On Main Street in the mornings when I
get there at like 6:00 in the morning
it's really nice and quiet and the only thing you can really hear is when the tracks are coming by ...
There's not a lot of people. It's nice and cool in the shop
and the lights are still half off — it's really nice.
What I like about being in a
coffee shop is the interaction with
people you realize you are getting to
know people. Eventually that person is starting to feel comfortable in this
shop it's almost like feeling comfortable in a home.
Howard Schultz coined the term "the third place." It's
this place that's a stable part of people's lives that's like in between
home and work. It's familiar it's
comfortable it's friendly and I think
the coffee shop really embodies that.
There's a strong cultural value
inside the coffee industry of just openness in it and so I think
Salt Lake really exemplifies that. I think the people of Salt Lake really do
like to be warm and welcoming and open
to a lot of different people.
Experiencing something new is kind of the most magical thing that can happen
to coffee. But with coffee you might have kind of your style dialed to a certain
extent and you think okay I know how to
pull a good shot of espresso and then
you go somewhere else and you see them making all the things you would never do
and you taste it and it's incredible and
it turns out there's just a lot of good ways to make coffee.
To me it's really a question of
What does it taste like? That is all that's
important and so often we try to think of the rules to coffee — to what makes it
good — but I think frankly we don't know the rules yet.
There's no one thing that makes an amazing cup of coffee.
It's the whole life of that seed down to the
preparation that makes it good and it
requires somebody who really cares on
the production end too.
I consider the roasting my art but all
these other people have to touch it to
make a completed product. So I rely on
the farmer to make a really good product.
I then rely on the importer to treat it properly when they bring it here and
then I have to do my piece with it but
then I also have to hand it off to a
barista and trust that they have the
knowledge and expertise to finish the art.
It's a collaboration in an artistic
sense that's really cool.
One of my favorite things is to look out
into the cafe and see all these
different people you'd never see in the
same room together. I have seen
businesses blossom I've seen romances
blossom, I've seen businesses crash.
I've seen romances crash. I'm sure babies have
resulted from conversations that have
happened here.
This is about people who live here
trying to just create the things they love.
I mean we set out to embrace what
we love about Salt Lake and and bring
new things here rather than, you know, try
and copy what's going on anywhere else.
People come in every day and are
surprised that we even have coffee.
And not only do we have coffee, we have
really good coffee.
You have a place [in Salt Lake] that is like a blank canvas
There's no preconceived notions about
what it's supposed to be or how you're
supposed to do it and to me that's much
more powerful for creating something new.
When we start to talk about things like
coffee scenes and coffee culture, I like
to think of it as coffee community.
It's just a great thing where you can express
yourself and not be wrong ... probably no
matter what you do.