Seattle remains a guiding star for coffee. From Vivace to Zoka, Trabant to Victrola, Tully’s to Caffe Vita, and — of course — the omnipresent Starbucks and hundreds of happy, independent retailers, coffee houses, espresso carts and hole-in-the-wall walk-ups, the city teems with caffeinated masses, most of ‘em tanked up on some damn fine coffees served by folks who know their way round the business end of a portafilter. I’m impressed as I can be with places like Stumptown that hold daily cupping events so folks just walkin’ in off the street can sample a flight of coffees from all over the world, and compare and contrast flavors and aromas, body and balance, while elbow to elbow with the pros.

I hope I can stay longer next time… provided the place doesn’t kill me, first.

Coffee purists would never, ever add dairy to their coffee, and they would sooner drink General Foods International’s instant Hazelnut Belgian Café than add soy milk. After all, we’re now in the age of microlot coffee, when beans are harvested and handled with the same care that goes into making wine, and the flavors of an exceptional cup of coffee can be as layered and complex as a glass of pinot noir. Cream would just ruin it.

If it sounds snobby, consider this: would you dab a Peter Luger porterhouse with ketchup? A slab of well-aged beef needs nothing more than salt, pepper and a good char. There’s nothing arrogant about leaving the Heinz out of it.

Firstly, never is a very  long time. To say that one might never add cream — or any dairy — is to rule out the little slice of heaven that is the espresso macchiato, or the more bountiful coffee and dairy expression that is the cappuccino. And that would be wrong.

Secondly, Peter who? Oh… yeah. I guess it’s a New York thing. Sorry, if you want to make a purist’s analogy between coffee and aged beef, maybe you should refer to a purist’s steakhouse, and those are in Kansas City. Yes, both of them.

Thirdly, hey… check out that photo! That’s an old-school alt.coffee regular in the picture! Neat. ;)

And fourthly, if you think this isn’t an issue near and dear to the hearts of many, note that the original Times piece has more than 100 comments on it, which is to say, this may be a greater issue than Global Climate Change and FISA, combined.

But let’s be honest… running a successful and (ideally) profitable coffee house is something of a high-wire act at the best of times. And — economically-speaking — these aren’t the best of times. You’ve got a budget to watch; a creeping expense column can throw things out of kilter. Fast. It’s not going to do you or your environmentally-minded customers any good for you to bankrupt yourself in the name of ecology.

That said, there are savings to be found in running a more efficient and sustainable coffee house, coffee shop or espresso bar. Some of these savings can be realized pretty quickly, others require a longer view. If you can, don’t just consider today’s bottom line, but tomorrow’s. And next year’s. And — for goodness sake — don’t lose sight of the ultimate bottom line here… the planet’s climate is in crisis. And it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that the viability of specialty coffee is at the forefront of that crisis.

In greening up your coffee house, there are (at least) three distinct areas where you can bring your efforts to bear: reducing energy, increasing sustainability, and making it easier for your customers to go green, too. We’ll look at each in turn. There’s a lot to slog through here, so I’ll get right to it.

Reduce energy.

A coffee shop is an energy sink. You’ve got lots of things to keep hot, things to keep cool, and excruciatingly specialized equipment to get them all mixed together. Where do you begin?

Start with an energy audit. Chances are your power company will audit your business at no charge, and provide you with a fairly comprehensive list of recommendations. It’s a great place to start… and an ideal way to benchmark where your business stands, right now. You’ll want that baseline to measure against after you’ve made some improvements.

While your power company will have lots of tips for you in terms of properly insulating your space (ceilings, walls, windows, doors) and savings you might achieve in terms of lighting (switching to CFL fixtures) and the like, chances are they won’t know enough about your specialized equipment — say, espresso machines — to tell you the whole story. You can augment what you learn on an audit report by using a portable or panel-installed power use monitor (think Kill-A-Watt and the like) to measure how much energy your specialized equipment consumes.

You’ll find your coffee house has any number of power-sucking commercial appliances. You’ll probably learn which of these costs you the most to operate in the course of your energy audit; you may not learn, however, which are the most efficient… or more importantly, which aren’t. Lacking any information to the contrary, here’s where you might want to start.

• Dishwashers. You probably know you can save energy and water by running your dishwasher only with a full load. (Of course you do!) You may not know that if you invest in an Energy Star rated commercial dishwasher you can see a pretty immediate return on your investment. An efficient dishwasher can save your coffee house up to 90 MBtus, (about $850 a year on your energy bill) and 52,000 gallons of water (probably another $200 a year).¹
• Refrigerators and freezers. Today’s Energy Star rated chill chests are as much as 35% more efficient² than the bog standard item of the last 10 years, due to advances in compressor and fan-motor efficiency and new anti-sweat technologies (’cause nobody likes a sweaty fridge.) Your new refrigerator can pay for itself in a little more than a year.
• Espresso machines and brewers. In a great many cases, you can insulate the boilers of your always-on equipment (much like you’ve insulated your shop’s hot water heater, right? Right?) Mind you, if you don’t know the internals of your brewers like the back of your hand, it’s probably best to have it done by your service-tech. A flaming espresso machine is decidedly not eco-friendly; we’re probably talking about kevlar, not simple fiberglass batting.
• Coffee roasters. Clean, clean, clean! A clean roaster is not only a safe roaster, it’s also far more efficient than one that’s choked up with years of coffee oils, a creosote-filled exhaust and clogged air vents. You may be surprised with the energy savings you realize.

So maybe it’s not in your budget to spring for new, high-efficiency appliances this year… there’s no reason you can’t make sure the appliances you have are operating at peak performance. Clean your fridge’s evaporators, condensers, and heat-exchange coils. Replace worn and leaky door seals. Better still, get a regular service regimen going so that all of your equipment is operating well throughout the year.

Increase sustainability.

Greening up entails more than just curbing your shop’s power demands. It’s also about breaking some bad habits, many of them having to do with things we simply throw away. After decades of disposable everything, we’ve become conspicuous consumers of our limited natural resources. And it’s got to stop.

• Enough with the plastic cold cups already. Bio-polymer alternatives biodegrade in commercial composting landfills inside a month; plastics are forever. Greenware cups from Fabri-Kal make petroleum-based plastic cold cups obsolete.
• Nix those unrecyclable paper hot cups. Look into compostable paper cups like the ecotainer from International Paper, lined with a corn-polymer resin that’s compostable and will degrade over time.
• Still double-cupping? Just stop, already. Please. Products like the Java Jacket are pretty much de rigeur and new biodegradable entrants like the ecoSleeve appear to work just as well for cold cups, too.
• Want to take a really big step? Consider getting rid of disposables altogether!
• Recycle! How many gallons of milk does your coffee house consumer every day, and how many plastic jugs do you empty as a result? If you’re not recycling, that adds up to a heaping pile of forever in a landfill. Recycle your consumables. More, make it easy — like, really easy — for your customers to do the same.
• Use green cleaning products. Green cleaning agents are safer for your employees to use, and they typically don’t contain any VOCs (volatile organic compounds).³ Check with the Green Restaurant Association for a list of endorsed products.
• Buy food locally. When you purchase locally grown foodstuffs, suddenly all of your customers are localvores. More to the point, locally produced milk, fruits and vegetables are fresher, taste better, and your dollars support your own community (rather than some faceless transnational food cartel.)

Make it easier for your customers to go green, too.

People are waking up — finally! — to the stark realities of global climate change. And increasingly, folks the world over want to do something about it. People are setting back their thermostats, choosing cars with better gas mileage, replacing their light bulbs — all the while looking for opportunities to do more. You can help.

• Offer organics. By all means, start by offering a selection of great organic coffees. More, make an organic coffee your house blend; your standard espresso. But don’t stop there! Look for local, organic milk and dairy suppliers, bakers and folks who farm great produce. Make organic an every day thing.
• Switch to recycled paper products. From paper towels to napkins to bath tissue, recycled paper products — no longer limited to options of “brown” and “rough” — are an increasingly compelling alternative to virgin fiber sources.
• You know and I know that folks just love those cute little bottles of water. More, we both know those little plastic bottles are just plain stupid, ecologically. So do something about it. Offer ice-cold, filtered water to refill your customer’s reusable bottles, to start.
• Encourage customers to use their own mugs. Whether you want to host a wall of customer cups for your regulars, or offer a discount for folks who drop in with their travel tumbler in-hand, get behind your customers’ efforts to green up their own lives.
• Educate your customers. Going green isn’t one of those private, hair-shirt-wearing sort of things… it’s something that you want to make some noise about. Let your customers know that you’re going green. And how. And why. By demonstrating your commitment to the environment, and by making it easy for your customers to make good choices in your place of business, you help them make greener, more sustainable choices everywhere.

Final thoughts… and an invitation.

Greening up your coffee house can save you money (in the long run, certainly, even if it may have some up-front costs). And going green can improve the morale of your staff even as it boosts the loyalty of your customers — all of them. Greening up means a safer, healthier place of business, and will ultimately lead to a safer, healthier environment. Most of all, going green is simply the right thing to do.

While I’ve thrown a lot of ideas into this article, it’s really just a start. I welcome your feedback, your ideas, and your stories about how you’re greening up your coffee house… the challenges you face, and how you overcame them. We’re in this together, after all.

I’m not the only one talking about the intersection of coffee houses and sustainability these days. See also:

• Matt Milletto’s Going Green in Your Coffee House, part 1 and part 2.
• Stewart Fritchman’s Sustainable Coffeehouse video

Notes and Links

1. Source: Energystar.gov commercial dishwasher savings guide.
2. Source: Energystar.gov commercial solid door refrigerator / freezer savings guide.
3. See Treehugger.com for more on volatile organic compounds.

Sure, while most every other coffee roaster in the land releases new roasts seasonally — you know, to align with new coffee crops and all that — Starbucks’ latest blend is different, apparently. Word is, it’s not… you know, burnt. More, Howie would have us believe this is a pivotal event in Starbucks’ history, even suggesting that it’s a peek into a future that isn’t steeped in an espresso + milk monoculture:

“We’ve been so focused on espresso … that we haven’t done anything to reinvent brewed coffee,” Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz said in an interview.

Profoundly true. Not only has Starbucks done virtually nothing to reinvent brewed coffee — or even support it — their general disregard for drip coffee, press coffee and the like spilled over into the marketplace, where thousands upon thousands of competing independents likewise ignored the possibilities of unique origin coffees. Unless, of course, they could chuck it in a portafilter with decent results. It’s fair to say that only very recently, I’d say the last five or six years — or a time line roughly consistent with the rise of the Cup of Excellence auction program — that the indie retailers have promoted non-espresso coffee with particular enthusiasm. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

And then Howie slips in this dubious bit…

Mr. Schultz says he believes Starbucks has underplayed its expertise in selecting and roasting coffees, something its main competitors don’t specialize in.

It’s left as an exercise for the reader whether Schultz is suggesting Starbucks’ ground-game at origin is better than that of Peet’s, Green Mountain, Stumptown, CounterCulture, Intelligentsia, The Roasterie, Terroir, Thanksgiving, and a few hundred assorted smaller roasters, or whether he doesn’t view them, individually or collectively, as his competitors. Either way, it’s a low blow. And one that may well come back to haunt him.

Godspeed, Ernesto.

No comment necessary, really. Save for this.

I think those observing the WBC competition this year will have noted that blends have gradually become less complicated and often now have far fewer components than they might have contained in the past. There has been a real movement towards allowing the coffee to do the talking with signature drinks, presentation and blends becoming simpler. This has to be applauded.      

This is me, clapping loudly.

I make no claims to be a purist — a snob, yes, but not a purist — but I’m awfully keen to see more single-origin espressos come to the fore; for their character, their unbridled flavors and aromas, and the sheer adventure of discovering what a given grand cru drip coffee can do in the small cup. I want to see more coffee origins — especially Central and South American origins — experiment with semi-washed and dry process coffees to afford the kind of character that would better complement a single-origin espresso (a stellar example being Erna Knutsen’s Santa Elena Tarrazu Miel from a few years back.)

But mostly I want to see more single-origin espresso coffees as an antidote to the sameness, the blandness, the carefully measured and highly reproducible mediocrity that so very many commercial espresso blends strive for. And if you think I’m calling out Illy and LavAzza and their ilk, well… you just might be right.

Meanwhile, good on you Steve! And you, dear reader, go get yourself a copy of Barista magazine. There’s fine stuff in there. Look for the issue with a very relaxed-looking James Hoffmann on the cover. 

He’s upped the ante with his latest contribution to a world in want of caffeination… an illustrated guide to espresso drinks.

I’m new to the world of fancy coffee drinks. With the vast number of ordering options and new words with accented characters to pronounce; the coffee shop ordering experience can be intimidating. I’ve created a few small illustrations to help myself and others wrap their head around some of the small differences.
–Lokesh Dhakar

While I expect his contribution won’t bring an end to the incessant arguments about coffee drinks and their proportions, it does offer an informed, common point of reference. Maybe it’s the beginning of a period table of espresso elements. ;)