Do Multiple Roasters Give Coffee Houses Too Much Variety?

by Erin Meister, Posted Mar 10th 2010 @ 11:00AM

coffee beans Photo: sean dreilinger, Flickr

What if walking into a coffee shop were more like stepping into your local wine store? Imagine if you could peruse brews from different regions, processed and prepared by different growers and roasters -- just as you can scan the bottles for a spicy Spanish red or a crisp French Riesling. Would you feel empowered or overwhelmed?

Some boutique coffee shops are banking on the idea that more is more, with cafe owners adopting almost a curator's eye toward the caffeinated offerings. But is this a passing fad or the next wave in coffee connoisseurship?

Read on after the jump to hear what some coffee people think.

"We're a bit obsessive about our coffee, so we're always keen to try everything that the top companies are buying and roasting," says Rachel Haughey, owner of Darien, Conn.'s espresso NEAT, a thoughtfully curated, quality-focused cafe that highlights coffees from several different roasters on a brew-by-the-cup menu. "By working with multiple roasters, we're able to provide a much wider selection, displaying not only different origins but also different roasting styles."

Customers at NEAT can choose from a menu of up to four different drip coffees -- each brewed to order -- and are often helped through the (sometimes seemingly impossible) decision by one of the cafe's passionate baristas. "We're constantly sampling coffees to find the ones that we'd be most excited to drink and serve," Haughey says.

Humberto Ricardo, owner of one of Manhattan's up-and-coming high-quality coffee shops, Third Rail, is also trying to suss out the idea of featuring more than one company's coffee in a way that works for the shop, which primarily uses Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea alongside "guest" coffees. At Third Rail, patrons have an option for both their drip coffee and their espresso -- though they might not realize how much thought goes into the beans that ultimately go into their cup.

"We're still feeling our way through a lot of this, but we're more or less keeping Stumptown's Hair Bender on as an espresso-in-residence," Ricardo says, crediting the New York Times' Oliver Strand for the coinage. "We're defaulting to [Intelligentsia's] Black Cat for milk-based drinks and [Stumptown's] Hair Bender for straight shots and Americanos. We'll use whatever coffee someone wants to make any drink, and sometimes the barista will make a judgment call based on what he or she feels is tasting best at the moment.... [But] it's part of our philosophy not to impose our philosophies."

With quality as a focus, cafe directors who don't feel tied to one supplier or the other are free to explore many of the best options available. Haughey says, "We're brewing each cup to order, doing our best to do justice to the beans, and our customers enjoy being able to choose from our rotating selection. I believe that we will certainly see more multi-roaster shops going forward." And we already do: Portland, Ore.'s Barista, and both Manhattan's Cafe Grumpy and Kaffe 1668 brew beans from near and far.

What do you think: Would you rather pick your own joe from a menu, or do you think that high-quality cafes should simplify, simplify, simplify? Let us know in the comments.

Erin Meister trains baristas for North Carolina-based Counter Culture Coffee and sporadically maintains the blog Meet the Press Pot from her home in New York City. This is part of a series for the caffeine-addicted.

Filed Under: Trends, Coffee
Tags: coffee, coffee beans, coffee shop, coffee trends, CoffeeBeans, CoffeeShop, featured

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

3-10-2010 @6:35PM Anna said... Personally, I would love to be able to choose from a wide variety of coffees. Some of the best coffee I have ever had was from a small cafe that had adopted this idea! Each variety was listed along with its region(s) and the various flavors the more discerning addicts would be able to taste. It was delightful!
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3-10-2010 @6:46PM Barry Benedict said... I can't tell you how liberated I feel after reading this story. I tried coffee about three times as a child and found it tasted like crap and haven't changed my opinion since.
I have also found that most people had a similar experience as a child but being the sheep they are, kept drinking it until it became palatable. I find the same happened with beer. Both drinks taste like horse piss and too many people are too concerned with others peoples opinions to go with there own first impression.
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3-12-2010 @2:51PM Momo said... I've actually always loved the taste of beer, even as a child taking a sip from unprotected bottles (My parents learned quickly that the coffee table was to low).

And my mother, growing up, had strong associations of home mixed up with coffee. She's been drinking it her entire life. I can't take the stuff straight, it's too bitter but when the bitter's been dealt with or mellowed I rather like it too.

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3-10-2010 @7:06PM David S. said... Too much variety in coffee houses? No way -- I am old enough to remember when coffee houses did not exist in many mid-size and even large cities and all you could get was crappy fast food coffee...
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3-10-2010 @8:30PM Sunday said... Well, I for one did not have to aquire a taste for coffee - I was raised on it! From the time I was a little girl in the late 60's and 70's, my Mom always served us a cup of coffee with our breakfast. It definitely had more cream in it than anything, but it was wonderful! Having alot of variety to choose from is never a bad thing as far as coffee goes in my book. Just as long as the customer who just wants a "normal" cup of coffee can still get one. Some of the fancier cafe's that I have been into don't offer just a plain cup of coffee for those who only want that.
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3-11-2010 @7:20PM wvcorgi said... A crisp French Riesling? Much more likely to find that from Germany.
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3-11-2010 @1:40AM tmin said... Anything that gets people to realize varietal character in coffee (there's plenty) is cool with me. In my mind, it's usually easier to pinpoint the general area a coffee came from than with wine.

This trend might also encourage some lighter roasting from the bigger chains to leave some more varietal character in their coffee - which would be nothing but welcome.
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3-14-2010 @7:14PM Glenn said... I'm all for diversification and choosing from an ever changing menu.

Coffee consumers are quickly being educated that coffee is a seasonal crop and as such they have the chance to taste coffee from all around the world and enjoy the nuances of a particular region and start to get to understand a particular varietal or region.

We should however be mindful that many consumers just want a coffee, and there is nothing wrong with this. They may not wish to have the choice and will often ask the barista for a recommendation.

Increasingly cafes in the UK are becoming less aligned to a particular roaster and are willing to 'host' a guest roaster's single origin offerings or their flagship blend for a period of time.

There are also numerous instances of Trans-Atlantic (and Pan European) coffee swaps taking place and this is exposing consumers (and enthusiasts) to different roasting styles and crops that the wholesalers in a particular region could not secure (for any number of reasons)

I hope to see the trend of multi-roaster cafes increase, but am not sure this view will be shared by the roasters, who 'potentially' lose out on volume.
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