“Sometimes it’s long days of cupping, sometimes it’s long days of traveling, and sometimes (like today) it’s long days driving all over the mountains in the back of pickups meeting our farmers…..”
-Colby Barr/Coffee Buyer, Owner
We’re officially one month away from the SWRBC. If you don’t have a place to stay yet and don’t want to sleep on my front porch (in the chilly coastal cold while I’m nice and warm inside sipping on hot chocolate and snacking on bruschetta toped with prosciutto) you should probably book a room at the Dream Inn. They’ve extended the discounted pricing for us until next Wednesday the 15th. That’s six days to keep you from being in the dog house (literally).
Here’s the Link: Dream Inn Discounted Rate.
#1 / Origin Trips
Colby Barr (Green Buyer, Co-Owner) and Sean White (Head Roaster) are headed to El Salvador next week, immediately followed by an extended trip to Ethiopia and Kenya. They’ll be meeting up with our producers and tasting hundreds of great coffees as they work to focus in on what lots we’ll be buying this year. Stay tuned for trip reports and pictures right here on the blog in the coming weeks!
#2 / Free Cuppings at 41st
The cuppings at our 41st avenue cafe are hands-down the best way to stay on top of our rotating offering list. Every Friday at noon, one of our super fun staff members leads the cupping. It’s totally free, and allows for learning all about each coffee’s origin, while tasting the unique differences between each one. No sign ups required, just stop in and join in the fun.
#3 / Bike Races
We just finished up sponsoring the Surf City Cyclocross Series. It was a great time! Sean rips on a bike, and always finishes up near the top in the elite classes. Ryan and I decided to join him by racing with the beginners this past weekend. Hopefully people don’t judge Verve by our Cyclocross finishes… big E for effort though, and we can’t wait until next year to give it another go. Thanks to Surf City Cyclocross, and to everyone who came out and made the races so fun for us to be a part of. We’ll definitely be seeing you next year!
In an effort to make the SWRBC event expand beyond the boundaries of just a competition we’ve decided to bring BGA certification testing into the mix. If you’ve been at all interested in taking your BGA level one certification test but don’t know if you’ll be able to make it to Portland this year you should do this: Grab the next train to the central coast, shred a surf with Truby, win the latte art throw down, rip up some single track on the mountain bike rides, and get your level one certification while your at it. There’s more info on the BGA’s level one program here: Level 1. It’s the building block that all other advanced skills can be based on and moves us one step closer to speaking the common language that is specialty coffee.
If that’s not enticing enough we’re brining everyone’s favorite Barista — Mr. Scott Lucey — to sunny California so he can find out what having a tan feels like, while leading the charge in level one testing.
Stay tuned, we hope to have an early sign up sheet up by the end of the week. Holla!
I just got back from the Dream Inn with Baca, where we secured room blocks and pricing for the 2012 South Western Regional Barista Competition. We took a few iPhone shots, so you can see just how sweet this place is. Every room in the hotel has an ocean view, private balcony, and fridge (if you’ve ever competed, you know the fridge actually fits nicely in that sentence). The hotel is right on West Cliff Drive between two well loved Santa Cruz hotspots — the Boardwalk and Steamer Lane. Another big bonus: it’s just 1 mile from Downtown Santa Cruz, where we are planning to hold the event.
We will be opening up the group booking link sometime tomorrow, so keep an eye on our SWRBC 2012 webpage. We’ll also make it known in the comment section below, as well as through twitter and Facebook.
We can’t wait for everyone to get here, and we’ve already made great progress in lining up some amazing sponsors, events, parties and adventures. Stay tuned, and make your plans early. SWRBC is coming up quick!
2011 was a big year for us at VCR. We moved our roasting operations to a new, (much) larger facility that we completely revamped from a 100-year-old cannery building into a pretty sweet Headquarters. We built-out and opened 2 new retail stores – our kiosk at the Seabright Roastery and our “well-lit” Pacific Avenue store. We added some truly amazing people to our team and have even more en route (there will have been 4 babies born within 6 months!). We also were able to offer healthcare to our staff and their families. We spent countless hours/days/months in professional development, training both our own staff and our wonderful partners in wholesale.
It has really been a great year for learning in so many ways, with the acceleration of our Origin Development program and even the obsessively curated library that fuels much of our knowledge base. We sourced and roasted some spectacular coffees and cupped thousands and thousands of samples from all reaches of the world. We have developed incredible relationships at farm-level and amongst our coffee colleagues as well. We paid more for coffee this year then we ever have and are proud to have done so.
All in all, it has been an incredibly successful and inspiring (if not perspiring) year, and we’d like to say “Thank You” to all of those people who help define us. From our farmers and millers, to our importers and exporters, our wholesale partners, our retail and online customers, our friends in the biz from the UK to Norway, Canada, Australia, all across the US, and everywhere in between, and of course our families – including the greatest staff in the game. Thank you!
As far as 2012 goes… well, we’re looking to make it even better. We have some great projects and products in the works and look forward to sharing them with you.
So, see you next year – er, uh, tomorrow.
-VCR
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Happy Holidays, everyone! Here’s a reminder that our cafes will all be open on Christmas Eve, and only Seabright will be closed on Christmas day. Stop in for one of the last Holiday Blend cappuccinos of the year with your family and friends. It’s going to be a great time!
Here are the hours:
// December 24 //
Pacific Ave: 6AM-8PM
41st Ave: 7AM-5PM
Seabright: 7AM-2PM
// December 25 //
Pacific Ave: 7AM-2PM
41st Ave: 7AM-1PM
Seabright: CLOSED
We are really excited to announce a very limited run on two of the most incredible coffees in the world. We are offering Finca Los Lajones Geisha and Panama Elida Estate Green Tip Geisha for one day only. You can pre-order online now. All Geisha orders will roast and ship on Monday, December 19th, just in time to age out for your holiday festivities. These are half pound bags, and they will arrive in a custom tin specifically made for these 2 amazing coffees. Happy Holidays!
It’s not often that one of our coffees gets its own blog post, but the Ruthagati is absolutely insane right now. Pick up a bag at any of the cafes or on the website if you want to try one of the best coffees on the planet. Or stop into the new Pac Ave store and ask them to make you a pour-over with it. I’m sure you’ll love it. Here are our notes from the cupping lab: Apricot Nectar, Fudge, Syrupy
Enjoy!
