Trailhead Coffee Roasters in Portland, Oregon may embody all things that come to mind when you think of the Pacific Northwest, coffee, bikes, and all the beautiful parks to explore. They’ve worked with Metrofiets to have a custom cargo bike designed and built to carry around large loads of coffee that pretty much embodies their company mantra:
Trailhead Coffee Roasters was created to combine our passions in life: great coffee, being outdoors, strong communities and being good stewards to the earth.
The company gives back to its community locally and globally through Kiva and by providing coffee to bike races and commuter events around town, which probably gives them ample opportunities to take this beauty out for a spin. While I’ve never had their coffee, I’d love to try their Guatemala –”Our latest addition. Three words: Chocolate Raspberry Truffle. Amazing.” Sounds like it!
The third and final video from the Intelligentsia series created by Dpt4D. Check out the others about espresso and syphon brewing.
While we’re on the subject of Intelligentsia, a big Congratulations to Michael Phillips, who was crowned the 2010 World Barista Champion last month in London. Phillips lives in Chicago and works at Intelli as the Director of Education, where he oversees the training of all the other fantastic baristas in their ranks.
It’s because of this fine company, the coffee they roast and the baristas who make it, that I love coffee so much. Before I wandered into their Broadway cafe one cold winter day in Chicago, I thought the only good thing about coffee was the caffeine. But the shot pulled for me that afternoon opened my eyes to the amazing world of specialty coffee that I was completely unaware of until then. So thank you, and keep up the fantastic work!
A good friend of mine recently met Tim Duren at the farmer’s market in Tuscaloosa, AL. Tim’s normal fare are Snapdragons (the flowers) but he recently began roasting coffee to sell at the farmer’s market. This is great news for anyone in West Alabama, because it’s a coffee desert otherwise, with the closest quality roaster 70 miles away in Birmingham. So my friend kindly sent two roasts my way to try out, and to sum things up, Tim has a bright future ahead of him. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this new roaster, but Tim’s El Salvador is one of the best cups I’ve had since being in NYC this spring.
— Tim’s Custom Roasted Coffee: Organic El Salvador
Whole Bean
Coker, AL
205-333-1234
Aroma: The ground beans were rich as Fort Knox with a sweet scent of chocolate and a handful of nuts. Once brewed the aromas became more complex and very sweet. Caramel and hints of vanilla were very present and the dry nutty scent was blended into the creamy aroma of peanut butter without the jelly.
Taste: My initial sip was met with a lively brightness, like a spoonful of grapefruit on a quite Saturday morning. The shine of the first sip smoothed into a nutty aftertaste that evolved more and more into dry cocoa as it cooled. A very pleasant and smooth, full body swells from the cup, filling my mouth as a warm marshmallow would after roasting lightly on a camp fire.
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I’m generally not a fan of Colombian coffees, and while this was more enjoyable than most, it was still kind of boring.
Aroma: The dry grounds were surprisingly floral with hints of fruit and nuts. After being brewed the aroma was surprisingly dull without providing much of anything aside from a slight hint of orange peel. The cup became very flat and unexciting to me.
Taste: Though the aroma offered no enticement, my first sip was pleasantly accented with a citrus zest followed by slightly salted walnuts washed down with a nice slightly sweet finish. As the cup cooled the brightness was more pronounced and the flavors became much more complex with chocolate and a dry wine finish that rounded out this medium body brew.
Able recently sent me photos of the new packaging they worked on for One Village Coffee. While I plan on tasting this coffee as soon as I settle down from my summer travels (the reason for a lack of recent updates), I couldn’t wait to post their beautiful coffee bags. They’ve already made the rounds on The Dieline, Lovely Package, and even Swiss Miss (a huge honor) and all for good reason.
The colors work great together and set a much more welcoming tone than the dark earthy colors normally used by coffee companies. The information draws you in to really engage and educate the customer about the company. The hand drawings carry over well into the website—although a little overwhelming at times—it maintains enough hierarchy to easily navigate through all the information on the site. Can’t wait to taste what’s inside!
Our hope is that the bag provides multiple touch points for customers who want to learn more about the company and get more involved. We are currently working on manifesting the “village” experience online, on university campuses, in grocery stores, and farmer’s markets. –via Lovely Package
In this ongoing series about coffee branding, I’ve decided to begin with one of the best roasters in the US, Stumptown Coffee. Portland, Oregon based Stumptown was founded in 1999 by Duane Sorenson, who cares deeply about his coffee. The brand itself has been built on his passion for quality. No logo, aesthetic, packaging, or marketing can capture the word-of-mouth buzz that transcends the taste of their product.
Packaging: There is no universal style to the Stumptown brand. Instead, an understated, but eclectic voice weaves itself through the various elements—beginning with their bags. For a company once credited with having the most valuable stock of coffee beans, you’d think more money would be spent dressing them. However, Stumptown choose a simple brown bag with a slight modification, a pocket. The slit in the front of the bag allows a color-coded card to be slipped in, displaying the type of bean, while the rest of the card contains information on the bean’s origin, elevation, and flavors. This modest, but functional packaging is a humble proclamation of the companies confidence in its product.
One thing I really appreciate about Stumptown’s branding, is that they’ve avoided the largest cliché in coffee branding, what I call the “origin aesthetic.” Coffee only grows in countries within the “coffee belt” roughly bordered by the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, so every company selling coffee gets it from similar cultural regions. It’s difficult to “own” tribal patterns, native color palettes, or photos of the locals, when anyone of your competitors can do the same. It’s an overused and therefore meaningless way to tell your customers who you are—think bottled water and images of mountain springs, no one cares.
Company Responsibility: When companies do use origin images, it often seems like it’s only purpose is to exploit the perception of the local population to increase coffee sales, instead of genuinely helping them. Stumptown however, has gone above and beyond most in the industry to establish relationships and pay above fair trade prices for coffee. They also work intensively with farmers to improve the quality, and thus the value of their crop. In 2006, Duane also founded a non-profit organization in Rwanda that builds and maintains cargo bikes to help coffee farmers deliver their crop. Yet, they’ve chosen not to exploit any of this in their branding or marketing, they do it because they believe it’s right.
Cafés: I’ve only been to a couple Stumptown cafés, but I found them both to have a similar ambiance, even though they were quite different. The atmosphere captures a slight steampunk vibe, with dark woods contrasting against the shine of the La Marzocco espresso machines. The barista’s were casually dressed like members of an indie band, except at the Ace Hotel in NYC where the baristas resemble the cast of the Newsies. While the environment will quickly be dubbed “hipster” by some, I think the latter is a fun and sophisticated twist on a bygone era. It makes visiting the café as much of an experience as drinking Stumptown coffee. If you want commodity comfort, look elsewhere.
Collateral: What I find most successful about the Stumptown brand, is the freedom and flexability it has established. All of the collateral has a unique aesthetic, designed with the brand in mind, but not dependent on anything designed previously. Each item is considered and fits comfortably into an invisible aura that Stumptown has created for itself. This characteristic has successfully allowed the brand to be placed within various lifestyles instead of trying to create one itself.
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Coffee is a huge industry—the second largest commodity in the world after oil—and Stumptown is one company treating it differently. While I know there have been others in the past, most have let their concern for the quality in the cup slip. Stumptown meanwhile, has been a master of making that their greatest concern, which is more valuable than anything good branding can do.
However, Starbucks has recently launched a fun new campaign to promote VIA, their instant coffee. The new website allows you to virtually and physically (through the use of a coupon) share a customized mug of VIA with a friend. While I’m no fan of instant coffee, I did review VIA last December and sadly, it’s better than Starbucks drip coffee. But all of my coffee snobbery aside, I do appreciate the design and—to a certain extent—the marketing behind the company. Starbucks has a solid in-house design group in Seattle and they consistently turn out high quality packaging, collateral, and emotion driven campaigns.
This new campaign does just that, while utilizing social media, customization, and mugs—which I love—and something many coffee drinkers have an intimate connection with. Now, if only Starbucks would start using them again in all of their stores, we could begin to stop wasting billions of paper cups each year (atleast they’re trying!).
The recent Seattle’s Best re-branding uproar has encouraged me to begin a series of posts I’ve had brewing for a while now. I plan to look at the leading coffee roasters and discuss their brand, packaging, and why I think they are or are not successful.
Coffee is a huge commodity, and for many people, buying coffee is as overwhelming as picking out a bottle of wine. When a customer can’t distinguish the subtleties in taste, they are left to rely on their remaining senses to help make decisions.
The way a brand of coffee represents itself in a cafe or on the supermarket shelf will determine how its perceived before you even have a chance to taste it. In the coming weeks I’ll discuss a variety of ways different coffee companies have positioned themselves to stand out in such a saturated market.
I recently discovered this thanks to Mike Crimmin’s great review of it on Daily Shot of Coffee. As a designer, my first response is to call it a BS marketing scheme hoping to capitalize on the provocation this brand invokes. Like the Cocaine Energy drink, it rides on the back of drug references, but Meth Coffee take it a step further with the entire company shrouded in a seedy lab of mystery. Using the language of pushers and videos of meth head coffee junkies freebasing the product, it takes coffee to a place where I’ve never seen it before, which is itself an inspiring feat. Though I wouldn’t consider myself a part of the intended market—I find the drug references to be dopey—I’m sure there are enough college guys and metal heads to keep “The Roaster” in business.
There’s only one blend and it’s laced with a bit of Yerba Mate for an extra caffeine kick. Mike gave its taste a fair review, but I’ve read elsewear that the Mate makes it a bit sour. Oh, and the State of Illinois banned it for glorifying drug culture.
In light of my comments yesterday, regarding coffee companies who work to improve the lives of farmers, I wanted to share one who is doing just that—connecting farmers with the consumers of their product. These relationships help educate the farmers and the consumer on many levels as well as help build a new sense of appreciation for the whole coffee system.
Last week I met with Emily Kerr of Liga Masiva and was extremely inspired by her heart for the Dominican Republic and the farmers who live there. While holding down a day job, she has successfully built and continued to grow Liga Masiva. Emily’s relationships with the farmers are as sincere as family and the passion expelled when she talks about her work is contagious.
While Liga Masiva is sold and brewed mainly in Dominican populated cafe’s in Washington Heights (NYC) as a way to connect customers with their DR roots, they have also begun reaching people though online sales, including a coffee subscription club. My favorite part, is the subscribers get postage-paid postcards each month to send messages directly to the farmers. Such an awesome way to show the coffee producers your appreciation and remind yourself of the families you are supporting.
