Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
Issue link: http://freshcup.epubxp.com/i/71652
CAFÉ CROSSROADS BY DAN LEIF Barrington Coffee Roasting Co. Boston Mukunda Feldman, co-owner ince 1993, Barrington Coffee Roasting has been helping to push forward New England's specialty scene. But not until the beginning of this year did the company have its own café. To lead the charge into retail, the Western Massachusetts-based roastery turned to Mukunda Feldman, who spent a number of years Why did Barrington choose to open a retail space now? Gregg Charbonneau and Barth Anderson [Barrington Coffee's co-founders] are my friends from way back. I think I was their first full-time employee, in around 1997. We had talked for years about doing a retail project together, and it started to become apparent in the last few years that it would be really helpful for them to have their own location where the primary goal is to serve coffee to customers, but where they could also direct potential clients and say, "Here's how we do it in our store." There's so much information out there about specialty coffee. As a roaster, if you don't actively take part in making a statement about how you like to do it or how it should taste, then I think you start to get lost in the shuffle. What statements are you guys making in the Boston store? Our main method of drip is with a Fetco brewer. Pour-over is great, and I make pour-over at home all the time, but in retail situations I've probably had more bad cups of pour-over than I've had good cups. I've also waited a really long time for it and paid a lot of money for it. So we have a Fetco and serve two coffees on it—something pushed a little darker and then a light, single-origin coffee. The coffees change pretty frequently. The fact that we're the roaster and do it all ourselves allows us to offer coffees on drip that most places probably can't. Right now we have a Cup of Excellence coffee from Rwanda on there. We had an Ethiopian from [boutique importer] Ninety Plus that probably retails for $30 a pound on there. continued on page 28 26 Fresh Cup Magazine freshcup.com working for Barrington Coffee before opening three other Massachusetts shops (which he continues to run). The six-month-old café in Boston's Fort Point neighborhood features Cup of Excellence winners and other top-notch coffees, but it prepares them using batch brewing and espresso as opposed to pour-over methods.