Seattle Coffee Works

Friends, we have been growing a lot. Knock on wood.

Our growth hasn’t been miraculous – it’s been the result of a lot of passion and a lot of work.

When last year we always worried about how to have enough work for everyone to make a living, this year we’re more worried about how to get it all done.

We need some help!

Here’s the kind of things we need help with:

Managing and nurturing a few of our most exciting small businesses.
Manage roastery operations, a fast-growing mail-order business, and be a face for the company. (This is  an odd mix of marketing, operations, creativity and detail-oriented execution – you better know why you’d like to do this one!)

In one day, we might encounter any of these kinds of tasks:

• answer a call from BBC London with poise and authority;
• respond to an online customer who’s wondering where her package is;
• set up a new coffee offering in the cafe and online;
• swiftly and effectively respond to an event organizer who’d like to pre-order 400 pounds of coffee, ground for flat-bottom filter, with a customized label;
• pack 500 bags of coffee, because the person who’s usually doing that is on a much-earned vacation (you have to be able to rally some help for that one – a winning personality helps!);
• plan, prepare, and execute an ad campaign which will create 3,000 mail orders within a couple of weeks;
• sweep and mop the floor.

Cashista-ing / Barista-ing.
We’re a somewhat unusual coffee house. Everyone on the team gets to play with amazing coffees. Everyone has a voice. Everyone sweeps the floor.

On any given day we might run into these challenges:

• explain how we survive, nay: thrive, amongst the 999 corporate coffee walk-throughs around town. (This might happen any number of times on any given day, and even when you’re on number 10 it must sound as if you’re explaining for the first time;)
• make some amazing coffee by taking great care about each step in its preparation (if you don’t know much about coffee that’s fine – but you must be extremely eager to learn everything you can about this ambrosia!);
• taste almost every cup of coffee before your customer gets to taste it, and make it again if it’s not excellent;
• professionally, cheerfully, energetically lead a coffee tasting with four groups – one corporate team from Procter & Gamble, one party of ten family members celebrating their great grandmother’s 101st birthday (the great grandmother is there, too!), a small group of tourists visiting from Tokyo; and a tour group from Texas taking a peek at Seattle on their way to the cruise ship to Alaska (they voted for the presidential candidate you hate the most, twice);
• assemble sandwiches;
• do the dishes;
• sweep and mop the floor.

Managing the cafe at 107 Pike Street.
This one might seem like a far shot. First of all, we have a cafe manager, she’s awesome and not going anywhere anytime soon, so no need to rush. But if you think you’re born to manage a mid-size little coffeehouse operation and grow it grow it grow it, then please do step forward. No rush but we’re dead serious: we do need another cafe manager.

Here are a few examples of things you might need to be able handle to be a star store manager:

• one refrigeration unit or another breaks, or two at once, on the hottest and the busiest day of the year (you calmly get someone to help, pronto!);
• one of the team members is sick – you get the call at 6am. You’re in the store at 6:30am to cover for the poor soul;
• you puzzle out the schedule for next week. One team member has had something come up, you have another five emails or notes from other team members as to their scheduling needs, you know that a two-day weekend is a must for everyone, including yourself, and you make it all happen;
• you notice that we’re buying more pastries than we’re selling; you make a call and adjust the pastry order;
• oh, man, you notice so much. You might notice that a team member is having personal trouble – check-in required; your day is busy, you’re the boss;
• sweep and mop the floor.

Ok, friends, that’s the short of the long of it. If you know anyone (including yourself) who might be interested, send ‘em on down. (They should read that blog post about our unique process first though.)

I should mention a couple of things that would pretty likely be show stoppers: we noticed that while cigarettes and coffee go together really well, it’s hard for smokers to taste the fine differences in coffee – probably doesn’t make us a great fit for you if you smoke (you’d miss all those delicate flavors). And, yes, it’s retail: lifting 50lbs or so happens all the time; we’re open 363 days a year, including Sundays and Holidays (and that means certain times are just not ok for a vacation).

And, did I mention?, everyone mops and sweeps the floor. It’s fun for us. And you?

Coffee Drinking Man is taking a brief rest. Many friends of our café have noted that his arm, which normally moves up and down as he “sips” from his coffee cup, is bound in a sling. Yes, our very own 14.5-foot tall Coffee Drinking Man needs a break. Constructed by City Lights Sign Company, Coffee Drinking Man has been experiencing slight muscle fatigue from tirelessly sipping his cup of coffee for over 365 consecutive days. His arm, gripping his orange cup, lifts and lowers every 45 seconds, which translates to around 788,400 cycles per year.

The “muscle fatigue,” as diagnosed by the experts at City Lights Sign Co., lies simply in a simple bounce. Drinking Man has an internal motor that powers his 50-lb kinetic arm to rise and fall. As the motor fights gravity to raise his arm, it also struggles to apply a break to lower his arm as well. In the transition between the rise and the fall, his arm bounces which places a strain on the rod that connects his arm to his body.

In short, gravity works.

Back at the drawing board, City Lights Sign Co. is working on a stronger motor and a less stressful mechanism to power his arm. The goal, says City Lights, is to find the right gear combination to fight the bounce by keeping equal pressure on the rod that holds his arm in place.

Drinking Man's Motor

Installed one year ago in July ’09, Coffee Drinking Man has become an iconic host for a city known for its coffee culture. Like Seattle Art Museum’s Hammering Man, who pays homage to the working class, Coffee Drinking Man honors the gathering of people over coffee and the burgeoning influence of coffee in culture and society.

We’re optimistic Drinking Man will make a full recovery. Last November SAM’s Hammering Man underwent a similar procedure and, after a successful surgery, is persistently hammering his 15 hours a day again. We’re confident Coffee Drinking Man will emerge from his procedure healthy and ready to sip from his cup by the end of the summer. Just in time for a good cup of coffee in Seattle’s cool autumn weather.

This is a good year to be in coffee. We see it in our cafe, and we hear it from our industry friends. It’s nice to have arrived in 2010.

A new analysis on mintlife (based on mint.com spending patterns) shows that:
+ Seattle is the top coffee market in the country when you consider spend per person (capita?)
+ Spending on coffee is up for folks who do spend on coffee (”users”) by 20% over 2009.
+ The average ticket is down a smidgen vs. 2009.

What we have seen at Seattle Coffee Works confirms these national trends but with one twist. Our average ticket is up by almost 4% vs. 2009: we’re selling more whole bean coffee and we see a trend away from consuming coffee in our cafe to home brewing. We also see a strong interest in single-origin non-espresso coffees away from the usual 12-oz latte. We’ll give an update on those numbers in the fall (once we’re through our busy summer season.)

Here is the graph from mint.com:

A quick alert about and an invitation to our event on Wednesday May 12 at 4:30 pm at Seattle Coffee Works (107 Pike Street, Seattle, WA, 206.340.8867)

The event is open to the interested public. There is a suggested cash donation of $10 to participate.

If you’re planning on coming, just so we know how many to expect, please sign up in the comments for this blog. Or send us an email. Or both. Otherwise just show up. We’ll have a good time either way!

Here is the skinny:

+ Ahead of the May 18 Hacienda La Esmeralda auction (which last year saw prices of more than $100 per pound for green coffee), we’ll be tasting samples for the seven lots this coming Wed. The format will be part traditional cupping part samples made through another contraption (either the Trifecta or Hario filter)

+ The event is a fundraiser for Facing the Future, a local Seattle nonprofit currently reaching 1.25 million students nationwide each year. Facing the Future develops curricula for all grade levels to help teach about issues of sustainability, global inter-connectedness, North-South issues — all topics critical for the future of the enjoyment of coffee.

+ The event kick starts Seattle Coffee Works beer & wine offering and showcases various coffee making contraptions including the brand new Trifecta.

Tentative Program:
4:30-5:30 Hors d’oeuvres (appetizers, $3 beer & wine cash bar, free coffee)
5:30-5:45 Introduction to Facing the Future and why sustainability matters in an increasingly interconnected world. A short introduction of Hacienda La Esmeralda and why we believe this coffee farm can show the way to more sustainable coffee consumption
Speaker: Pipo Bui, Director of Development Earthcorps; Member Board of Directors, Facing the Future
5:45-6:00 Cupping and Tasting.
6:00-7:00 Raffle for top coffees; cash bar.

We hope you can make it.

For quite some time, we have wanted to know how to best package our freshly roasted coffee. Currently, we’re using multi-ply bags consisting of lots of petroleum derivatives and aluminum foil. Without actually having researched the matter, we have thought it better to have a one-way degassing valve in our bags. We pack all of our coffees within minutes of roasting. Unless we’re mailing the coffee we do not heat seal our bags.

Yesterday, we started a six-week test: we put our beloved Colombia Huila Monserrate in six different kinds of packaging:

1. Multi-ply plastic/aluminum bag with one-way degassing valve; rolled closed but not sealed;
2. Same as 1.; heat sealed;
3. Low barrier, bio-degradable paper / corn-based plastic liner bag; rolled closed but not sealed;
4. Tin with degassing valve;
5. Tin without degassing valve;
6. A Mazzer Mini standard bean hopper.

We’ll be doing regular blind tastings of 1. and 3. through 6. during our Monday 3pm conventional cuppings and our *new* Thursday 3pm vertical tastings. We’ll be taking notes on cup quality and anything we notice. We’ll throw Packaging 2. into the tasting mix only after three weeks so we can see what difference it makes when we heat seal our regular bags.

Feel free to join the tasting fun and weigh in with your opinion, or, just follow the experiment here on the blog. We’ll be appending our results to this blog post.

Update 1 - six days (cupping on April 5, 2010), Sebastian updating:
I only had a few moments at the cupping table this Monday. Katie had put coffee from five of the six packages on the cupping table. (No. 2, the heat sealed multi-ply bag, is remaining sealed until day 10 or so.) The tasting was blind, i.e. none of us cuppers knew which coffee was which. For, No. 1 (multi-ply, no sealed) won the tasting by a far shot: the coffee tasted brighter and was simply a lot more exciting than the other coffees. It seems, the other cuppers agreed. The experiment continues. Next tasting is on Thursday April 8, 2010 at Ryan’s Vertical Tasting.

Update 2 (cupping on April 12, 2010), Katie updating:

Nice cozy cupping with plenty of time to taste and chat. I mixed up the order of packages from last time to make sure any repeat tasters started with a clean palate. Coffees 3 (tin w/valve) and 4 (multi-ply bag w/valve) garnered the most positive comments–3 seemed the most balanced with enough body and strong, sweet caramel notes. Coffee 4 offered tangy notes with milk chocolate body. I also offered a control coffee: the same coffee, same roast date, packaged in our standard multi-ply bag w/valve for use in the cafe. I wanted to see if there were any strong differences in the experiment coffee and our Slow Bar coffee, since we continuously open and close the bags to brew single origin cups. Coffees 1 (tin w/o valve) and 2 (bag w/o valve) offered similar notes but were lacking the bounce and body of the others.

Thursday’s Vertical Tasting (@3pm) will feature Colombian again, with a few other coffees in various brewing methods. Join us next week and give us your own tasting notes!

It’s a great time to be a barista. I love transitions. I feel the most alive in them. And coffee culture, to my mind, is evolving right now. Even at premium coffee shops in Seattle, you can pay around $2 for a shot of espresso that will peel the enamel off your teeth, or you could pay $2 for a transcendent elixir that will make you fall in love with the world. I can’t think of another product with such a dramatic difference in quality. It’s a coffee jungle out there.

But lately, people seem to be demanding better. Why? I think it’s the tension between two factors. First, there’s better quality coffee to be had nowadays. Fresher coffee is being served, and you’re more likely to be told where your coffee comes from, and therefore what it really tastes like. “Kenya” or “Guatemala” tells you more than “Breakfast Blend” or “Dark Roast.” And you can order a Kenya coffee made in a variety of ways that will also affect the product, from French-pressed to vacuum pot to espresso.

Second, there’s the pre-existing condition, or the Starbucks effect. It’s easy to take shots at Starbucks when you make espresso at a micro-roaster. But I’m not into that at all. Starbucks as had an enormous impact here and around the world, and a look at coffee culture would be incomplete without considering it. What they do is standardize a product that’s better than terrible and make it so uniform that people always have their expectations filled. And that’s valuable to people. Up to a point.

What’s interesting to me now is that many people seem to have reached that point. We want more than predictability; we want flavor. We want to taste coffee, at long last, after 200 years of drinking it in this country. There are a myriad of flavors available in coffees grown in different countries, different regions, different family farms; all distinct. Also, each method for extracting coffee from beans brings out different characteristics. And each extraction method has a sweet spot where the best intensity and balance of flavors is achieved. This is what we geek out over at work. Sometimes, you get such a perfect coffee that it sends shivers down your body.

And everyone can experience that, not just coffee geeks. It’s a jungle right now. Even I don’t know what to expect half the time I order. But I do know that the more I listen to my palate and to the people serving me, the faster I will learn. I will continue to find new ways and reasons to love coffee.

Photo Credit: Claude@Munich: http://www.flickr.com/photos/c-s-n/79822340/

Last week we had a pleasant surprise when Sebastian Pinzon and Juan Villegas came by the cafe to check out our Colombia Huila Monserrate. In the picture Sebastian (left) and Juan are enjoying a cup made in the Chemex. We were excited to present them with what we thought is the best our Colombia Huila can be.

Sebastian and Juan often travel to the town of Monserrate. They are responsible for the super-premium segment at one of Colombia’s largest (if not THE largest) coffee exporter, Racafe.

While enjoying some coffee - we also sampled a great vacuum pot of our Tanzania Blackburn Estate - we had a great conversation about what has made the brand of Colombian Coffee so strong: a relentless focus on quality by the all powerful Colombian Coffee Growers’ Association.

How to Brew a Good Cup of Coffee from Ben Helfen on Vimeo.

Thanks to our friend Ken Wagner, who likes the burnt stuff, for passing this along!

What a year 2009 has been!

From moving our café to inaugurating our very own roasting operation; from a website re-launch to appearances on many national media outlets including NPR and ABC (and soon, CNN); but mainly from excellent coffee to excellent coffee.

We’ve had a good year. Our team and our business grew more in 2009 than we could have hoped for. While we may have disappointed some who are missing our original concept of having ten different espresso blends “on tap,” we have had quite a few encouraging reviews, including more than one calling us the finest in coffee roasting Seattle has to offer.

We know that it’s a privilege and honor, and an obligation!, to be roasting and making coffee in the epicenter of the coffee world. While we feel flattered by all the wonderful feedback we’ve received, we also have a list of about one million things we’ll work on in 2010. Please stay tuned!

But before we turn the page, a huge thank you to all members of the Seattle Coffee Works crew, past and present, who have worked their hearts out to take us to where we are now. We’re very lucky to have a team of such dedicated and talented people. Thank you!!!

We would have not survived the year without a lot of help! Thank you to all the brilliant people who contributed to our build-out! (The health inspector’s jaw dropped when we turned our new space around even faster than a very well known coffee chain in town which threw an army at the effort.) A million thanks to the good folks at Green Tortoise Hostel who are the best neighbors anyone could wish for.

And, oh man, what would we have done without the indefatigable family members and close friends who were there for us during this past year, at every step of the way??! Thank you!

Happy New Year to all!

Picture Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dancingwithwords/4046704573/

We’re looking for a full-time barista, or someone who’d like to become a full-time barista. If you’re very ambitious (and can imagine training for the next Barista  World Championship); if you’ve gotten up at 4 am because  you were pursuing a project or a life ambition which was so exciting you couldn’t stay in bed; even better (but not necessary) if that life ambition involved coffee; but more importantly if that life ambition *could* involve coffee; if you love people, hundreds of them, every day; if you love to serve; if you have serious stamina and have proven you can outlast everyone around you; in other words, if you’re a super human, then  please consider joining us in our coffee adventure at Seattle Coffee Works. We’re arguably one the most exciting coffee ventures in town, and we have grown a bit.

(The line about the super human is a joke. We’re all human around here. But if you made it to the end of that sentence, you probably do have stamina.)

About stamina and passion: what we do is hard, hard work and it can easily turn into a “job” for people who are not completely passionate about our line of work.

To make sure (as best as we can) this would be a fit, we ask that you don’t apply in the traditional ways. Instead, please make your way down to our cafe‚ at 107 Pike Street. Come in, have a cup of coffee and hang out for a  while. Don’t let us know who you are. Just check us out. Find out if you’d like to be a customer. Come back another day.

If you like what you see, and if you could imagine spending your days behind the counter, please introduce yourself. A resume might be helpful. Other hints from your past indicating your excitement about food in general and coffee  in particular definitely help.

Don’t expect us to hire you overnight. It’s helpful if you’re currently holding another job and can start trying out part-time. If joining our team is for you, then we’ll all know in good time. If you’re looking for a generic food-service gig we’re probably not the right place for you. If your first question is “How much per hour?” we’re definitely no match for you. (We pay what most pay in the industry; benefits might be available; but surely there are many other jobs out there which would give you better pay.)

If you dream about the things you do, then we might well make for good dance partners. Partners in the dance of life. The band: all of us here at Seattle Coffee Works. The tune: music from a country between the tropics of cancer and capricorn. The rhythm: coffee grinding and brewing. The smell: coffee coffee coffee.

(If you bring the will, we’ll provide the skill.)

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rojojam/1621836966/