BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS
Join the Coffeebar family.
Coffeebar now offers our high-quality roasted coffee and all the expertise needed to nurture and grow your business. Moving high volumes of coffee is important - it’s what allows us to have meaningful impact at origin with our purchasing - but wholesale is about far more than simple numbers. It’s about ensuring the consumer always has the best experience possible. For wholesale, this requires a partnership where it’s understood that coffee is not a hands-off product. Drawing from our experiences in our own cafes means we can share our wealth of experience and knowledge, and let you learn from our mistakes to empower your business and team to create a sustainable culture, product, and experience around coffee.
RELATIONSHIPS BUILT TO LAST
Vertical Coffee Sourcing
Investing in coffee-producing communities.
Not to be mistaken with vertical integration, Vertical Sourcing is a term coined internally that speaks to the importance of aligning our supply chain. In coffee supply, there is no one size fits all model for best practices when dealing with various countries of origin. Context is everything. Direct trade models can work very well, and ensure better prices for farmers, but cutting importers from the equation can also harm a community by taking away the distribution of money, access to information, technology, and infrastructure that an importer can provide. What’s important for us is not choosing one model, but ensuring the right model is in place to maximize the positive impact we can have within each of the regions we choose to invest in. Sometimes this means a more direct, intimate relationship between the producers and Coffeebar, and sometimes it means a stronger relationship with the importers and exporters who themselves have boots on the ground. We believe strongly in the importance of fostering long-term relationships at all levels of our supply chain, and in the transparency and traceability that these relationships engender.
QUALITY
To get good out, you have to put good in.
We purchase fresh-crop, specialty-grade coffees that score from 83 to 90+ points on an industry-standard scoring system. Coffees on the lower end of that range are still quality coffees, but tend to lack more distinctive characteristics, thus making them the perfect components for our blends - coffees designed for year-round consistency and smooth, balanced flavor profiles. Our Vertical Reserve single origin line then consists of coffees scoring 85 and above. These coffees will highlight distinctive origins and capture unique tasting notes and region-specific characteristics. Finally, we have our Roastery Reserve line which is composed of the cream of the crop - the highest quality coffees we bring in, as well as unique, experimental coffees that highlight our investment and involvement at origin. Buying a range of specialty-grade coffees allows us more diversity in our sourcing strategy, and the ability to focus first on having meaningful impact in the communities that will benefit the most, and second on ensuring a high-level quality experience with each and every one of our products.
EXPERIMENTATION
Pushing the boundaries and supporting innovation at origin.
The direct involvement of Coffeebar at origin, coupled with the intentional partnerships we cultivate with importers and exporters, creates opportunities to push the boundaries of our industry. This can impact producers in two ways: market differentiation and improved quality gained from experimental processing methods can net higher prices on the open market, while improved methodology throughout production can result in higher yields and healthier long-term success. Examples of these are Coffeebar’s funding of fermentation experiments - not too dissimilar to the wine industry - undertaken by our partners in Guatemala. We commit to purchasing upfront, ensuring the producer’s sale isn’t tied to the success or failure of the experimentation we encourage.
ROASTING
Science, art, and a little bit of magic.
Hand-roasted in Reno, NV.
We roast on a bright orange San Franciscan roaster. With the manufacturer just around the corner from us in Carson City, Nevada, and with owner Bill Kennedy’s dedication to his craft, this was an easy choice. Supporting other local businesses is important to Coffeebar and is part of the holistic approach we take with all company decisions. The roaster we use and the associated technology gives us complete control of the final flavor profile of every coffee, from our high-volume blends to our unique single origins. Every roast is recorded meticulously, and all quality decisions are conducted by blind cupping and triangulation to reduce bias. We roast coffee to order for all our wholesale customers. This allows the customer to control the freshness they want. A common myth among many is that fresh is best. Just like it is for cheese and wine, a resting period is important to taste all the complexities a coffee can offer. Roasting and shipping fresh allows the coffee to get to a customer as soon as possible. We will then work with a customer to ensure the correct resting period and stock rotation systems are in place, so the consumer is having the best experience they can with our coffee.
EQUIPMENT PARTNERS
Great coffee needs great equipment.
The coffee brewing equipment you choose can greatly influence the quality and consistency of the product you serve. There is no point in over-engineering your solution, whilst under-engineering can potentially limit the growth of your business. The equipment recommendations we provide take this into consideration. We work with the best equipment manufacturers in the business to find a solution specifically tailored for each of our wholesale partners - from espresso to batch brew and everything in between.
WE’VE GOT YOUR BACK
Service and Support
You can purchase the most expensive equipment and highest quality coffee, but it still requires an educated operator in order to make tasty coffee. Understanding how to calibrate and recalibrate your equipment during service, and how to keep it clean and well maintained, is of the utmost importance. This leads to more consistent quality and reduces the need for costly emergency callouts or business downtime. Between our in-house maintenance team and third-party technician partners, we offer preventative maintenance to keep your equipment happy and serving you well.
Education
Even with the best coffee and the best equipment, you still need a well-trained team to really make the most of it! We have an incredibly diverse team, with experience in all aspects of the industry, and our wholesale education program is designed to share that experience with our partners. We offer free barista education on site to help you dial in your equipment, as well as perfect your barflow management, drink development, and increase general coffee knowledge. For our multi-site partners we also offer ‘train the trainer’ programs and barista quality management, allowing you to manage your own education and quality goals. And coming soon: internationally-recognized barista and quality control certification programs!
Water Filtration
With our retail locations being spread out from Reno to the Bay, we have experience treating various water conditions for our equipment. Our wholesale manager has also worked on water treatment solutions for coffee since 2012, implementing various technologies Australia wide, so please don’t get yourself all scaled up over this complicated problem! We will help you implement the solutions that will be best for your coffee and equipment. Since water can have so many different chemical reactions based on temperature, pH, and mineral content, a targeted solution for each piece of equipment is necessary to balance out scale formation and corrosion to protect your investment. Water chemistry also has a tremendous impact on coffees’ flavor. A certain level of Carbonates and Bicarbonates in water are important to protect your equipment, however, excessive levels of bicarbonate will make your coffee taste flat and dull by binding up quality flavors in this buffer.