Brooklyn’s not-so-indie coffee
16:34
Paulo Pedroso 2013
Those who cross the Williamsburg Bridge,
escaping from Manhattan through the Lower East Side, won’t
have any trouble finding good coffee when they arrive in Brooklyn. The district
that has attracted inhabitants seduced by a less
frenetic and, at least for now, less expensive lifestyle than the famous island
next door, has been occupied by coffee shops that take the beverage seriously. Beyond
providing technical information such as the name of the variety and the origin
of the beans, many of them, such as Blue Bottle Coffee, originally from
California, and Toby's Estate Coffee, from Australia, maintain small
laboratories with micro roasting within the customer’s view. Also, both of them
already have operations in dozens of other locations and have recently landed
in Williamsburg, the Brooklyn neighborhood that has been earning attention by
concentrating an effervescent scene of small enterprises of gastronomy, fashion
and art. However, further scrutiny reveals that the coffee business in this
region is not small at all and, indeed, the ambitions of the players go well beyond
the Hudson Bridge.
Born in New Jersey, the American
John Moore has watched the development of the new trend of coffee shops that began
to invade Manhattan less than a decade ago and recently crossed the bridge. In
2013, after working in this business for over twenty years, he took over as CEO
for the group FAL Coffee, which is based in New York and is the owner of several
companies operating in the coffee market. One of his first assignments was to
participate in the acquisition of two farms in southern Minas Gerais, one in
Ouro Fino and the other in Carmo de Minas. "I think that besides the
unquestionable quality, Brazilian coffees offer a wide range of possibilities
that go beyond the stereotypical flavors of the beverage. The beans travel from
Brazil straight to roasters in Brooklyn, from where they leave with our brand
Nobletree. By the beginning of 2015 we will open the first stores selling
directly to the end consumer. We want to deliver a product of excellence and
therefore apply the concept of vertical integration, where we are producers,
roasters and baristas”. The ease with their plans advance is explained by the fact
that FAL Coffee is just another arm of the FAL Holdings, a large Saudi
conglomerate based in Riyadh.
The specialty coffee market refers
to when the raw material acquires value due to care and attention to detail
received from the field to the cup. Many of these lots are traded directly
between roasters and farmers and no longer treated as a commodity on the
trading floors. In the U.S., this movement gained momentum from the last decade
of the century initially in cities like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and
Chicago, where the first Premium coffee roasting appeared and where the barista
profession first rose to prominence. In New York, where this movement is more
recent, the next big thing is Brooklyn. That's where beginners can roast their
beans at the Pulley Collective, a roaster with a shared business model that
rents space and roasting machines for half-day periods. The company founded by Steve
Mierisch, who is a descendent of a family of coffee producers in Nicaragua, is
fueling the market so that their schedules are taken not only by those who have
no capital to start a business alone, but by incumbents , who are exchanging
the high costs of doing one’s own roasting for investments in buying high
quality beans.
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