Doug Zell’s involvement with coffee began in the early 1990’s. He had moved to California to begin a new business venture.  It ultimately failed and landed him in San Francisco where he drank his first cup of real Specialty Coffee at the now defunct Spinelli Coffee.  It was love at first taste.  After stints at Peet’s Coffee and Spinelli Coffee working in various capacities from barista to management, Doug packed all of his worldly possessions into an old Isuzu Trooper and left San Francisco with his wife and future business partner, Emily Mange, on April Fool’s day, 1995 bound for Chicago, parts unknown.  

After devising a business plan in his parent’s basement (doesn’t every entrepreneurial story require a basement, garage or second bedroom?), Doug and Emily emerged to found and open Intelligentsia Coffee in Chicago’s Lakeview East neighborhood on October 9th, 1995.  Doug has literally held every position in the company from coffee buyer, to roaster, to barista, to delivery driver, to bill collector, to Art Director, to chief floor sweeper and everything in between.  He currently serves as Intelligentsia’s CEO, a position that he finds alternatively thrilling and maddening.  Under his watch the company has grown from one retail store to two and from zero wholesale accounts to several hundred.

What Doug cherishes most about the coffee business is traveling to coffee origins along with Intelligentsia’s VP of coffee, Geoff Watts, to work directly with the growers and growers’ groups that lovingly grow and prepare the best coffees in the world for Intelligentsia to roast. He can’t thank them enough.  The stamps in his passport for these visits include Mexico (Oaxaca and Chiapas), Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil, and Indonesia (Sumatra and Java).  Doug plans on adding some more places to the list in 2004-2005 including Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Rwanda, Sulawesi, East Timor, Peru and El Salvador.  

Doug currently serves on the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s Board of Directors. Other than that, he loves a perfectly pulled double ristretto shot of Black Cat to start his work day.

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Geoff Watts is the Director of Coffee and Green Coffee Purchaser for Intelligentsia Coffee. His solicitous engagement with coffee began while a student at the University of Vienna in Austria, where his study of German literature and language often led to extended visits to many of the city’s famous cafés. As fortune would have it, his academic pursuits (and in equal part a keen appreciation for lovely weather, oceans, and those sorts of things not readily available in the Midwest) landed him at UC Berkeley, where many of this country’s most accomplished coffeemen have set up shop, allowing ample opportunity to continue cultivating a coffee palate. It was there, under the tutelage of a most tremendous Ghanaian drummer, that music became a principal focus, providing a foundation which would become a steadying force in what most would agree is a fascinating but not altogether stable world.

Upon returning to Chicago in 1995, Geoff began playing with the African American Unity Ensemble, a West African percussion group with which he is still involved. In the fall of that year, following a brief yet highly pleasurable tenure as a dog-walker, Geoff helped open Intelligentsia with founders Doug Zell and Emily Mange. An innate tendency towards tinkering and experimentation was the driving force behind the pursuit of the most delicious cup of coffee possible, and what began as an investigation of coffee as a beverage, from roasting to preparation, naturally evolved into what is now a continuing exploration of coffee’s development at the farm level.

Each year, extensive travels to farms throughout Central and South America, Africa and Indonesia, alongside new relationships with farmers, exporters, and specialty coffee importers throughout the world continue to provide insight and understanding of what it is that makes coffee extraordinary.

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Matt Riddle is the Designer for Intelligentsia Coffee. He came to Chicago after obtaining a BFA in Fine Art - Photography at Indiana University and working for an Advertising and Web Development Agency in Bloomington, Indiana. Matt was hired on at the Intelligentsia Broadway store in September 2002 as a Barista. He quickly took a liking to the company, the philosophy, the people and, of course, the coffee. In April of 2003 he took a position at the Roasting Works as a Training Specialist. He partnered with Ellie Matuszak and Amber Sather to form the Training Dept. which trained our baristas and our wholesale customers on proper drink making, cleaning and maintenance of their espresso and brewing equipment. In October of 2003 Matt joined forces with Jay Cunningham to bring all of the design for Intelligentsia in-house.

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Amber Sather is a Training Specialist at Intelligentsia Coffee.  Amber moved to New York in September of 2000 after graduating with a BA in Liberal Studies from the University of Montana, then landed in Chicago a year later, with nothing here except her good friend Anya Davis.  Anya introduced her to the world of Intelligentsia through the Broadway retail store and a year later Amber signed on as a barista.  She fell in love with the coffee, and then the espresso, then the barista craft.  Amber started doing training alongside Ellie Hudson and Matt Riddle (Training Dept) about 8 months after starting at Broadway.  She helped in the opening of our second retail location, the beautiful Monadnock store, and from there trained our retail staff to pour breathtaking latte art and get Bar Certified.  In 2004, Amber and Ellie had the amazing opportunity to train with Barista Champions and to prepare for competition in regional championships, the United States Barista Championship (USBC), along with introducing the first ever Intelligentsia Barista Championship (IBC), held in August, 2004. Amber recently placed second in the first ever Great Lakes Barista Competition.

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Sarah Kluth has been an Intelligentsia employee since 2003, beginning originally as a Barista at the Broadway store. For the last 20 months, Sarah has represented Intelligentsia on a national level as a Wholesale Training Specialist, focusing on education and in-depth training of coffee preparation. Most recently, Sarah has been transitioning to Intelligentsia’s Quality Control department which is responsible for assessing incoming coffee quality, purchased coffee quality and outgoing coffee quality. It is this newly acquired position that brought Sarah to Peru with Intelligentsia’s Green Coffee Purchaser, Geoff Watts, exploring coffee country and meeting the fantastic people who grow specialty coffee as part of Intelligentsia’s Direct Trade work.

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Doug Palas is the Tea Buyer for Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea, Inc. Doug has been working at Intelligentsia since 2000. His tenure with the company began on the production floor after which he assumed a purchasing role. It was during this time that he discovered his love of Specialty Tea and helped launch Intelligentsia Tea Traders in 2004.

For the past several years Doug has spent countless hours cupping and tasting teas with the goal of bringing truly great artisan teas to Intelligentsia customers. He has led numerous tea demonstrations, including tastings for Slow Food Chicago and several other international organizations. He is committed to educating and enhancing people’s lives through the proper preparation and consumption of the world’s most popular beverage.

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