Brooklyn’s not-so-indie coffee
Autor: Paulo Pedroso | Publicado: 2015-02-13T16:34:00-02:00




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.










Some entrepreneurs, such as the
owners of Grumpy who recently opened a shop in Chelsea, &nbsp;are already going back to the other side of
the bridge and are taking their business to Manhattan. Gimme Coffee, chosen by
the New York Times in 2006 as one of the best places to drink espresso in town,
is another shop with a presence on both sides of the bridge and that, besides its
various stores also has an itinerant coffee trailer. The new guys on the scene
are Sweetleaf-- originally from Queens, with two stores in Long Island and,
now, one in Williamsburg—and, with a new location in nearby Greenpoint, Budin
which only works with beans from Scandinavia. The owners’ proposal is to offer
customers a space for drink tasting like in wine bars, with specification of the
origin and the names of the roasters all of them being Nordics who generally
favor lighter roast profiles which produce a liquid with a slightly citric
taste and with almost zero bitterness.


The Brazilian beans can be found for
sale in most cafes in New York and are often part of house blends served at the
counter. The producer Felipe Croce, from Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza (FAF), located
in Mococa, São Paulo, Brazil, which began exporting only eight years ago and
now sells to twenty-seven countries, deals directly to some of these companies. "The global coffee trade has
always been characterized by strong pressure over prices, but now, with the
growth of this new market, it’s possible to present higher value products that,
from the example of fine wines, take into account factors such as location and
microclimates, especially when we deal directly with the customer without going
through large traders.” FAF is positively infiltrating small farms in the
region with sustainable patterns of production and is also introducing
collaborative work methods. With this, many of them are getting their first
steps in foreign markets.