PRESS - ROAST MAGAZINE - ROASTER OF THE YEAR 2007

by Laura Everage
originally published in Roast Magazine

WITH AN OVERALL BELIEF that the compassionate treatment of people and the environment inevitably yields a higher quality, Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea, Inc., has carved out a niche, and built a successful company that is dedicated to offering the highest quality coffees available, while at the same time creating direct relationships with those whom they do business with.

Collaboration is at the heart of this success. “There are many components to it, from the development work at source to the wholesale or retail customer, and it is exciting and very gratifying when all pieces of the puzzle come together,” explains Doug Zell, one of the co-founders of the Chicago-based roaster.

Making the Connection

Back in 1995 when Zell and Emily Mange (now husband and wife) started Intelligentsia, they relied on importers to source the high quality coffees they desired. While successful, they soon realized that with increasing competition in the specialty world, and their desire to become more involved in the process of sourcing directly, they should set forth to create their own connections with the farmers. “I wanted to ensure we had access to the best ingredients possible, and getting in on the farm level became essential for us,” explains Zell.

The desire to connect with the farmers was also strong for Geoff Watts, who currently serves as director of coffee and green coffee purchaser for the company. “Our aim is to develop coffees that transform the morning cup from a routine to a culinary event and give coffee drinkers the opportunity to see what the real flavor potential is in a cup of coffee that is made using beans cultivated and handled by growers who are not just harvesters, but artists who have a profound influence on quality,” he explains. “The vision is that coffee should be sold in restaurants and cafés in the same manner as wine—identified by farm and region, priced according to quality and origin, and treated as an important offering on the menu rather than as a careless afterthought.”

Watts continues, “If one intends to find a coffee of extreme quality and with very particular characteristics, the only way to find it consistently is to go where the coffee is grown and dig in.”

And, that’s just what they did. They dug in at source and made the effort to meet farmers face to face to learn about their needs, creating a unique collaboration that would ultimately be beneficial for all parties involved. “We all have come to love the development work at source,” Zell adds. “We strive to work with farmers who are focused and in turn we pay them great prices for their work. The farmers are truly artisans, and it is very gratifying to see a coffee go from good to dazzling.”

A Collaborative Effort

The whole crew at "The Hideout" for the company holiday party

Creating that culinary event requires a collaborative effort from the seed to cup. As CEO, Zell has been instrumental in ensuring every piece of the pie is handled with great care. “I have a very clear vision as to what I want from the coffees we buy, and we are meticulous about guiding the process to ensure the ultimate final result,” he explains. To further illustrate his point, he offers up the following analogy: “The way we are working at source is similar to if you go to Napa Valley and say ‘I want these grapes and want the wine maker to age the wine in both stainless steel and in oak.’ This way, you’re guiding the process and creating your own custom-bottled wine. Other than participating in the actual growing of the grapes, you have been instrumental in each piece of the process. This is similar to how we work with the farmers.”

Zell and his team of buyers are very much involved in what happens at the farm level. They provide recommendations to the farmers about growing practices, yet are very mindful of any cultural nuances that may exist. “We don’t want to come in and demand that farmers produce something in a certain way, we want this to be a collaborative effort,” says Zell. “We want to be able to share our knowledge and give growers the comfort that Intelligentsia will be there in the long run working side by side with them. Most people still don’t buy coffee that way. It is something that we are proud of and I believe it gives us a competitive advantage.”

The Intelligentsia buying philosophy is straightforward: “We believe in coffee quality and have made a commitment to our customers to offer only top-shelf specialty coffees that speak for themselves in the cup.”

In order to accomplish this, Intelligentsia seeks out partners at origin who are highly committed to the same goals, which include helping further social, economic and environmental sustainability within their communities. “We seek out the best coffee in the world,” says Zell. “And by developing coffees with growers, and rewarding them for their efforts, we have been able to accomplish this.”

Further, the partners realize that this commitment is continually changing and requires a constant focus on raising the bar on cup quality. As a result, each partner is required to yield definable and measurable progress towards this objective.

With the ultimate goal to pursue better quality, better returns and long-term viability, Intelligentsia created the Intelligentsia Direct Trade Relationship. In fact, “The words direct trade describe a buying philosophy centered on extremely personal, interactive relationships with specific farms, cooperatives and mills,” says Watts. “It’s not a new practice for us, but merely a name we’ve given to our origin work that has been in constant evolution for the last six years and will continue to get more fine-tuned in years to come.”

In order to be considered for the Direct Trade program, there must be a direct involvement between the growers and Intelligentsia—and that requires more than a simple phone call. The desire is to ensure that there is a mutual understanding of how to best create successful strategies among the partners involved. Each farm that is part of the Direct Trade program is visited three times a year; pre-harvest to create a strategy, during the harvest in order to monitor quality, and post-harvest to celebrate success and review any concerns. “In essence, we view the farmers we work with as partners in the craft of specialty coffee,” explains Watts. “It is our responsibility to teach the consuming market what quality coffee really means and how much work goes into its creation, selling only top-shelf coffees and making our customers aware of all the costs involved with true specialty coffee. Returning great profit to farmers who do great work is essential to the model, and providing critical feedback to help identify both blazing success and production missteps is key.”

With the implementation of this program, there is no doubt that the coffee is a collaborative effort between the farmer and Intelligentsia.

However, that collaboration involves more than the farmer and Intelligentsia. It includes the farmer, miller, exporter and Intelligentsia and requires total transparency of the process as well as the price paid for the coffee all along the line. “It fails when there is obscurity, lack of communication, and competing interests,” explains Watts.

Frequent visits to farmers are required as part of this collaboration, as are visits from farmers to Chicago to experience where their coffees are being sold. During these visits, the farmers have the opportunity to speak with staff at the café, and witness customers enjoying the coffees that they worked so hard to grow.

Working within the Direct Trade framework has given Watts, who travels to origin quite frequently, the opportunity to work with multiple farms in countries to provide exceptional blends. For instance, in El Salvador, Intelligentsia invests in several farms and chooses the best coffees each year to create the perfect blend, called Los Inmortales (The Immortals). Once purchased, Watts and the other roasters fine-tune the blend by adjusting the ratio of the individual estate coffees to ensure stunning results that highlight the attractive characteristics of multiple growing regions. “We strive to create a complete, thrilling and thoroughly delicious culinary masterpiece,” says Watts.

In fact, Watts explains that “This year’s version was put together after extensive cupping where we tasted more than 150 individual lots and selected only the most pristine. It was a big step forward in separation this year...we deconstructed the coffee harvests from four farms into single days or weeks of picking, and then meticulously combined the best ones to create what is easily our best edition of Los Inmortales to date. The exciting thing is that I’m convinced we have not yet found the ceiling. Every year should be a measurable advance as our relationship with the farms develops and we are able to zero in on even more microscopic degrees of detail in production and harvest methodologies.”

Continued Care for the Cup

Anyone in the specialty coffee industry knows that care taken in obtaining great quality coffees is a risk unless the same care is taken to roast and brew the coffee with the same care.

With so much effort being taken to ensure the coffee is produced in a manner that meets the needs of Intelligentsia, continued quality assurance steps are taken once the coffee arrives at Intelligentsia’s facilities. “It is extremely important to deliver the coffee in the best possible fashion and that means we must take extreme care in the way we roast them as well as how we brew them,” explains Zell. “Care on every level is essential.”

Once in the hands of the roaster, the coffee is transformed through roasting. Watts uses his innate tendency towards tinkering and experimentation in his pursuit of the most delicious cup of coffee possible. Through constant cupping and recoding of each roast, Intelligentsia remains meticulous about their coffees, providing feedback to farmers so they can continue to produce some of the best coffees in the world.

Within the three retail locations, Intelligentsia baristas are meticulously trained on how to properly care for the coffees. Customers are treated to a plethora of offerings from the Americas to Africa, and can participate in many in-store events that discuss the coffees and the story behind them. They also can interact with growers when they visit or read about their story through numerous educational pieces made available. But it is the barista that is the final step in assuring the highest quality control.

“If we didn’t have trained baristas, the people who care about brewing the coffees properly, we wouldn’t be successful,” says Zell. In fact, the care taken in training baristas has led one of their own, Matthew Riddle, to be named the 2006 United States Barista Champion. He went on to compete in the 2006 World Barista Championship in Bern, Switzerland and placed third overall.

Beyond the daily customers who frequent the café for the Black Cat Espresso, Los Inmortales, or any one of the Direct Trade offerings from around the world, Intelligentsia has built a solid wholesale following. With the number of wholesale accounts reaching 800, the task is great to ensure all the care Intelligentsia has taken to source and roast coffees is continued once it is sold. “We don’t want to be the coffee police,” explains Zell, “but we do offer our wholesale accounts as much or as little support as they desire.” To further ensure care is taken of the coffee once it is sold, “we try to align with the right customers who execute properly and have values that closely align with ours.”

A Cut Above the Rest

“What sets us apart from others is the desire to make sure everything is as outstanding as it can be,” explains Zell. “It includes the way we source coffee, the amount of time we spend with the farmers, the hands-on roasting, the quality assurance measures we employ and the diligent preparation of the coffee.”

For Intelligentsia, the human element is a critical factor in coffee, whether it is at the grower level, at the roaster level or at the barista level. ‘We don’t just want to be a caffeine delivery system, we want this to be a collaborative effort along the way,” says Zell.

It appears as if that collaboration has paid off.