Yeah, and so like there's some fruit acidity. There are other things going on. But especially when you're making coffee espresso that's supposed to have steamed milk on top, then all those fruit acids I don't think go particularly well with steamed milk, which is why I still like sort of a more developed roast level in an espresso in a shorter, thicker shot because like what tastes better with milk? Like, like Mallard reaction kind of tastes or cranberry juice.

1:51:42I choose Mallard. Can we talk about espresso for a second? Let. Because I've asked many about espresso and Jeff Watts comes to mind, one of the founders of Intelligentsian Wheat. We definitely went long about talking, a joke about Jeff, about why he hates espresso essentially and how it kind of with pressure and the way it's roasted, it kind of like the farming element and the flavor profile gets like leaves the coffee. Do you agree or disagree with this? Oh, I agree with the kind of the moralizing stance. I agree with this objectification of espresso as a thing that should be a certain way or should not be a certain way.

1:52:25You know, I think it's, what was it, like 10 or so years ago, a very interesting thing happened. And I mean, to step back, people in coffee have a sense that we're on an escalator, always continuing to evolve, to innovate, to push the industry forward. But I actually think we're on a pendulum. And, you know, fashions, tastes in coffee swing back and forth. I love that. I so agree. Media is the same way, by the way. Media is we're not an escalator. We're a pendulum that's inside. Yeah, yeah. And so many, many things that people are thinking now about coffee have been thought before 20 years, 100 years, you know, X number of years ago.

1:53:06So an interesting thing happened in coffee and espresso. And it was sort of inevitable because if you remember drinking like gimme coffee in New York in what year was that? 2007 or 8. It was like the triple basket, you know, filled with coffee, super, super dense shot. And I kind of like that. I still kind of like that flavor. I mean, Shout to Gimme, wonderful, wonderful company. I'm a huge fan. Yeah, as am I. They were one of the few people in New York in those years that really knew how to make coffee. Yeah. And I like that taste. I still like that taste. It doesn't taste like any particular growing region.

1:53:48And that's, yeah. You know, and it doesn't taste like any particular agriculture. The question to ask then, is that right or wrong? And I don't see that as a right or wrong question. If what you're looking for is particular insight into the agriculture or the varietal of the coffee, then of course espresso should not be the thing you order at a cafe. And I think the foundational element of coffee buying and paying fairly and having terroir and giving the farmers as much credit as the barista, I think the tendency is to say, yes, we need to have that flavor profile that is from a region and recognize it.

1:54:27And espresso is smashing that model. That's kind of the argument against espresso. Yeah, that's true. And that's a legitimate argument. But then you have to look at what you're selling in your cafe. You are selling 80 percent, 90 percent of the drinks you're selling are drinks that people are putting steamed milk on top of. And hence, you're unable to taste the agriculture anyway. So you might as well give them something that pairs beautifully with milk. Grieffully, and we all love a cortado. We love lattes and oat drinks. And it's wonderful, especially at certain times of day. Some people like having a morning latte or cappuccino with milk.

1:55:09I kind of like you know draw a parallel between you know where we're at right now with coffee and like cocktail culture in like the early 2000s mid 2000s when 80 % of people were ordering vodka sodas and Bud Lights you know but then there was like the Manhattan and Negroni right and look where we are now with cocktails I'm hoping my hope is that in 20 years coffee will ultimately be more brew drip hand brewed than espresso but I would like to believe that's true. However, I mean, if you look at how people are building cafes now in the U.S., obviously there's constraints around construction and budget and things you can't do in the U.S.

1:55:52because it's hard or expensive. But I do think there's so much emphasis now on batch brewing, even in the specialty shops, that how can you make an argument that coffee is special and like incredibly rarefied if you're saying like, oh, cool, 20 seconds, here you go. I don't know when, you know, this has been sitting for 20 minutes in this pot that is not beautiful. It's true. I mean, that's why hand brewing what Nigel's doing at Drip is so interesting. Exactly. But in taking that four to seven minutes to get a coffee, obviously that does not work for a lot of people in their daily routines when they want coffee at a cafe?

1:56:33Does it? I mean, that's the question. Like, yes. Anybody, especially in New York, you go walk into a room, it's like, who here is not very busy? Right. Nobody raises their hand. Right. But who here has some sort of agency over their schedule? Who here has some sort of choice in the matter of when they wake up and what they do? A lot of people have that kind of agency. So it's really about the prioritization of that time. Some people would prefer not to wait in line for a coffee that takes a long time to make. I understand that. But if you design the store in a certain way, if you make the performance practice of making coffee underscore the rarity and the privilege that we all have of paying$5 for something extraordinary, then maybe people will prioritize their time in a little bit different way.

1:57:26However, if you build a shop that just looks like any other shop and you have a brewer that looks like any other brewer and you want them, people to think it's a privilege to have a coffee that's way too hot that takes 20 seconds to make. And then you're going to end up, if you're careful, you're going to have a timer on it. And then you're going to end up dumping that brewer out half of the time after 20 minutes. Like, isn't that a sight to behold? somebody dumping really precious rare coffee into a sink. Yeah, into the drain. You know? James, I love that. I want to leave it there because I think we could go all day about it.

1:58:05Yeah, file that under don't get me started. No, it's so really cool to hear your thoughts on that because it's definitely something I think about. I'll rattle my walker about that all day long. The next 20 years is going to be interesting. I've got to ask you about coffee at home. How do you make it? How do I make it? Yeah, what's your preferred method? Oh, man. I do like a little cappuccino to start the day. I'll make that from time to time. What's the gear? Oh, Matthew. There's a lot of gear in my life. My go-to is a Linea Mini, which is very nice. Oh, I love that. I love that machine. A while ago.

1:58:43I look at that in catalogs in one day. Oh, yeah. One day. One day. As a New Yorker, your counter space is limited, too. Yeah, true. So there's that. And I like thinking about the past in terms of coffee, the history of coffee. I'm much more interested in the past than the future, or I spend more time thinking about it and how the past might inform the future. So somehow I ended up with the 1958 three-group Faima Urania lever machine that opened Blue Bottle Williamsburg in 2010. Is there wood involved in that? No, no, no, no. Like from the peak, you know, mid-century Italian design, it's a beautiful machine, blue glass, and it's finicky.

1:59:26It's finicky. But I have that in a little barn on my ranch, and I'll make espresso there that's very textured. It's all about texture. Usually there's robusta in the blend that I'm making. Wow. What percentage? 7 to 12. Wow. Usually. And it's all about texture. It's buttery. It's thick. It's, you know, 24 grams in, 18 grams out. It's a very retrograde, transgressive espresso in terms of the modern standards. But I like, you know, I'll spend 30 seconds drinking it and an hour tasting it. And speaking of Robusto, I had a Wynn Coffee Supply, 100 % Robusto recently. Oh, yes. It was cool. It's great.

2:00:06She sent me an anaerobic Robusta that I thought was – I made it actually a little bit on that machine, that old fine. Yeah. I think she's doing incredible work. I mean, there are very few people that I think you can call coffee innovators. Yeah. But I think Sarah is totally an innovator. Check it out. Yeah, I'm a big fan. Let me ask you about, like, getting coffee into, like, the pop culture sphere. I think there's plenty of vanity projects you see. Of course, with, like, the push-button machines, you see that, like, Nespresso always has, like, a John Hammer or one of those guys. He's so honky, though.

2:00:42Yeah, definitely. or Clooney, I think it's Clooney actually, push buttons. This all leads up to Jimmy Butler, NBA star, truly a coffee nerd. I've had him on the show. Oh, that's cool. And are you familiar with what he's doing at Big Face? Yeah, I mean, you know, you have just picked the exact wrong guy to talk about popular culture or sports. So I've only heard like a little bit. I've heard he's a very famous basketball player. Yeah. And I've heard he's really sincerely into making good coffee and drinking beautiful coffee. And buying good coffee and selling it, hopefully, at an equitable rate for the farmer, hopefully.

2:01:20Yeah, yeah. So all of those things I'm in favor of, and I do think that it's sort of an interesting time where that coffee nerddom, you know, that otaku kind of used to be unattractive. And now this very famous person is being pretty deep, a pretty deep nerd and bringing that to a lot of people. Well, it's, you know, my hesitancy is like, well, what is he selling? Like what is actually being sold in that cup? Yeah. You know, and I'm not saying that it's somehow bad or wrong to have a 16-ounce big milk drink. But it's like how are people experiencing that coffee that is in the bottom of that big, big cup?

2:02:02I mean he's selling Cup of Excellence coffees. That's awesome. He's definitely thinking about roasting. I can't wait to have him back to talk more about it. A lot of people think about roasting. What do you mean by that? It's hard. You've got to do it I mean it's so crazy to think about roasting And it's at the end of this massive chain From farm to middleman to get the hauling I mean we could go through all the process But then you've got these green beans And you've got to figure out something to do with it And you can really mess it up Yeah, yeah, yeah Coffee occupies a very interesting place in society Because many, many people make coffee every single day of their lives.

2:02:40And if you do something every single day of your life, you're apt to think you have this privileged insight into how it should be made or what it should taste like. That's the tendency. I mean, with anything, if you watch movies every day of your life, you have a tendency to have this point of view that's pretty firm. You know, and so like when you go to have a rarefied dinner somewhere, it's like, well, that's not exactly how I make a lime souffle every day. You know, people just don't have that thought, but they become experts in their own minds and tend to think that coffee is easier than it looks when actually coffee is much harder than it looks.

2:03:17Yeah, I think we've established that a bit in this conversation and other conversations. Let me ask you a couple broad questions. Yes. I just like to get a sense of when somebody comes to you and says they like their coffee strong, what do you say to them? I say bravo. You know, like, what are you talking about in a professional context, like when I was working a cafe and somebody would do that? Or when you're just talking to a general consumer who's interested in coffee, but it's like, you know, I like what I like. I like, James, I like strong coffee. Yeah. I think in my time in hospitality and listening to people talk about coffee, and I've listened to a lot of people talk about coffee, I think getting into the particulars is interesting and sometimes important.

2:04:02But really looking into the emotion behind those words that they're saying because I could say like, OK, well, strength in coffee is generally measured by this metric called total dissolved solids, TDS. I've got a little machine. I can measure the coffee you think is strong and then brah, brah, brah, brah, brah, brah, brah. And, you know, if somebody is nerdy enough, they might want to. And then we'll talk about NTU, a measure of turbidity, nephelometric turbidity units, which is, I think, one of the most underutilized metrics in coffee. But anyway, getting to this emotion, when somebody says, I like my coffee strong, what is that emotion?

2:04:41Like, I'm afraid I might not get coffee I like. You know, is it fear? Is it like— It's not going to hit my sweet spot. Right, right. I'm like, I just want to feel safe and loved, you know? And you can't hug them in a cafe. Yeah. But you can say like, all right, when was the last time you had a coffee that made you feel like it was strong enough? Like what was that like? How did that feel? Yeah. We have such an emotional connection. Exactly. To our coffee experiences. Why we often say I had the best coffee on the autoroute in Italy. It was like the best coffee in my life. But ultimately coffee maybe was good, but oftentimes maybe not.

2:05:23It was just the experience. And that's the allure and the myth of Hawaiian coffee, right? Right. You know, you go on your honeymoon. It's like I had the most amazing cone of coffee. And, you know, and what's the emotion behind that? It's like I've never felt more loved that day. Yeah. And as we know in the industry, talking about coffee, Hawaiian coffee is, you know, it's fine. I'm sure it's beautiful on the Big Island, coffee being made, but it's not the top ten region. There are many, many instances of Hawaiian coffee not being particularly well-produced or delicious. There's a guy, Miguel Meza.

2:05:58He has a roastery called Paradise Roasters, and he's sourcing a lot of Hawaiian coffee, kahu especially, doing beautiful work, incredible work. I'm glad you shouted somebody out because I'll definitely look to buy some coffee. Yeah, I'm a big fan. Next question. What do you say to somebody when they come to you and say, James, I like Colombian coffee? Well, it's the richest kind. Why shouldn't you? No, I like Colombian coffee too. I think it's that same, like, what is the impulse to having that? Or is it somebody that's, like, not familiar with the milieu of a specialty coffee cafe? And it's like a little test that's like, oh, is somebody going to make me feel okay if I ask this?

2:06:43Or is it somebody kind of coming in with a swagger? like this is what somebody told me I should say but there's a little bit of a fear behind that. Yeah, that like record shop, you know, bartender kind of snobby vibe going on. Yeah, yeah. So looking at the emotion behind an utterance I think is going to give one more insight into how to treat the utterance, how to respond to the utterance. But as a matter of fact, there's what? Colombia is the second or third biggest producer of coffee worldwide. Yeah, I think Brazil is number one probably. has always been number one. The only question in my mind is Vietnam number two now.

2:07:21But Colombia has La Grana, Esperanza, you know, some of the most glorious, glorious producers in the world. And it's got a range of tastes. It's like saying, I like American food. Well, yeah, or I like French wine. Yeah, exactly. Which is, I think I'm kind of repeating something I've brought up on other shows, but it's just like when you think about terroir and region, you got to unpack a little bit more Northern country, right? Who, who, you've got to think of who is making this thing. Great. And that's really hard because like the baseball card element of coffee, like who, who are the cool guys and who are the not, like that's, I mean, I don't personally have any idea how to keep track of all that stuff.

2:08:02Good, good. Yeah, I gave up years ago. I mean, so that's the challenge because we want to, like, be like, I love this finca. You know, what did you say? You had a finca that you – in Japan, you had named a coffee and, like – Oh, finca debra. Yeah, debra. So, like, finca debra. Like, I'd love to have finca debra. Like, you would just name this thing. But, like, how do we get it? Who's roasting it? You know, finca's a farm. Many people are roasting finca debra. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when was it roasted and how was it being made? And, you know, how – yeah, there are many, many ways to go wrong with an extraordinary coffee.

2:08:39Yeah. I mean it's just why it's really complex to kind of figure out what does terroir actually mean outside of these general flavor profiles that we kind of connect with regions. Yeah. I think of terroir as just being a metaphor, like a way of thinking about a taste and in a very, very general way. but then you have to, like, who are the people along this chain that started in Panama and, like, ended up on a plane or ship and then to a roastery and then, you know. It's amazing. It's the who that counts. A few more questions, James. It's been a real delight to have you in. I'm delighted too. I'd love to get a sense of a few brands.

2:09:18We talked about Wynn Coffee Supply, but are there any other brands that we should be looking for? Roasters, cafes, all. Who excites you right now? Oh, well, I just came out of La Cabra, the new cafe in Soho, which is very pretty. And I got a beautifully made, very limpid espresso gesha, very soft. Like sometimes espressos of lightly roasted coffee can be a little bit like a punch in the mouth. Was it a Panama, you said? All I saw was varietal. Interesting. I mean, no, I'm sure they were very clear. Yeah, I just forgot. In the menu, it just escaped me. Yeah, and one of the reasons I like La Cabra, just from the farmer's market, there was this ethic in the farmer's market, we sell what we make.

2:10:08And the thing I admire in addition to the coffee about La Cabra is that they make their own croissants. They make their own venoisserie. They make these little cardamom knots that are calling out to me. That you brought us so kindly. If anyone's ever had the cardamom knots from La Cabra, James has just dropped a few for Pat and I. We're quite happy. Thank you. Thank you. Very good. But I admire places that make what they sell, like Tandem in Maine. Yeah. Does the same. They're former Blue Bottle colleagues. They're so good. Oh, cool. So good. I love their malted cold brew. I've never had it. It's so good.

2:10:42Yeah. It's so good. Yeah. So when I was in my most creative phase with Blue Bottle, we were making what we sell. I was fortunate. My wife, Caitlin, was the pastry chef, and she was making incredible things, beautiful things, extraordinary things that went beautifully with coffee. And so I like working harder than you have to. Yeah. What makes me a little bit sad is walking to a cafe where they seem to care about everything, but then that care, that hard work stops at the case and, you know. You mean the pastry case? Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely. What about like a multi-roaster cafe? because I think I'm hearing you appreciate an all-in mentality, which I also appreciate.

2:11:24I love places like Intelligentsia and Stumptown, East One in Brooklyn, beautiful coffees there that are doing everything. But I also enjoy a good multi-roaster. Oh, my gosh. That is such an interesting model. I talked to Akira about that because I love going. There's some in L.A. that I go to, and there's all these incredible coffees from all over the world, great roasters, amazing things. and I don't know how they make a business out. I don't know how you can pay your bills with all that shipping and keeping the stuff fresh. I'm glad I don't have to do it. I love going there. I go to one that, you know, regularly has like a coffee that's$13,$14,$15.

2:12:07It's always beautifully brewed. Dayglo? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Beautifully brewed. And I sit outside their little shop and I drink it and like it. and I just don't know how they do it. Yeah, I always wonder if, like, doing retail and doing multi-roaster, how do they upstream the retail into the program, and how do they keep their inventory moving? Thank God. It's not my question to answer. I think Los Angeles and New York, I know they're opening in Brooklyn, they certainly have the customers who will come in and drop real money. Yeah, I will. What kind of advice would you give anyone young getting into specialty coffee right now?

2:12:46As a, like, profession? Yeah, like a profession. Like, it could be at the barista level, it's their first job, or it could be somebody who's rising and is a young roaster. Because I know there's just a lot of professionals out there who listen and love coffee. Yeah. It's such a different time. When I was starting, like, the internet was around, and you could look things up on it, but it was before, like, it was basically taking the joy out of these personal discoveries. And I thought coffee was like very personal. Everything was very personal to me. And then I could also make mistakes that didn't live forever and that were not visible by everybody in the world.

2:13:25You know, pre-Instagram, pre-Twitter, I could just make these mistakes at the farmer's market, apologize for them, make somebody another drink, and it wasn't like a scarlet letter on me. so it's a very different time in coffee and if somebody wants to be a professional it's very tempting to just like look on instagram and think you've learned something about coffee you know so like i would say like delete instagram and like apply for a passport and just go places go places drink things and then work someplace you know don't work for a few shifts or a few weeks or a few months, if you've gone to Tim Vendelboe's cafe in Oslo, you know the first thing I noticed?

2:14:15The floor. It was immaculate. It was... Terrazza was a cool design? No, no, no, no, no. It was clean. Just the cleanliness of it. It was clean. It was a roastery without a single coffee bean on the floor. And it takes a while to learn how to do that, to learn how to sweep, to learn how to To see the one bean on the terrazzo that's over in the corner and to pick that up. So that's a skill that you have to practice in the real world over many, many shifts, many, many hours. So that would be the advice is to, you know, I suppose it's Mr. Miyagi advice, wax on, wax off. Patience too. I mean, and certainly it sounds like skipping steps can happen, but it's not the norm in coffee and you just got to put the time in.

2:15:06Right, right. And to think about what you want, what you think is cool, what excites you, just because somebody is doing it in Copenhagen doesn't mean it's the right thing for you to do. I agree. Well, I want to close by asking a question. I've asked many in coffee, Jeff Watts, Nigel Price of Drip, Nicely Abled, Jordan Michaelman, James Hoffman, Ashley Rodriguez. is I mentioned all of those folks because I really respect their opinion and we've had them all on the show. And James, let me ask you, what should coffee cost per pound? A lot more than it does. I'm sure every single coffee professional would have told you that.

2:15:45There's a great, like four or five pages in Dave Eggers' book, The Monk of Mocha, where he talks about, he just lays It's at every hand that coffee touches before it gets to a consumer. And it's a lot of hands. So, you know, coffee is built on this very colonial, very exploitative model. And that model is still very, very deep and very, very present in the coffee. Cafe owners are sometimes complicit in that, like, free refills and treating coffee as a commodity, treating it as if it were not precious and touched by a hundred hands before it gets to a guest. So, yes, coffee should be more because people all along the chain ought to be paid more.

2:16:31That's a great point to close on. I always want to like probe and say should it be like$60 a pound should it be$80 a pound should we drink less of it and treasure it I mean all of those things right I'm hearing that because I think it's we know it's not people don't charge enough and people don't value it that's just really the end of this conversation yeah people value the pharmacological effect quite quite extremely highly but they don't translate to those effects. Like, gosh, this thing that just made me smarter and more energetic and more charming and reduced my capacity for feeling depressed for a few hours, maybe I should pay twice as much.

2:17:18Yeah, that's both legal and readily available. Exactly. Yeah. So great point there. James, we ask all guests on taste, if you could write a cookbook or food culture book without the burden of time, meaning you have no deadline, or the burden of budget, meaning you have all the money in the world to create this book. I know you are a bibliophile. You've published with 10 Speed in the past. What would this book be? Yeah, I'm actually thinking of a book. If I had it with no deadline, then I wouldn't do it. So I've learned I need to operate with a deadline. So that's a hypothetical constraint. I'm going to have to add a deadline back in.

2:17:51So, yeah, I want to write a book. I'm sort of talking to people about writing a book using Blue Bottle, my experience with Blue Bottle Coffee as a metaphor for sort of this clash between creative businesses and where we are in late-stage capitalism and, you know, and this idea, to paraphrase Mario Cuomo, I think, you know, that creative businesses like mine are often founded in poetry and scaled in prose. And that's hard. That's a hard place, you know, if you're wanting more poetry, but then the pressure is for a more prosaic sort of approach, then that can be difficult and sometimes chattering even.

2:18:36I think that a book on creativity and scale and creativity, but also, of course, having some coffee detail in there. Oh, so much coffee detail. And just that word, you know, scale a noun or a verb. Or when I started, scale was a noun. Yeah. It was something you weighed shit with. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's so interesting, and I hate that term, actually. It's just against, because as you know, media is not a scalable business. No. You've got to do it one by one, same with coffee. Yeah. I agree. James Freeman, thank you for joining Taste. Thank you very much for having me.

2:19:13This is Taste is hosted by Eliza Abarbanel and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is produced by Shalia Harris and Pat Stango and edited by Clayton Gumber. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter for updates on all cool things that are happening.