Paulo Pedroso 2013Those who cross the Williamsburg Bridge,escaping from Manhattan through the Lower East Side, wonthave any trouble finding good coffee when they arrive in Brooklyn. The districtthat has attracted inhabitants seduced by a lessfrenetic and, at least for now, less expensive lifestyle than the famous islandnext door, has been occupied by coffee shops that take the beverage seriously. Beyondproviding technical information such as the name of the variety and the originof the beans, many of them, such as Blue Bottle Coffee, originally fromCalifornia, and Toby's Estate Coffee, from Australia, maintain smalllaboratories with micro roasting within the customers view. Also, both of themalready have operations in dozens of other locations and have recently landedin Williamsburg, the Brooklyn neighborhood that has been earning attention byconcentrating an effervescent scene of small enterprises of gastronomy, fashionand art. However, further scrutiny reveals that the coffee business in thisregion is not small at all and, indeed, the ambitions of the players go well beyondthe Hudson Bridge.Born in New Jersey, the AmericanJohn Moore has watched the development of the new trend of coffee shops that beganto invade Manhattan less than a decade ago and recently crossed the bridge. In2013, after working in this business for over twenty years, he took over as CEOfor the group FAL Coffee, which is based in New York and is the owner of severalcompanies operating in the coffee market. One of his first assignments was toparticipate in the acquisition of two farms in southern Minas Gerais, one inOuro Fino and the other in Carmo de Minas. "I think that besides theunquestionable quality, Brazilian coffees offer a wide range of possibilitiesthat go beyond the stereotypical flavors of the beverage. The beans travel fromBrazil straight to roasters in Brooklyn, from where they leave with our brandNobletree. By the beginning of 2015 we will open the first stores sellingdirectly to the end consumer. We want to deliver a product of excellence andtherefore apply the concept of vertical integration, where we are producers,roasters and baristas. The ease with their plans advance is explained by the factthat FAL Coffee is just another arm of the FAL Holdings, a large Saudiconglomerate based in Riyadh.The specialty coffee market refersto when the raw material acquires value due to care and attention to detailreceived from the field to the cup. Many of these lots are traded directlybetween roasters and farmers and no longer treated as a commodity on thetrading floors. In the U.S., this movement gained momentum from the last decadeof the century initially in cities like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco andChicago, where the first Premium coffee roasting appeared and where the baristaprofession first rose to prominence. In New York, where this movement is morerecent, the next big thing is Brooklyn. That's where beginners can roast theirbeans at the Pulley Collective, a roaster with a shared business model thatrents space and roasting machines for half-day periods. The company founded by SteveMierisch, who is a descendent of a family of coffee producers in Nicaragua, isfueling the market so that their schedules are taken not only by those who haveno capital to start a