Interview: Gotham Coffee

Recently had the pleasure of chatting with head roaster Andrew Richter of Gotham Coffee in NYC to discuss their philosophy on roasting, branding, sourcing and coffee education.

Kaldi:
Andrew, how long have you been with Gotham? You're the head roaster, how's that going?

Andrew Richter of Gotham Coffee:

It's going pretty well. I've been with Gotham since 2014, about six months after Chris Calkins started it at Pulley Collective in 2013.

Kaldi:
So what's your roaster background before Gotham? Were you somewhere else?

Andrew Richter of Gotham Coffee :
I learned mostly at Gotham. I had been home roasting actually, in a little popcorn popper in my garage and buying coffee in little 200 gram green coffee sachets from Sweet Maria's. But I had been working in coffee and cafe's for  four or five years at that point, and was getting interested in roasting. Through a fluke of events I ended up being introduced to Chris, and he took me on as an apprentice roaster in 2014.

Kaldi:
Since Gotham’s founder Chris Calkins has been in the industry for decades and is well known in the coffee industry. I'm curious to know how you guys have taken that wisdom and developed in your coffee program? So how do you guys define your roast profile?

Andrew Richter of Gotham Coffee :
In terms of our roast profile, like overall how we feel about roasting coffee?

Kaldi:
Correct. Or even buying or just everything. I'd love to know how you guys are different from other shops and brands.

Andrew Richter of Gotham Coffee:

Yeah, it's definitely been Chris’ wisdom and his perspective going back to the late 70's. It’s been an influence on me, how we shape our products, how we present our products. One of the things that he always stressed to me and that I've carried through the past six years is the importance of being physically attentive to the roasting process. I see a lot of roasting within the Pulley Collective, I've just seen a lot of people come and go and pass through. I see a lot of roasters who, personally, I think put a little bit too much stock in the graphs and the charts of the Cropster software package. I've seen people roast for four or five hours without ever pulling a trier out and looking at the coffee. It's just a video game when you’re tracing a roast profile line…

It's something that from the beginning, from the first day, Chris tried to instill in me, to pay attention to the process and to watch it and be physically present with the coffee. And I think that translates to what we're doing now. Our overall roast profile I guess is probably not too different, honestly, than what other people are doing. We're roasting light to medium, whatever those terms mean to you, they're kind of up for interpretation. But we're really just looking for what we think of as a balanced flavor profile when we test roast. We try to achieve the most balanced expression of any particular green coffee, at least to our palates. And so that's what we have in mind whenever we approach any new coffee that comes in, or as our blends change throughout the year.

I think digital tools help and are an invaluable tool for consistency, the most important thing that has influenced my roasting is that initial training through Chris and his sensibilities. The more roast systems that I get to work on and the more people in the industry that I talk to, the more I think those graphs and charts are not the entire picture. They are a really limited measurement tool. And most of the time in the roaster, that little thermocouple, that little probe is not even in contact with the seeds themselves. It's in contact with the air and the hot gases that are flowing through the chamber. Everything is moving around at the same time.

And so I think it can be misleading to think that the outputs of that tool are really the end-all be-all of what's actually happening, of the physical process that's going on inside. And it's easy to get lost in that and then lose track of the bigger picture of what's happening in front of you. I think we get the best of both approaches. The digital tools help, but they are just tools. At the end of the day you have to be paying attention to what you're doing.

Kaldi:
How are you guys approaching green buying? You probably have a big philosophy on that as well.

Andrew Richter of Gotham Coffee :
That's a good question. This is kind of a loaded term I think within the industry and amongst roasters, because freshness with green coffee is kind of a shaky metric. But we're really approaching green buying from a seasonal standpoint. We plan our purchasing schedule around the seasonality of harvests throughout the world. We try to only buy enough volume of something to make it to the next segment, or round, of harvests. I'm particularly proud of our blend program. I don't see as many people focusing on blends, and for us I think it's really a core of the business and it's a core of our green buying, because we can buy these larger lots that are more significant and economically meaningful, to producers in various countries.

We only have two blends, an espresso and a filter, and we switch out their components entirely two or three times a year. In part that’s possible because we rely very heavily on some strong partnerships in Colombia where you can get fresh coffee from various regions, pretty much the entire year round. And then for the other components of those blends, we're looking at whatever is about to land in the US. Right now Central American coffees are going to start landing. We're starting to see samples, talking to our suppliers. Those will run out and we'll think about coffees from Peru and from Mexico, as these harvests roll around the year, we've catered our buying schedule and our volumes to accommodate the actual agronomic production.

We try to keep the flavor profile consistent. But we're pretty adamant about keeping the blends simple, simple number of components, straightforward roasts, and every four or six months it's a completely new iteration. So it might be slightly different depending on the composition, but having that regularity allows us to plan almost up to a year in advance with some of the importers and producers that we work with. They know our volumes, and we try to work with producers that we've bought from year over year instead of just swapping around to all sorts of very different sources. In particular, this is the second or third year we're working with Association La Victoria, which is a producing group in Santa Maria, Colombia. And that's a coffee that we've committed to buy every harvest basically, in consistent volume.

Kaldi:
Have you guys been to Colombia to build that relationship?

Andrew Richter of Gotham Coffee :
Yeah, I was actually just there in January. So I went down, we've got a very strong relationship with an importer called the Coffee Quest who hosted me. They work, primarily in Colombia, on a fixed pricing model and they have several buying stations throughout the country. One of their earliest buying stations was in Santa Maria. I went to visit them, saw a whole bunch of producers that contribute to the La Victoria lot and was beyond impressed. We also visited their buying station in Antioquia where another one of our components comes from. We do a lot of business with them. Our coffee program is pretty reliant on their quality and consistency.

Kaldi:
And then how would you describe your guys' typical customers? What is the split between retail and wholesale?

Andrew Richter of Gotham Coffee :
Most of our customers are wholesale. So while we have one cafe, the majority of our business is wholesale really. So we have two sets of customers. Save for any ones that have gone out of business, we have never lost a wholesale customer. So a lot of them are pretty old relationships. And they've come to expect certain flavor profiles from us. There is a back and forth and like; Oh does this work for you? Is this doing well in your cafe, et cetera. But for the most part when we were planning out how to structure our program, we said, you know what, we know what we like, we have good connections, we have good sources, let's just try to make the best possible thing for us.

And people seem to have responded to that. At this point our existing clients are used to what we've been doing this whole time. And so they can say; Oh this is a little more acidic than last time, or we’re getting more fruit, or what have you, and we can take that into consideration when dialing in the roasts. We do a lot of roast profiling because we change coffee so frequently. Every couple of months I get to completely reinvent the program.

Kaldi:
What other roasters are you guys kind of excited by right now? Are there... Or coffee shops or anything in the coffee industry that you guys are following? Or are you guys kind of just doing your own thing?

Andrew Richter of Gotham Coffee :
To be honest, I am not super tuned in to the rest of the coffee world. My colleagues always say to me; Oh did you hear about this shop, roaster, etc? And I'm like, no I didn't. They tell me I have to pay more attention to this stuff. Right now I'm probably most excited about what’s going on in producing countries. I'm excited by the emergence of more importation and exportation operations that are working off of fixed pricing models. We work with two import/export groups that do fixed pricing. I think that offering that kind of economic stability to the people that we rely on for the raw materials of our business, it just improves the whole thing from the bottom up.

Andrew Richter of Gotham Coffee :
I'm also excited about fermentation experiments. I think for the first time and since I've been in coffee, I'm starting to see people really pay attention to; how was your coffee fermented, what was the processing protocol? Because there's the varietal, and the terroir, and the altitude, but the processing has so much of an impact on what finally makes it to our roastery, to the bag, to your cup. I'm seeing more people experiment with different and longer fermentations, intentional fermentations with yeast inoculation. These are the kind of experiments that I get excited and nerdy about.

Kaldi:
Yeah, I think those are really exciting. The only challenge sometimes they can get a little bit too, almost like rum-like for me personally. But they're awesome that people are experimenting.

Andrew Richter of Gotham Coffee :
Oh in the naturals for sure. But I think some of the extended fermentation lots, I find, you get this kind of beautiful fruit character without any of that fermentation defect, the winey or the rum-y, really alcoholic... I agree with you. I'm not a big fan of that.

Kaldi:
I think it's awesome though. It's just pushing the envelope further and further. I actually used to be in the beer world, so we always did a lot of collaborations with coffee companies. So for us it's almost like it's going backwards now.
It's awesome to see people experimenting with that as well.

The branding on Gotham is pretty, I would say kind of nineties aesthetic, which is cool and different than most trendy coffee brands.  I guess that's from Chris, but how does that play into your guys' brand ethos or feeling or what does that kind of, how do you feel about that? I mean, I like it. I'm just curious. A lot of people have a very kind of Instagram kind of Everlane aesthetic now.

Andrew Richter of Gotham Coffee :
So yeah, that is... Chris founded the company and his roots go all the way back. So it's actually been, it's a bit of a push and pull. Because I don't really want us to look like every single other coffee company, with the two-tone, muted, kind of vaguely Nordic, minimalist aesthetic on Instagram. But I also want it to look modern. Because frankly, there are a lot of consumers, and we've had potential clients before tell us that; Oh, your coffee was really great, but your bags aren't going to look great on our shelf, so we're going to pass.

So there's been a push and pull between how much do we modernize and how true do we keep the brand to its roots. And it's kind of something that we're towing the line with all the time. We recently just updated the designs on our bags, introduced this nice floral aesthetic to it. And so I think we're in a pretty good place right now. But that's always been something that we had a lot of conversations about, frankly. How far do we push it, how far do we take it? Do we make this change? Do we leave it alone? We're talking about that constantly.

Kaldi:
Cool. I mean I think ultimately the most important thing is the product. And then I guess shelf design is important. So it seems like you're kind of balancing that modern... I like the sides of the bags. Look nice now, the floral kind of illustrations, I think they're coffee plants. Those look good and then matched with kind of the heavy Batman-esque logo.

Andrew Richter of Gotham Coffee :
Well thank you. We're trying to balance it, because at the end of the day, I really just care about the coffee. But people are buying a brand and you can't ignore the power that branding has over your ability to run a business. So that's something we're working on.

Kaldi:
So just finishing up, how do you usually drink your coffee? Black or espresso guy or what's your…?

Andrew Richter of Gotham Coffee :
I have a very unpopular opinion for a coffee person. I don't like espresso. I don't like it. I think it's so strong that you can't really taste a lot of the nuance. It's subjective of course. I'm not saying that my answer is right, but I almost exclusively drink black filter coffee. Usually a Chemex, or I love the Fetco. I love a good batch brew.  Black filter coffee.

Kaldi:
I think personally we know a lot of coffee nerds and I think the machinery is what they like more about the espresso process. You know what I mean? It's just so hard to... Yeah, I agree with you. I always love a good pour-over, personally, compared to like a... Unless you just want to drink milk. But yeah, a lot of people we know it seems like yeah, the espresso, the whole like steam punk technology is what they love about espresso.

Andrew Richter of Gotham Coffee :
Oh, they're such beautiful, cool machines you know? And it's there on the counter and it's like this crazy thing and it's steam coming out of it and people are doing great things... People are doing crazy stuff with espresso machines now and it's certainly like a whole field of people focusing on that. But that's never what drew me to it in the first place. And I think as I've gotten farther and farther into it, I just find myself drinking more and more filter coffee. That's where I'm at, I feel like it's the best expression for me.

Kaldi:
And I guess finishing up, how do you guys try to educate customers at the either wholesale or retail level on how to enjoy or... It looks like you have a good training program for wholesale customers, but do you have an active... How do you guys educate your retail customers on that?

Andrew Richter of Gotham Coffee :
Well for wholesale customers we offer onsite or offsite trainings. The same trainings that we would give our staff in the store. Everything from the beginning of; how is coffee grown, to how you steam milk. We also have some limited partnership with different education spaces in New York City, we're good friends with Coffee Project New York. They just opened their new Academy space in LIC. So sometimes we'll send people over there for SCA training. But in terms of retail customers, I think that it would be presumptuous to tell people how they should enjoy coffee, frankly. What I'm interested in, in teaching people about, is the variety of coffee. How many different kinds and how it's this immensely complex process with so many different steps all the way along the line, from growing and picking to... to do any one step you need to have like a whole career in that field.

Andrew Richter of Gotham Coffee :
So that's what I want to show people about coffee. The kind of variety and what it is.
But it's difficult, because in a consumer interaction, someone coming into the coffee shop, that's a very limited window to try and convey; Oh, this is everything that we stand for when we're presenting this special product. Especially in New York City, people come up and they want to go and grab a cup of coffee and walk out the door. So as much as possible, we try to educate our staff so when people come in and they want something off of the slow bar, they can talk about: where does that coffee come from and what the process was, and how it might taste.

But it's honestly a difficult proposition and I think that it's something that we could do better. And I think in the industry it's something that we can do better just across the board. Because it's hard to not come off as pretentious or presumptuous when you're telling someone; oh, before you can drink this, you've got to know all about the et cetera this and you've got to know the names of all these drinks and the name of the guy who like sweated over the beans. It's difficult, but I think it's something important that we need to work on. Because if people are not willing to pay more for these specialized products, they're going to start disappearing. Especially with climate change… and the current, hopefully not forever, price crisis with green coffee, you're seeing more and more farmers leave the fields or abandon farms or just leave fruit on the tree. And I think that before... We've got to think about: can we justify to people, paying more than they're used to for this product? and why they might have to do that, or I think it's not going to exist anymore.

Kaldi:
I mean, to me, it's hard to understand that the green pricing keeps going down when Onyx and Blue Bottle and people are offering Californian grown coffee and Hawaii coffee keeps going higher and higher. And I think somehow there's a market on one end for really, really premium pricing and no one even glances anymore if you charge 7, $8 for a cup of coffee at pour-over. And then at the same time the farmers are just... It seems like they're a lot, like you said, in certain markets, they just keep getting pushed lower and lower and lower. So that's a weird disconnect isn't it?

Andrew Richter of Gotham Coffee :
Yeah, it's a disconnect and it's the... Those $7 and $8 pour-over's, those are from these very small lots and those are incredible, and we love them and we serve them. But I think that a lot of the time, those lots represent the top 10% of farmers. They're well established, they have resources, they maybe own larger plots of land and they have the extra revenue to be able to invest in experimental processing or boutique varietals. These Pacamara's and Geisha's, African transplants in South America, stuff like that. But for the majority of farmers, even if you're in the specialty market, you're producing cup score 82 to 85, 85.5. And that is the majority of specialty coffee. And so there are a lot of importers, there are a lot of exporters, that won't even touch anything that's below an 84. And so what do you tell someone, who had a crappy year or just doesn't have the resources to dry properly. And they consistently are bringing in these 83's and they're labor intensive and they're getting maybe pennies more premium. So there is a disconnect.

Not only that, but the specialty market is such a small, small percentage of the overall coffee production and coffee market. I think the majority of coffee producers, and maybe not in our world, are producing commodity coffee. And a lot of them rely on that as their sole means of living. So the commodity price and the commodity being treated at these low levels, it affects everybody all the way up.

Kaldi:
Yeah. And I think it's great that you guys are at least, like what you said earlier about having the fixed pricing of the model, hopefully helps the farmer make enough to make it worthwhile to do both the commodity business plus the specialty business, hopefully. Like you said.

Andrew Richter of Gotham Coffee :
Yeah, I think so. And those are the groups that we try to work... we've tried to work with groups that have not had access to specialty buyers before. They were selling just commodity. That's half the battle, is just being able to find a reliable and honest buyer that can say; listen, if you do these extra processing steps, then I can pay you X, Y, and Z, and I'll be here this year and I'll be here next year, and the year after that. And if it doesn't quite meet the mark, I can help you get it there. These are the kind of initiatives that when we're sourcing, we're looking for. Because I think that it's the most important thing that's happening right now in coffee.

Kaldi:
Awesome. Andrew, is there anything else you'd like to add about Gotham?

Andrew Richter of Gotham Coffee :
I think I covered most of it. That's green buying, coffee pricing. Roasting.

Those are the three most important things to me about Gotham and making great coffee.

Kaldi:

Thanks for your time.

Learn more about Gotham Roaster

(This interview was conducted as part of a premium coffee subscription program called Kaldi in  2020 that is no longer in operation  due to COVID 19  Business Closures).