By Caitlin McGarry
March 4, 2012
Tucked behind a nondescript door in
the back of a Boulder City industrial center 20 miles from Las Vegas, there's a
whole wide world of beans -- sacks of imported, green coffee beans piled to the
ceiling.
Next door is the roastery, where a
shiny black Diedrich roasting machine is caramelizing the beans, some from
Ethiopia, others from Guatemala. The rich aroma of roasted beans competes with
warm blueberry notes of the morning's drip coffee and the chocolaty scent of
espresso.
It's a sunny Monday -- roasting day
at Colorado River Coffee Roasters.
Erik Anderson funnels the beans into
the Diedrich, monitoring the exact temperature inside on a laptop computer.
Roasting is an art and a science -- some of the beans are roasted at a low
temperature, some high, some low and then high, all in the quest to achieve
just the right flavor. There's no second chance if something goes wrong.
Anderson is part of a rare breed in
Southern Nevada. His father, Colorado River owner Don Anderson, is one of a
handful of coffee roasters in Southern Nevada, and the only one in metropolitan
Las Vegas who roasts for widespread commercial distribution. Colorado River's
beans are grounds for lattes and cappuccinos from Strip eateries like Carnevino
to independent coffeehouses like The Beat and Sambalatte.
The roastery now serves up about a
ton of beans each month, but with the number of independent coffee shops
increasing in the Las Vegas Valley, Anderson hopes for a 50 percent increase in
production by the end of summer, which will add six days to the company's
roasting schedule.
CULTURE IN A CUP
Las Vegas is world-famous for
late-night dining, early-morning drinking and 24-hour partying, but the city
that never sleeps isn't even ranked on lists of America's most caffeinated
cities.
According to a July report from
market research firm NPD Group, Seattle tops the list of coffee-drinking
cities. Denver; Austin, Texas; Anchorage, Alaska; and Portland, Ore., are in
the top 12. Vegas is nowhere to be found -- yet.
The presence of a local coffee
roaster is a step forward for Las Vegas' coffee culture, said John Ynigues,
owner of Grouchy John's coffee shop. Java-centric cities like San Francisco and
Seattle have far more independent coffeehouses and an abundance of roasters to
supply them. Many shop owners also roast their own beans. That hasn't yet
happened in Las Vegas.
"It's the next logical step, I
think," Ynigues said. "In order to be diverse enough to grow that
culture, we have to have that type of thing (roasters), also, not just small
independents using the same bean."
Ynigues uses Colorado River Coffee
Roasters on his mobile coffee truck, and also plans to use the Boulder City
beans at the Henderson coffee shop he's opening in March. Roasting his own
beans is a "pie in the sky" idea because of the cost, he said, but if
the local coffee business reaches critical mass, it could happen sooner rather
than later.
"Coffee has traditionally gone
through a cycle of expansion and consolidation. The time is appropriate for an
expansionary cycle now," said Ric Rhinehart, executive director of the
Specialty Coffee Association of America. "What's really held it back over
the last couple years is the lack of access to capital. Banks were not lending
very well and people's traditional sources of capital, home equity and
retirement accounts, were not as liquid or available as they once were."
Las Vegas' independent coffee shop
culture is growing, helped along by the presence of a local coffee roaster
supplying specialty-grade beans; the depressed commercial real estate market;
downtown redevelopment, which lends itself to and derives inspiration from
creative public gathering places such as coffee shops; and the Internet, which
provides information and resources on coffee that were previously unavailable
or hard to find.
INDUSTRY BRUISED AS HARD TIMES BREW
It wasn't so long ago that Las
Vegas' independent coffee scene, which brewed hot in the mid-1990s, had all but
gone cold. Starbucks ruled the market, and smaller chains like The Coffee Bean
& Tea Leaf and It's A Grind filled in the corners the Seattle coffee
behemoth left behind.
Five years ago, local fan favorites
like Cafe Copioh and Cafe Espresso Roma near the University of Nevada, Las
Vegas and downtown's Enigma Cafe were closed for various reasons.
The Beat co-owner Jennifer
Cornthwaite said when looking at coffeehouses from a financial perspective,
closures often "didn't have anything to do with how much money the
business was making or how much people liked it. It was just they signed a bad
lease."
Las Vegas' car culture lent itself
to drive-thru java joints, and the price of commercial real estate was
sky-high, preventing entrepreneurs from dipping their toes in the coffee
business.
Then the recession hit. Starbucks
shuttered 17 stores. The cost of commercial retail leases dropped like a brick,
from $2.08 in the fourth quarter of 2008 to $1.38 at the end of 2011, Colliers
International research director John Stater said.
Coffee aficionados began to start their
own businesses, hoping Las Vegas residents would coalesce around locally owned
neighborhood shops.
Sunrise Coffee owner Juanny Romero
opened her Henderson shop in 2008, at the height of the recession. Others
followed. Sambalatte Torrefazione owner Luiz Oliveira was unemployed when he
launched his Boca Park cafe in 2010. Michael and Jennifer Cornthwaite in 2010
opened The Beat Coffeehouse downtown. Ynigues, also unemployed, took to the
streets with Grouchy John's last spring and plans to open a brick-and-mortar
location in Jeanne Kessler's former Saxby's shop this month. Perk Up Coffee
Shop owner Kessler shuttered her Saxby's franchise and founded an independent
Southern Highlands coffeehouse in October.
"There's been a lot more
buildings up for grabs, and because of that, the pricing has been a lot
better," Kessler said.
The Brazilian-born Oliveira had
hoped to open Sambalatte in 2005, but when he approached Boca Park, he found
leases were far out of his price range.
"There was not a good place for
people to go and have a good coffee, a place that reminded me of places in
Brazil or Europe where people can go and have coffee," Oliveira said.
"This idea was brewing, brewing, brewing, but at the time I couldn't pull
the trigger because commercial real estate was absolutely crazy in Las
Vegas."
After being laid off by a hotel in
2009, he again tried Boca Park. This time, he could afford the rent. But some
20 banks refused to finance Oliveira's venture, so a friend agreed to be his
financial partner.
Sambalatte opened with a slate of
hard-to-find drinks (flat whites, Nutella cappuccinos) made with Brazilian
beans from Colorado River Coffee Roasters. The Italian-style coffeehouse
garnered raves from critics and Yelp reviewers, and Oliveira said six more
coffee shops quickly followed his lead.
FIRST, YOU ROAST
Colorado River's opening coincided
with the birth of the latest wave of local coffeehouses.
Don Anderson worked on developing
the roasting business for the last eight years, but didn't officially get off
the ground until 2009.
"It's a tough business, very
capital-intensive," Anderson said, but the love of high-quality coffee
pulls him through on days when he has to drop thousands of dollars on a backup
generator or forklift.
It's a family business. Erik roasts
while other Andersons package orders and schlep beans to various clients.
Ninety percent of Colorado River's
business is wholesale, but retail orders are picking up. Customers can buy bags
of beans at farmer's markets, the Boulder City Albertsons, downtown Las Vegas
grocery store Resnicks and, soon, at Whole Foods Markets.
A coffee roaster's startup costs can
range upwards of $200,000, when factoring in roasting equipment and product.
"For people who want to get
into this business, it's tough because costs are high," Anderson said.
It's also an intensely localized
international industry.
Colorado River Coffee Roasters works
with importers who travel to coffee-producing countries and find microlots, or
small farms that produce minimal amounts of high-quality, specialty-grade
beans. The importers test the coffee and send flavor descriptions to Anderson,
who selects four or six farms from which he wants to buy.
Prices vary widely, depending on the
export country. Jamaican beans are often prohibitively expensive for Anderson,
who buys them only on request from a client. Colorado River stocks a supply of
one or two months in Boulder City. Most beans are stored in San Francisco,
Seattle and Houston because they're happier in coastal humidity, Anderson said.
Roasters also must stay on their
toes because the cost of coffee can fluctuate rapidly. Of every $1 Colorado
River makes, 45 cents goes back into buying coffee. Then there's packing,
overhead and labor. If Anderson pays $3.13 per pound for a bag of coffee, and
21 percent is burned up in the smokestack when roasting, he has to factor that
into the wholesale base price.
But clients don't mind paying for
specialty-grade coffee roasted locally, Anderson said. Business is growing
steadily, with help from word-of-mouth and the Internet.
The roaster is at about 30 to 35
percent capacity with its current Diedrich machine. When it hits 65 percent,
Anderson will buy a new machine four times larger than the Diedrich. Colorado
River's current machine can roast 7,000 pounds per month.
SKINNY LATTES, SKINNG PROFIT MARGINS
Coffeehouse profit margins are still
slim, mainly due to the nature of coffee-drinking as an early morning pastime.
Peak hours of operation tend to be early in the day, with sales in a limited
time span.
Sunrise Coffee struggled to stay
afloat during its first couple of years. Owner Romero said she was
"bleeding," and decided to supplement her revenue with vegan and
vegetarian food, which has helped her stay in business.
"I started making these wraps,
and at this point they're actually competing and getting the lead on my coffee
sales," Romero said.
Oliveira said his Boca Park slot
near Summerlin was carefully selected to bring in more revenue. Sambalatte is
striving to be the Neiman Marcus of coffeehouses, he said, so a high-end
location was essential.
Drive-thrus also help -- or, as
Jeanne Kessler puts it, they are a "necessary evil."
"People have become so
accustomed to having that drive-thru aspect to their morning," she said.
Grouchy John's will also have a
drive-thru when it opens, which Ynigues agreed is essential.
"With the culture in Vegas
being as transient as it is, with everyone always moving, a drive-thru
helps," he said. "We're fighting the Starbucks mentality and they
always have drive-thrus."
But for many coffee shops, ambiance
is just as important as what's in the cup.
At The Beat, the Cornthwaites have
fostered an atmosphere that's blends an artists' den with a "Cheers"
philosophy. Soon after opening, the coffeehouse became a destination in its own
right for locals who want a place to hang out downtown during daylight. At
night, gallery- and bar-hoppers can grab a beer at The Beat before checking out
the rest of Emergency Arts or moving on to other downtown watering holes.
"Cafes thrive when there's
culture," said Brian "Paco" Alvarez, a Las Vegas native and
curator for the Las Vegas News Bureau Archive. "As people begin to
congregate downtown, they're going to want more places like The Beat. We're
going to need a Beat 2, a Beat 3, a Beat 4."
People are also looking to get away
from the chain experience that dominates retail, Alvarez said.
"There was a moment in time
when we saw Starbucks munching away on mom and pop stores, but people want a
more authentic experience," said Alvarez, who spent his formative years
hanging out at Cafe Copioh and Cafe Espresso Roma.
There will always be the person who
wants a grande, nonfat caramel Frappuccino with no whip every morning on the
way to work and the person who wants to buy organic coffee on the way to the
farmers market. Independent coffeehouses will likely garner the latter, but
they are also trying to attract the people in the middle, who will visit a
local shop if it's conveniently located, or even drive across town for the
right taste.
"That might be one thing that
drives the shop local (movement), is if they have more options for quality
stuff, then they'll opt for that," Ynigues said.
The success of small, out-of-the-way
(unless you live in Henderson) breakfast spot Bread and Butter is proof of
that, he added.
Whether Las Vegas will ever be the
Seattle of the Southwest is up for debate, but with more emphasis on shopping
and buying locally, Las Vegas residents may increasingly seek out more
specialty coffee blends and the shops that sell them.
"The amount of education people
do on their own, it makes the whole idea of latte art and specialty coffee ...
part of mainstream culture," Sunrise Coffee owner Romero said.
"Procuring something that might not be hard to find but was made with love
and care -- people want that."
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Contact reporter Caitlin McGarry at
cmcgarry@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5273.