The Lovewright Co. is a southern California-based lifestyle brand that’s teamed up with Jyumoku, another California based designer, who specializes in bags made from repurposed material to develop “The Roasters Collection.” The matching duffel and tote bag are made from salvaged military tents and contrasting burlap giving a refined quality to the idea of repurposed coffee sack bags.
I don’t know if the burlap used actually comes from repurposed coffee bags, but the aesthetic seems to have inspired the name. If you’re a roaster or green coffee buyer who travels to origin, this may be the perfect luggage to load up on your way to the farm.
A new café opened last week in Shibuya, Japan that offers a service you aren’t likely to find in many other coffee shops—laser cutting. The concept of Fab Café (meaning both fabulous and fabrication) is one of the more unique combinations of “coffee and” that I’ve seen, but makes total sense when you consider the creative clientele, like designers and architects, who want access to a laser cutter are highly likely to drink coffee.
You can reserve the VLS660 for $60 per 30 minutes, upload your vector files and start slicing your designs in wood, acrylic, and felt like a Jedi wielding a light saber. While waiting you can try their signature “Marshmallow Latte” and enjoy the bright and open space designed by Naruse-Inokuma.
The café is owned by a digital media production studio called LoftWork, who wanted to create a hub for designers who they could collaborate with in the future. By offering ample power outlets, free wifi and a laser cutter, the café slash co-working space is sure to be a popular place no matter what the coffee tastes like.
Maaemo is a restaurant in Oslo, Norway that’s been open little more than a year, and today is celebrating its addition to the Michelin guide with not one, but two stars. The restaurant celebrates local, organic and seasonal ingredients through a collaboration between chef Esben Holmboe Bang and sommelier Pontus Dahlstrøm.
Though I haven’t eaten here myself, several friends have to much praise. The reason I’m writing about their success in food is that they take their coffee just as seriously, which is far too rare among world class restaurants. From early on, they’ve been working with Tim Wendelboe to develop a coffee program that supports their Nordic menu while maintaining the quality of fine specialty coffee.
Early this year they approached me to see if they could improve their coffee service even more in their restaurant. Since the focus of Maaemo is Nordic food they were dreaming of serving traditional steeped coffee in their restaurant, just like they make coffee when hiking in the forest, etc, but did not know how to implement this technique in the restaurant.
After a brief meeting and some demonstration they came up with what I think is the most exciting coffee service I have experienced in a very long time. It is not very often you come across such a well thought out coffee concept and it is even more enjoyable that it is in a restaurant. -Tim Wendelboe
As specialty coffee continues to elevate the quality of whats available, it makes sense that the experience moves solely from cafés and coffee bars to the post-meal menu of the world’s best restaurants. All to often, a 9-course menu with every detail considered is followed by undrinkable coffee—it’s a terrible shame. With restaurants like Maaemo and Eleven Madison Park elevating coffee to the same level as their other menu items, we may soon be able to indulge in that after-dinner coffee more often.
Congratulations to Maaemo. I hope to experience you soon.
Why settle for a cup of Joe, when you can have a cup of Johan? That’s the latest pitch from Kraft-owned Gevalia Coffee. Gevalia, founded in 1853 in the northeastern city of Gävle, Sweden, was bought by Kraft Foods in 1971 and is now a grocery aisle mainstay next to brands like Nescafé. I can’t attest to Gevalia’s historical quality, but what’s available now is barely drinkable. That said, it was recently chosen by the Göteborg newspaper as the “best taste for the value” compared with 8 other commodity coffees.
However, large companies like Kraft can produce engaging ads that may or may not have anything to do with the actual quality of their product. A new campaign for Gevalia is harnessing its Swedish heritage to differentiate itself from all other bad grocery store coffee. In doing so, they’re taking the Swedish concept of Fika to a global audience.
While the video above is an entertaining, but vague introduction to Fika (not to mention annoyingly stereotypical), I recently wrote about this wonderful tradition in a bit more detail. So if Johan has piqued your interest in the art of Fika, you can read more about it—along with much better coffee—over on Nordic Coffee Culture.
During my first visit to Sweden, long before deciding to move here, I knew that I could adjust quite well to Nordic culture due to its lovely traditions like fika—the Swedish coffee break.
Last weekend was the 4th and last regional Barista Cup of the year in Sweden. For this round, the barista competitions were combined with an all day public event called Coffee Feast GBG, organized by da Matteo and held at their roastery.
We have a simple idea with the event – to make it more public and more enjoyable for many more than just us avid coffee people.
The free event included a multi-roaster coffee lab in the morning and an evening party with food, drinks and live music. Best of all, they organized a Lunch Beat to warm up the crowd before the barista competitions began in the afternoon.
The first rule of Lunch Beat is everybody must dance.
The second rule of Lunch Beat is everybody must dance.
And so on…
This is how Sweden rolls.
I’m sorry I missed out. Coffee Common really needs more dancing.
When your coffee company’s market value is $27 Billion, you can afford to hire world renown architects to design your cafés. In 2008, Starbucks worked with Japanese-born Kengo Kuma & Associates to build a new location near Dazaifu Tenman-gū, a major Shinto shrine first built in 905. Kuma’s goal to reinterpret traditional Japanese architecture for the 21st century is apparent throughout his work, which takes a macro look at woven sticks of wood to create a dynamic fluidity within the space.
The building is made of 2,000 stick-like parts in the sizes of 1.3m – 4m length and 6cm section. Total length of the sticks reached as far as 4.4km. We had experimented the weaving of sticks for the project of Chidori and GC Prostho Museum Research Center, and this time we tried the diagonal weaving in order to bring in a sense of direction and fluidity. Three sticks are joined at one point in Chidori and GC, while in Starbucks four steps come to one point because of the diagonal—a more complicated joint. –ArchDaily
This really is an incredible looking shop—now if only it served better coffee.
John Giannakos, a barista from Vancouver who joined the Coffee Common team at TED, took time between working on bar to shoot this incredible video of Coffee Common moments throughout the week. It captures so much with so little. It’s a lovely vignette of both the professionalism and fun that takes place at Coffee Common. This was another inspiring week spent with incredible people who also happen to make spectacular coffee.
Thanks to everyone for being a part of this and making it so damn awesome.
William LeGoullon is an Arizona-based artist and photographer who also happens to be inspired by the bean. A recent project called “Coffee Roasting Phases” was prompted by his experience working as a barista at Cartel Coffee Lab in Tempe, AZ. It’s a strikingly simple composition revealing the physical changes coffee beans go through in the roasting process and it’s currently on exhibit at the Eye Lounge Gallery in Phoenix.
It’s fascinating to look at the fine details of something we handle each day, but rarely stop to inspect the subtleties. These photos really capture a unique perspective of coffee at a scale uncommon in our daily coffee routine. I would love to see a large print of this on a light box in a café somewhere. It serves as a good reminder of the craft behind each bean. Hopefully your coffee doesn’t resemble anything close to that last one.
In the last week or so, you may have seen me posting a link and asking for your vote to help send me to Vienna—some of you have enthusiastically obliged. Thank you all!
For those who haven’t yet voted, I want to explain the contest and how you can help. Natvia, an all-natural sweetener company, and their partners, are giving away 8 trips to the World Barista Championship this summer in Vienna. In the past, I’ve covered several coffee events on DCILY and there will be many more to come—all of which are paid for out-of-pocket. It would be great to have my travel and lodging covered for one of these coffee escapades while sharing more great content with DCILY readers. Help me represent coffee lovers everywhere at this year’s WBC.
To help out, just register and vote once (it will only take a minute of your time).
Step 2: Validate your email address by clicking on the link emailed to you. Step 3:Visit my profile and click the heart to show DCILY some love.
Bonus: Everyone who registers to vote also has a chance to win $1000.
I’m already in the lead thanks to everyone’s support—let’s keep it going!
There will also be challenges throughout the contest where I’ll be humbly sharing my (lack of) latte art skills and more. Once you’re registered you’ll be able to vote for these too if you’d like to show extra support. So if you’ve ever spent time enjoying the content here on DCILY help send me to Vienna where I can continue to bring you even more.
A website launched on Friday announcing a new company that plans to export Scandinavian coffee culture to a city near you. Simply named “Scandinavian Coffee House” the company is opening its flagship store and head office in Ålesund, Norway—the town where I attended a coffee and chocolate pairing last fall. There are already plans to open stores in New York and Tokyo this year, while also searching for franchise partners in the Middle East, China and India.
The SCH brand has built itself upon the great pillars of Scandinavian life, which include design, nature, heritage and coffee. With the coffee aspect focusing on the very small percentage of very well regarded coffee that you can find here. They have partnered with Robert Thoresen—the owner of Kaffa roastery in Oslo and the very first World Barista Champion—to select and roast coffee under the SCH label.
The SCH website, which is quite beautiful, talks about seasonal coffee, the importance of their roast style and their commitment to brewing each drink individually. In many ways, this seems like the first attempt to launch a coffee chain built on progressive coffee ideals (as opposed to a progressive shop becoming a chain).
If they can stay true to their core principles and maintain quality control, this seems like a great way to reach a broader market of the coffee drinking public. My biggest concern would be how they maintain quality control and freshness of the roasted coffee that’s being shipped to places far from Norway—like Tokyo and India. Will there be a roasting facility and trained roaster included with each new franchise?
The website is currently just a teaser, with no real photos of their cafés (since they’ve yet to open), but it has definitely grabbed my attention. The website itself is one of the nicer ones you’ll come across in the coffee world, the samples of their custom furniture look fantastic, and the photos of nature remind me why I moved to Sweden.
However, after spending time reading through all the content, I’m left wondering why SCH isn’t focusing on spreading the joy of Scandinavian coffee within Scandinavia. While we are spoiled here with roasters like Kaffa, Tim Wendelboe, Koppi, da Matteo, Coffee Collective, among others—majority of the coffee served in a traditional Nordic coffee house is not what I would like to have representing my heritage.
It’s wonderful that they want to share the incredible aspects of Scandinavia with the rest of the world, but sometimes I think people should have to come here to experience it. After all, that’s what adventure is all about.
