Seattle Coffee Works

Our good friend and local Coffee Hero, Michael Smith, writes that he’s taken up home roasting because of the rising prices of Espresso blends from Seattle roasters.

The view from beach house number five on my privately owned island in the Carribean.

Even though Michael doesn’t mention names in his post, he could be referring to us when he writes that “one Seattle roaster [which] saw my May 2009 Espresso price list…raised his whole bean price 50 cents a pound, because he was priced lower.”

Michael goes on: “There are two ways to put more cash in the register.  You either increase your customer base through competition and marketing or you squeeze the customers you already have a little bit more.”

He’s right. Seattle’s roasters are overcharging their customers. We’re gouging, we’re greedy, we’ll suck any of those sacred green bills from the living. (In fact, I’ve already applied for a job at a big, sleezy investment bank — I hear they’re always looking for my type.)

While I can’t speak for other roasters, Michael’s conclusion is certainly not true for Seattle Coffee Works.

Before I go on let me state that, yes, we did increase the price of our Seattle Space Espresso Blend by 50 cents to $13.45 per pound (that’s a whopping 3.861%), and, yes, we reduced the price of our Swiss-Water Process Fair-Trade Organic Decaffeinated blend, which we call Our Best Decaf. We also adjusted (up and down) many of our single-origin coffees to better reflect the different cost bases for the different coffees we source. This had nothing to do with Michael’s price list but was a long planned adjustment in our pricing structure. On average, our coffees are probably now cheaper than before.

Michael writes the price of coffee should generally decrease because of coffee futures, oil, commercial real-estate, and because almost everything else in this economy that costs money has gone gotten cheaper.

His observation sounds true at first; yet if you look little more closely you’ll find that price development in a specific industry often has very little to do with price development in the overall economy. Case in point: While many goods and services have gone down in price, some have gone up.  

For instance, softwood lumber has seen a price increase of 6.7% year over year – despite a prolonged decrease in building activity. Pure conjecture doesn’t help explain price increases or decreases; it all depends on the specific economic activity.

The reason we had to increase the price for our signature Espresso blend is very simple: we use a large percentage of coffee from East Africa in this blend, and simply put that coffee has gotten 20-30% more expensive during this past year. Our modest price increase doesn’t go very far to cover that increase.

And our costs also don’t adequately reflect any of the services a roaster provides, namely the work involved in sourcing really high quality beans, the storage—both the quality of storage as well as the space—packaging, the continuing sourcing of new-crop coffee… the list goes on. If our prices were so high as to actually make us some serious money, you would likely find us lounging on the beach rather than in downtown Seattle.

Other than some of the big chains no one has gotten independently wealthy in our industry. The adage: Start with a big fortune to make a small fortune, certainly holds true for most of us in specialty coffee.

There are exceptions. Check out the coffee aisle in any large supermarket. Despite the comparatively low overhead and the less-than super premium coffees on offering, you’ll be hard-pressed to find coffee that’s cheaper than what your local roasters charge. (Trader Joe’s and Costco are an anomaly, and this would warrant another post.) That would explain the nice earnings at some of the large coffee companies. I know that some especially savyy folks have indeed retired to some beach in Central America.

But here’s the deal, Michael. In addition to roasted, we’ll also sell you green coffee for your home roasting. It’s cheap. It’s straight from our roastery with the added services (minus the actual roasting) provided by the roaster.  And by the way, if you order online with the code: STORE, we’ll package your coffee, ready to go for you to pick up in the café, with no additional shipping costs.

So check out some of the new, outstanding coffees we’ve recently received: Sulawesi Toraja Sapan Minanga; Sidamo Moredocofe; Tanzania Blackburn Estate; El Salvador Capitales Unidos; Honduras Las Capucas. We look forward to seeing you back for your green (or roasted) beans sometime soon! Or, just for a chat over an expertly pulled double espresso ($1.82 + tax.)

Picture credit/source:  http://www.flickr.com/people/18220192@N04/ / http://www.flickr.com/photos/18220192@N04/2053190004/

Tuesday, July 14 marked the birthday of our new Coffee Drinking Man. The 14+ foot sign arrived early morning, ready to be hoisted into his new position atop our cafe and roastery.

It’s here! Tuesday is the big day as we’re finally roasting in our new location at 107 Pike Street. Join us in the cafe on Tuesday, July 14 between 11am and 3pm to see Anna in action for the first time. We’re giving away free samples of freshly roasted coffee, sips of our tasty brewed coffee from the cafe, bites of our original sandwiches and tours of our new space. We’re also celebrating the arrival of our 14-foot Drinking Man sign above the cafe! We hope to see you there! It’s been a long journey from our previous home in the Newmark building, but we’re ready for our new space. Take a look!

The construction begins…

Slowly taking shape as the barista bar and counter are pieced together…

Sebastian and Anna, our new roaster…

Molly. Our very first roaster. It’s nice to remember how far we’ve come.

The final touches…

Check back for more photos soon and we hope to see you this Tuesday!

Time flies! We moved a month ago and have barely had a moment to breathe. It’s probably in keeping with our small-n-real business character that we moved before we had all i’s dotted and all t’s crossed.

A reviewer on yelp liked what we’re doing a lot, but knocked us down a star because our slow bar wasn’t quite there yet when she stopped in. Now it is.

We’ve continued to have to roast off-site at Velton’s as the permits for the roaster took a little while to snake themselves through the various agencies. Thanks to all of our inspectors and reviewers we may have managed to get a coffee roaster through the process from permit submittal to approval faster than anyone before us, at least here in Seattle. (And you’d think it would be easy to start a roastery in the Coffee Capital of the World!)

A couple of weeks ago, vinyl decals went up on our windows so folks knew what we sell.

And, finally we’re about to welcome the last member of the team: Drinking Man. We received a sneak preview from the shop. Stay tuned for the dude!

Oh, how we’ll miss that 111 Pike Street address that gave name to our first espresso blend: 111 Pike Street Blend! Earlier today we made the move out of the t-shirt shop into our own lil’ café.

Everyone here at Seattle Coffee Works is tired and very happy. Tomorrow morning we’ll be making coffee in our new 107 Pike Street location. The roaster is here and almost ready for action.

During the last few days, Katie took some pictures and I took a picture of Katie– check out:

Katie cut the ribbon as the new Diedrich IR-12 arrived

We wanted to see, once and for all, how many people could fit between counter and “grinder hutch” in the old 111 Pike location - almost the entire team fit. From left to right: Erik, Vicki, Elie, Amir, Pipo, moi, Ryan, Brooke, Daryl, Patrick, Katie, and Juan. Not pictured here: Max and Eric.

Katie took this shot of one of the many Home Depot shopping lists we created and filled during the last few days. 

Today there is only space and time for a HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who helped us make our dream reality; you know who you are. Soon, we’ll have the real-deal VIP party followed by a very grand Grand Opening.

I hope no one is surprised to read that we think that our coffee is the finest there is. We’re constantly cupping new green coffees and trying out new blends; we’re also continuing to tweak our roast profiles to bring out the best in each of the coffees. If you disagree let’s at least state that we’re trying REALLY hard.

But does it matter?

We’ve long found that our ability to sell a coffee has a lot to do with what the label says. For instance, our variation of the Mocha Java, the Obama Blend, has been one of our best-sellers ever since we introduced it last November; when we renamed our Atlantic Blend into Seattle Sunrise, we immediately saw a significant up tick in sales of the very same coffee. 

The big packaged-good companies know the drill much better than we do: a can of cola consists mostly of very expensive aluminum packaging filled with water and sugar and trace amounts of flavor, color and caffeine. Most shelves in a regular supermarket are full of this kind of stuff: it’s all about the art of selling an inferior product with the help of expensive and good-looking packaging. Wall Street types, immune to immoralities such as endangering half the nation with obesity, have made great money with this deceptive practice. It also comes as no surprise that our corporate competition in the coffee business, the one with the green logo, has a number of consumer-good veterans on its board.

Even though we’ve smelled the success potential of good packaging, we’ve concentrated most of our efforts on the stuff that’s inside the bag. Turns out, there is a chance we might be working in vain. In an experiment at MIT, participants were asked to describe the smell of rose pedals concealed in two separate paper bags. One bag had a positive label on it, along the lines of “deliciously fragrant roses;” the other said something about lawn clippings. To everyone involved the first bag smelled much better than the second. What gives?

Is possibly Katie’s artful description the real reason why we have a hard time keeping our delicious Sulawesi Toraja in stock?

Photo Credit: Shabby Chic 

All of us here at Seattle Coffee Works are such coffee fanatics that we find ourselves talking about coffee almost in terms of an alternate reality.

When we named our Guatemala-East Timor blend Chocolate Truffle we didn’t take into account that to everyone else this sounds like a flavored coffee. To us Chocolate Truffle tastes like pure hot chocolate; most folks in this world would describe it more like a smooth and balanced coffee “with a hint of chocolate.”

Admittedly, we’re a little over the top with our descriptions. With that said I think it’s time for an update on what direction the Seattle Coffee Works roastery has taken in recent months, and what new coffees we have recently received.

Direct-Trade Model

Our long-term goal is to move towards a direct-trade model. That means we’re aiming to directly import coffee from farms with socially and environmentally sustainable practices, partnering with individual farms and coops rather than sourcing our coffee from importers who often give us very little background about the coffees sold. Most coffee today is traded anonymously through a chain of middlemen; the model of “fair-trade” certification seems to be only a partial fix to ensuring basic ethical standards.

Some larger roasters have started promoting a “direct-trade” model; yet most of the coffees they sell continue to lack certification let alone a verifiable pedigree. Check it out at the roaster of your choice next time you’re in their store: their best-selling espresso blend usually has no sticker on it. From this little hill it looks like they are pursuing a smart marketing strategy, no more and no less.

Currently we’re doing no better than those roasters but certainly no worse either. Our long-term goal is to source 100% of our coffees directly.

Our Colombia Huila “Monserrate” is a first step in that direction. This highly rated coffee comes to us directly through Atlas Coffee Importers, one of the several importers we use to find the most outstanding coffees. We wish we could get our hands on more such direct-import coffees with a known pedigree; we’re certainly willing and able to pay a premium for this kind of coffee. While this is the way of the future, it seems at this point the only way to make direct-trade happen is for us to grow large enough to start importing directly ourselves.

Satisfying Taste

Having the most conscientiously sourced coffee can be no substitute for a winning taste. Coffee – just like chocolate, wine, and ice cream – has to be delicious; otherwise it has no place in our lives. We have learned that our preferences in coffee do not necessarily predict what our customers like.

One good example is decaffeinated coffee. While decaf drinkers are in the minority, we have come to respect them as true coffee connoisseurs. Decaf drinkers like coffee for its taste alone. Initially, we paid little attention; with our latest green-coffee buy we have improved a little. Try for instance the water-processed Costa Rica, which has an aroma of sweet candy and a good deep body. Both our Sumatra and Guatemala decafs also display desirable profiles of those origins. And then there is our Decaf Chocolate Truffle – well you have to try it for yourself to go crazy over its deep chocolate notes as we did.

Another good example is our new Harrar Longberry (Grade 4) which we sourced through Walker Coffee Trading company. It’s back to a close-to-optimal taste profile – notes of blueberry, fruit, and simply a tasty coffee.

For whom if not for our customers?

When we started Seattle Coffee Works we were focused almost entirely on espresso drinks. At first we didn’t even carry “drip coffee;” we simply brewed up coffee blended for espresso once it was too old to use in the espresso machine. When our customers wanted to buy coffee by the pound we sold them espresso blends as well. We theorized that espresso blends are superior to any “drip coffee” out there. We were wrong about that.

Through our Taste-Off 2008 we discovered that our customers much prefer blends with the medium body of the Central and South American origins. About a month ago, our Atlantic Blend was born. While it’s “smooth” we think it also has plenty of personality to please the true coffee connoisseur.

Speaking of coffee connoisseurs. Our new Chocolate Truffle blend is certified organic and shade-grown (Guatemala); did I mention it’s sumptuous?