Coffee for the Greater Good...of Business

I've often wondered what it is that people say to loan officers when they want to start a coffee business in Portland but don't have enough capital to go it alone.

"Yes I know there is a lot of coffee in Portland, but my business will be different..."

"What Portland really needs and wants is just good quality coffee..."

"What!? How many other coffee businesses are there in Portland?"

But regardless, another coffeehouse, roaster, retail brand, or coffee service company keeps popping up.

Hence, Citizen Coffee. Citizen Coffee currently only services the Ecotrust building in the Pearl District, but I imagine their ambitions are greater.

Citizen Coffee's website purports to be "the only Portland coffee venue that features Sustainable Harvest Coffee Importers direct-relationship coffee beans."

Sustainable Harvest tries to close the middleman gap between coffee farmers and roasters. It's a noble endeavor with the assumed benefit of better financial structures for the farmer and roaster. But Sustainable Harvest is themselves a for-profit company that itself would benefit from large brokered transactions from an increasing list of farms and roaster-businesses.

Back in Portland though, the same folks that bring you all those lovely Laughing Planet restaurants are the ones who now bring you Citizen Coffee. All of Citizen Coffee's pastries are baked at the Laughing Planet in the Ecotrust building or at the Laughing Planet's commissary.

Oddly enough though you can't find Citizen Coffee at any Laughing Planet location. They are still serving Portland Roasting coffee. I've been told that is only temporary and soon all Laughing Planets will serve their Citizen Coffee brand.

I also assume that eventually the roasting will be done in Portland, possibly by Laughing Planet themselves. Right now all the Citizen Coffee beans are roasted by Dillanos Coffee Roasters up in Sumner, WA.

Laughing Planet has created a fantastic brand for themselves which is the best asset a business can have. The brand is recognizable, respected and trusted among Portlanders. From the Citizen Coffee website, it seems they are continuing their reach with a great brand of coffee that is trying to stand apart from the rest of the coffee pack.

If I was an investor, Laughing Planet would seem like a good place to park my money for the time being. They have a good sense of what it takes to be a successful food company in Portland and I imagine Citizen Coffee is only one item on their long list of possible ventures for the future.

I can't say much for the actual coffee in the cup. I've only tried it once and it was served at an extremely hot temperature. As it cooled though, it seemed full-bodied and pleasant, nothing too outstanding to mention. But I will say that the Cosmic muffin I tried was pretty incredible.

The Cosmic muffin is a vegan, fruit-juice sweetened bran muffin with what looked like apricot pieces scattered throughout. All the baked goods look pretty good actually and I will probably be back soon.

Coffeehouse Northwest and BARISTA, Part I of II

Since the early 1990s the coffeehouse has grown from a niche market into a huge industry that has seen espresso consumption shoot up in popularity.

However the differences in the product being sold have become small, completely ubiquitous lacking in satisfaction.

In Portland, people have come to appreciate the small differences that make one business stand apart from another, one coffee roast better than another, one barista much more talented than the rest. Even so, the landscape of espresso and coffeehouses has become more and more flat, and the competition for consumers' dollars more and more fierce.

Location and branding may be the last two options for a coffeehouse business to set themselves apart from the competition here in Portland. Even quality and knowledge of the beans has been taken for granted in this artisan coffee town.

In taking a close look at two Portland coffeehouses, however, there is a new era in coffee approaching. Portland will be able to watch the evolution of the coffeehouse move from a cookie-cutter beverage industry into an interactive and highly variable coffee experience.

Coffeehouse Northwest

Located on the pedestrian unfriendly strip of W. Burnside, Coffeehouse Northwest is almost frustratingly uncharacteristic.

There is little pretension and pretext, but the coffee just tastes better, the baristas just try harder, and the owner, Adam McGovern, just cares a little bit more about bringing an authentic coffee-tasting experience to every customer.

For example, most coffeehouses in Portland use Stumptown's Hairbender roast with Sunshine Dairy's milk to make their drinks. However, McGovern discovered the superior taste of using Organic Valley milk mixed with Sunshine Dairy and uses it for all cappuccino drinks. Organic Valley is a more expensive milk, but the taste experience was valuable enough to make the switch.

Recently Coffeehouse Northwest made another investment to show they care about their customer's coffee experience.

At Coffeehouse Northwest you are now able to order espresso, french press, Eva Solo, Chemex, Melitta, or moka pot coffee. These are not roasts or brands of coffee, these are brewing methods of making coffee. (If you'd like to learn the differences between these methods, you can ask the baristas at Coffeehouse Northwest and they are more than happy explain the different styles.)



The hope is that there are enough people who also want to be able to make the distinction and once they do, they won't be able to go back to Albina Press or any other coffeehouse in Portland. I think the hope is that they not only will stand apart from the competition, but that they will lead the way in a whole new coffeehouse format.

Where coffeehouses have just one or two ways to enjoy coffee beans, Coffeehouse Northwest now has five.

Imagine walking into a coffeehouse at 7am and instead of hearing customers order "12 oz. latte" or "grande non-fat mocha" you hear "12 oz. Ethopian Eva Solo" or "tall Hairbender moka pot."

Some of these methods take up to four minutes of brew time before you can get your drink. The beans are specially ground for each method, water heated, coffee steeped and then served. And in many cases there are certain roasts that work best with each method, making your options for a morning beverage rise exponentially.

Sounds extremely fussy. Sounds like a gimmick to squeeze more dollars out customers. (a 12 oz. moka pot coffee costs $6) But anything you could say about this new business choice isn't something that wasn't already said about the proliferation of coffee culture across the United States in the early 1990s. And none of us would consider ourselves fussy just because it takes more than three words to describe our favorite drink.

McGovern says they are still working out a good flow to get these drinks prepared and equipment cleaned in a quick manner. There will be a slow education process to get people well-versed in the many options and delicate nuances of what they're doing behind the counter. But Coffeehouse Northwest has too big of a reputation, too much at stake, for anyone to ignore this development.

There is also a hope that this will expand the customer experience of each roast of coffee. Bringing out subtle differences in aroma and flavor and causing customers to want to possibly recreate the experience at home.

It is certainly a new approach to coffee unseen yet in the mainstream prepared coffee market.

(Part II: BARISTA, coming soon)

The Fresh Pot (Hawthorne)

I only recently discovered that you can order books from Powells.com and instead of paying for shipping, you can pick them up at any Powell's location. I picked up my two books at the Powell's on Hawthorne the other morning and then stepped into The Fresh Pot for coffee.

There always seems to be a line eeking into the bookstore boundary and I absolutely love the utilitarian design of the long bench, small tables and opposing chairs all spaced so evenly like a study hall.

There was a large selection of Sweet Pea bakery treats along with the ubiquitous Voodoos and some Pearl Bakery croissants. I chose a Marionberry muffin from Sweet Pea and a chocolate Voodoo for my coffee partner. (She was next door perusing the books on how to can any type of fruit or veg you can imagine. It is fall harvest time, after all.)

When I got to the counter and placed my coffee order I failed to notice the "No debit or credit cards" sign until my shots were already being pulled. I apologetically explained to the counterperson that I forgot it was cash only and pulled out four ones that I had off-handedly grabbed from home on the way out the door. The total for drinks alone was going to be $6.50.

She seemed unfazed and explained it was fine and I could just pay the balance the next time I was in.

I can recall another instance where a coffeehouse that I visited very often was having problems with their debit card machine and so if customer's couldn't pay cash they just wrote down what they ordered in notepad and asked people to pay next time. This seemed reasonable to me since I and almost everyone else who visited that spot were regulars.

The Fresh Pot, however, is a place I haven't been to in maybe 8 months, so I am anything but a regular. Did the counterperson just not want to deal with denying me coffee since the shots were already out and the milk was already poured? Maybe. But maybe if this happens a lot it's just as well to keep the line moving and count on the nice people of Portland to repay their debts.

But if it happens at all, isn't that reason enough to break down and get the debit card machine set-up? It does cost money, I understand. You lose a small percentage of each transaction you take everytime the machine is used (the cost of having the swipe card service and having the funds deposited directly into your company's account). Plus Visa and Mastercard themselves take a chunk out of your sales too, which is why many shops have a minimum purchase to use the debit machine.

But seeing all those tables full of paying customers and a built in customer base streaming in from the Powell's location, I can't see how denying this service is saving them loads of money. It's a hassle, it's an expense, but being a cash only location is something that keeps me out of coffeehouses all the time.

Luckily I was able to reroute my coffeepartner to the cash machine (where we had to pay the service charge to take money out of a bank that was not ours) so that we could get our pastries and settle our debt to The Fresh Pot. Everything worked out ok, the muffin was surprisingly moist and very cake-y and the coffee was, as usual, a very balanced and chocolately-tasting cup of Stumptown.

Never Too Much Information

Recently Ben Worthen posted on the Wall Street Journal's Technology Blog that:

"The first mistake that companies make when they’re designing a Web site is copying features from competitors. Bells and whistles are worthless if they don’t help a customer find what he’s looking for. Manning says that too few companies take the time to sit down with customers and find out what they’re using a Web site for and what information would make a site more helpful."

What does this have to do with coffeehouses? Businesses where customers are naturally spending a larger amount of time and money on, year after year, need to be able to tell the public as much information as possible about their business. Especially since the number of coffeehouses in Portland has reached near-saturation, the public's choices are so numerous that the smallest bit of helpful and easily accessible information can mean the difference between snagging another regular customer or watching someone walk by to the coffeehouse down the block.

Just because the purchases are smaller, doesn't make the business any less important. I think Starbucks is a pretty important business that makes its billions one $2.00 purchase at a time.

While it is true that location is still the number one reason a customer will patronize one coffeehouse over another, when there are several "near-by" coffeehouses to choose from, which one wins out and why?

Take the three coffeehouses within blocks of each other on Alberta: Random Order, Star E Rose and Concordia Coffee House. I think it's a given that if you want to find out some info on a local business, or any business, or anything in the world you are going to hit the internets first. So I did. (What else would someone do? Find the Yellow Pages?)

Star E Rose has no website that I could find. Furthermore, I didn't see any posted hours of operation when I walked by the other day. Isn't posting your hours Small Business 101? (The counterperson said they close at 10pm.)

Concordia Coffee House does have a website. They have plenty of info on their site like a list of menu items, their "coffeehouse" philosophy, and photos of the space. They even mention that they are "open late for the night owl". Fantastic! But I could find no hours of operation on the site. What does "open late" translate to in real time? Apparantly 8pm. At least those business hours were written down on paper and taped to the front window.

Random Order, however, has a smokin' website. Looks very expensive and is loaded with great graphics and tons of info on the food, coffee, art, crafts and neighborhood. Best of all they have their hours right there on the home page: "6 a.m. to 8 p.m. everyday". Except they actually close at 9pm.

In the end I stopped by Star E Rose as it was the only place left open when I was out and I dropped over $6.00 on a brownie, iced coffee and tip.

I have coffee money I want to spend! Finding a place to spend it shouldn't be hard to do.