With 35 locations across California, New York and Tokyo, and with nine more hitting the East Coast this year, some coffee fanatics might wonder if Oakland, CA-based Blue Bottle isn’t becoming Starbucks for the hipster generation. As we learned on a recent visit to their new cafe and roasting facility in Bushwick, Brooklyn, scaling up doesn’t mean Blue Bottle’s standards have gone mainstream. In fact, …
As many of us have, Blue Bottle founder James Freeman discovered designer (and CH favorite) Joey Roth through his incredibly attractive Ceramic Speakers, which have long been a staple at Blue Bottle’s Brooklyn and Rockefeller Center locations. As the story goes, Freeman looked up Roth’s portfolio online, stumbling across his years-old moka pot concept. “It was an impractical but interesting looking piece,” explains Roth. Apparently …
A desert may seem an odd place to find high-end, small-batch coffee beans, but Joshua Tree native Royce Robertson is making just that. Fresh, Fair Trade beans are stored in custom-built, climate-controlled containers, then hand-roasted and immediately packed into resealable bags. The upshot is a delicious brew from a surprising source at an accessible price.
