THE VIEW

Welcome to CoffeeTalk’s

2021 Winter Issue. We are excited to share industry expert’s experience to help your achieve success in your businesses.

Our Editor-in-Chief, Jake Leonti, has put together an exciting package of editorial around Cold Brew success stories to inspire and educate including how Groundwork Coffee achieved brand success in grocery, Bkon’s cold brew technology breakthrough, NOBL Beverages’ focus on innovation and Coffee Nitro’s UK achievements through innovation. I think my favorite quote from these articles is from Connor Roelke, “To win in beverage is not to conform to the rigidity built by the giants of yesterday. There is nothing that matters to specialty coffee more than building exceptional experiences for customers.”

Another compelling topic near and dear to my heart is addressed by Rocky Rhodes as poses the question, ‘What is coffee worth?’ He suggests a more thoughtful pricing model would start with, ‘How much does it cost to produce?’ Only after that information is known can one determine what is needed to make a reasonable profit and a sustainable life for the farmer. I very much appreciate Karl Seidel’s article on Boosted Profits, more important than ever in today’s challenging economic environment.

And finally, Mark Linderman shares an inspiration tale of his Journey in Coffee, reminding us that coffee is what bonds family, friends and even strangers. “Coffee, for me, is a gesture of hospitality and goodwill to be shared. I am truly blessed to share a bit of happiness with my healthcare brothers and sisters through the joy of coffee! Great coffee has always brought me happiness, and this is what I intend to spread through my roasting.”

CoffeeTalk Magazine THE VIEW

{ Cold Brew to the Rescue }

KERRI GOODMAN & JAKE LEONTI

Kerri

{Only a year ago. It was not unusual for a coffee roaster to

be focused entirely on a single revenue stream that aligned with their production line. Anyone solely focused on foodservice customers or retail cafes paid the price for putting all their eggs in one basket.

The companies that had already diversified their revenue streams and insulated their businesses through various sales channels have managed to weather the storm. Cold-brew and other RTD coffee beverages played an enormous role in keeping many coffee businesses afloat.

Cold-brew has been the single most significant product innovation in coffee since espresso. Its growth has been so tremendous that it is almost a guaranteed success if you already have a successful brand. Variations on recipes, added ingredients, and packaging formats leave an open field for boundless interpretations. Cold-brew has allowed small brands to create a national presence and large brands to build a new revenue pipeline with little investment risk as it requires no added equipment or training and very little care to maintain.

This beverage category has become ‘the Little Can That Could,’ and it continues to grow. As people shelter in place and do the majority of their shopping online, cold brew, RTD, and shelf-stable products are the low-hanging fruit. Every coffee company should have a product in this category as part of their offering, and that is why this issue is dedicated to this beloved beverage. JakeCOFFEETALK MAGAZINE

We got this one in the bag.

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GROWING UP

{ Building Bridges between Coffee & Beverage }

CONNOR ROELKE | CEO, NOBL BEVERAGES

When we put the final screw

in our first walk-in cooler, we backed up to admire our handiwork. Standing before us was a freshly built eight-foot-tall plywood box, complete with insulation and spray foam, perfectly encapsulating two large stainless tanks of cold brew coffee. Precariously bolted to the side was a large air conditioning unit, modified to run nearly continuously, serving as the refrigeration source for our crude walk-in cooler. I was concerned that the floor could not support the weight, but that was a problem for later. We had kegs to fill and orders to deliver.

It's not hard to remember our first facility because there was not much to remember. In the back half of a photography studio, situated in the sleepy town of Newmarket, New Hampshire, we produced twenty-eight kegs of coffee per day. Those kegs had to be delivered the very next day, considering our limited cold storage. If we didn't have orders, we would stop by our highest volume coffee shops and convince the owners to take them. We knew, and they knew, that they would need them soon; it was nearly impossible to keep up with the steady stream of customers itching to try our signature Nitro Cold Brew. It was 2015, practically a lifetime ago, when you consider the incredible growth that ready-to-drink specialty coffee has seen.

Over the past few years, the scale has changed by a factor of 10. From our humble roots of 340 square feet, we're now on our third facility, a 34,000 square foot state-of-the-art beverage plant. We've built each facility from the ground up, allowing us to incorporate scaled beverage processes and systems that bring perfectionism to extraction and packaging. Regardless of the medium - bulk, bag-in-box, bottles, or cans, every beverage we produce here is done with exacting precision. In building our facility, we created a coldchain distribution system to support our products and our partners' products in the Northeast. We had to. We could not bear the compromise that shelf stability brought to our beverages. I imagine most professionals in specialty coffee that have pursued packaged beverages have come to a similar conclusion.

NOBL Beverages is not a specialty coffee company; we are expert brewers. It is simply not possible to be exceptional in beverage and exceptional in roasting, so we chose the former. Coffee is an art, and I am not an artist. But all good artists need support, galleries to display their work, and studios to practice their craft. We are both of these to our artist partners. We have brought logic, order, and perfectionism to specialty beverage production, precisely the type of partnership that allows for the best-packaged beverages on earth. The beverage industry continues to be driven by the titans of sugar-filled soft drinks and cleverly branded tap water. To compete in that space and make a real difference, quality and genuine innovation are the only way forward. The coffee industry can finally bridge the gap between specialty coffee and beverage, and we've collectively allowed for real disruption in the space.

To win in beverage is not to conform to the rigidity built by the giants of yesterday. There is nothing that matters to specialty coffee more than building exceptional experiences for customers. To construct these experiences is to avoid all compromises. Leaving quality behind when freshly roasted coffee leaves the view of your roast-master is a sacrifice that we do not need to make, even with the arm-twisting of archaic distribution systems and rigid retailers.

There can be room on the shelves for specialty coffee in the broader beverage category by staying focused on beverage quality. Big Beverage is not paying attention, which is a perplexing proposition in the context of the craft beer revolution. It's time to make our mark on the non-alcoholic space.