Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/673312
one, and then we take what we've learned back to the original. We're evolving and the market is too. I personally love the diversity in our industry and the variety of companies out there," she said. "I love to try different coffees myself. The increasing diversity in our industry can only make our customers more interested in having a great cup of coffee as often as possible, and the more people know about coffee and the different roasters out there, the more they will appreciate the folks who do a better job." The same is true on the supply side, a micro roaster simply doesn't have the range of motion a larger company does in its ability to source coffee and influence dealers and farmers to sell to them, much less at prices that are favorable. Many specialty roasters have chosen to grow not because they necessarily want to make more money but because they believe they can solve some serious challenges to main- taining their quality standards through greater size. Obviously, from the day a small roast- er opens its doors the temptations to grow, if the original operation is the least bit successful, are intense. To open a small roastery with the ambition to stay small almost requires experience within a larger coffee company or companies to know the difference and make a conscious choice between two completely valid but very different options. This effort to better define the term "micro roaster" is not an argument for or against making the choice to build and maintain such a business. Rather, this is an attempt to appreciate both types of business for their strengths and advantages to their owners and customers. Opting for a Lower Profile Deaton Pigot, who founded Take Flight Coffee in Los Angeles and formerly worked at Toby's Estate Coffee, Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea and Brewleys, Ltd., doesn't plan to start out tiny and stay there, but neither does he have plans, or illusions, that his company will dominate a market where the competition for the specialty coffee drinker is vibrant and the existing purveyors are some of the best in the country. "There is the genuine micro roaster who might have one or three cafés and roast for themselves without thinking too hard about wholesale. They are in it for the love of the café and coffee culture and are interested in cus- tomers who love their coffee and are highly accomplished business owners who take care of themselves. They are happy to exist at 1,500 to 2,000 lbs a week, and within that they can have a great life/work ratio." Pigot's initiative presents a new and almost reciprocal model to the micro roaster of 25 or even 15 years ago, that of an outsider to the coffee business falling in love with coffee and deciding to go for it with everything they had…and while "everything" may have included a lot of resources and experience, it often did not include a lot of knowledge about coffee. We are seeing more experienced coffee professionals opt for a lower key profile, in terms of their size, but with almost more at risk personally because it is often not their brand or their business name that gets the press. No matter what he called his company, Pigot is the one who will be opening the doors—and his colleagues in the trade and quite a few coffee drinkers are looking forward to it, not because of the fairly charming company name, but because they know they'll get a good cup of coffee at the hands of Deaton Pigot, not a newbie, but a seasoned professional. It's not the brand that's as important for micro roasters as the model. As the market for fine coffee becomes more granulated, some coffee drinkers are gain- ing the confidence to decide that they love the coffee that a guy is roasting down the block or across the country and they will either walk or order online the coffee they want to drink for the next week. Likewise, a few restaurant managers and chefs are resigning themselves to serving good coffee and even bothering to look into it enough to make the determination that they'll buy their own brewing and grinding equipment. What's more, they'll pay top dollar, maybe even retail, for a particular coffee that they believe is best suited for their establishment. Redefining "Micro Roaster" The idea that a roaster might go through two and a half truckloads of coffee (a hun- dred thousand pounds) a year and still be considered "micro" doesn't work anymore. Nor does it work to find a term smaller than micro...Would calling the itsy-bitsy roasters "nano" work? No, no, no. When you start talking nano, you're measuring out the internal dimensions of an atom, and your L12 is going to be the size of a few protons—and that's ridiculous. Let's stick with micro and just take the trouble to remember what it means: (relatively) really small. That you'd need a microscope to see that enterprise is metaphor enough. Now that that's settled, it becomes apparent in today's market, that a micro roaster cannot be a company with a staff of twenty or more, nor can it have more than a few (maybe) locations, nor can it have more than a handful of wholesale accounts. It'd be nice if the coffee was sourced and roasted mostly by the owner, and even brewed by the owner, served by the owner, described by the owner—now, THAT's micro. Yes, it has disadvantages to do it that way: it limits potential net 30 Tea & Coffee Trade Journal | www.teaandcoffee.net micro roasters COVER STORY Chef Charles Olalia of Rice Bar. Deaton Pigot, founder of Take Flight Coffee in Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of Take Flight Coffee Photo courtesy of Timothy J. Castle