Coffee is the greatest storytelling medium
It is the thing that we meet over to get to know each other
when we really want to get to know each other
I love New York City
and New York City is the city of the [inaudible]
"Let's catch up over coffee"
And that's the thing that we tell our stories over
And then coffee itself has such a beautiful story
that I find that people get really drawn into that
not only just as a product and as a beverage
but the place that it has in our lives
Everybody drinks coffee
and everybody drinks it differently
You have it at a very vulnerable part of the day
It can really frame how at least the morning will unfold
if not the entire day
So if you can turn that moment
into something that's very aesthetic
and very beautiful, and very pleasing
and that makes you happy
how can you not?
How can you not do that every morning?
I have a complicated relationship with coffee
I'm not an aficionado
but I can't drink dollar coffee
Oh yeah, I ask my customer "Do you want a coffee?"
If they say yes, I put it right away sugar
If I want to more tasty coffee the customer come back
I put three sugar
Generally coffee, diplomatically I would say
that people should drink coffee however they like to
but for me personally I just couldn't do it
It makes me so existentially sad
I don't need to know where the coffee comes from
I don't need to know all the aromatic notes of the coffee
But I definitely appreciate it
if it means that I don't have to drink a dollar coffee
then I'm very grateful
Cupping's about 100 years old now
At first it was just as a way to differentiate
bad coffees from good coffee
and in the last 20 or 30 years
a point system has been assigned to coffee
and anything that's over 80 points
is considered to be a specialty coffee
We really look for coffees that are 84 and 85 points
Like anything else that you drink
you have flavor receptors all over your mouth
so you just want to get it everywhere
So that's why we slurp coffee
We're just trying to get some more air in there
A normal day for a neighborhood shop in New York
is busier than the busiest day for the busiest shop
in many cities around the world
And in the last 10 years we've gone
from maybe two or three well-known specialty shops
to maybe 75 to 100.
People want to know the person
making the thing that they're eating or drinking
and coffee is a neighborhood thing
Bringing together people into a community space
has always been really important to me
We're your daytime bartenders
We know your child's name we know where you work
And if you work really hard to make everybody feel accepted
to make everybody feel comfortable
it's a much better business model
than only wanting to serve people who have tattoos
and are between the ages of 25 and 30 and live in Williamsburg
The method you should go with
is the method that you're liking at that moment
I'll make an aeropress for two or three weeks
and that's what I'm doing every morning
And one morning I'm just not doing it, it's not clicking
It's like when you have a pair of jeans that you really liking
and you end up wearing the same pants over and over again
because you like how they feel you like how they fit
And that's what I find with coffee
For me, coffee is something where
I don't know, I kind of want it fast
and then for me I can just get to work
and that part of my day is sort of done
And at the end of the day
you just want something in your hand that tastes great
At the end of the day it's just a cup of coffee