TGITC

LA POP UP CAFE!

Click below to play this Video made by the dude! Jeff Newton from Americano Mondays !

At the start of the year I visited Los Angeles, and while I loved the cafes, the coffee and the growing specialty scene there I thought how cool would it be if the people of LA, the LA coffee industry and the enthusiasts all had a chance to all go to one local place and try all the best coffees from my side of the world and contribute to a local charity?! They could save on an expensive flight (apparently 63% of Americans have never left the USA), learn and experience these very unique different coffees from some of the BEST roasters in the WORLD, and do good!

So, this year in July I took TGITC international and flew to Los Angeles to do a four day pop up at my bike-crazy new friend’s shop The Golden Saddle Cyclery (GSC). I curated ten of some of my favourite UK and European Roasters and featured them at my pop up as filter coffee and I had an awesome local coffee roaster Bicycle Coffee LA on my red La Marzocco home mini, serving as espresso. We have international cuppings in the UK all the time and along with my travelling, I’m very fortunate to try so many coffees so I wanted to extend the growth to a city that seems to be slowly seducing me (haha) and share what we have, while having fun. So thats what we did!

All proceeds from the Pop up went to a local stray cat charity @luxepaws and to a Downtown LA women’s shelter!

To be honest, I was nervous about how this market might take lighter roasts, as LA on the whole seems to be more on the medium roast over lightly roasted coffee. Right before I opened I felt the fear: “Will anyone even come?” because I didn’t really know anyone in LA and I was worried people would think, “who is this random girl from NZ/UK bringing this coffee here?? Our LA coffee is perfectly fine!!!” (If you did, you know who you are). 😉

Though, I realised quickly that the customers who came through the GSC doors had a thirst for good coffee and new experiences, and were specifically into specialty coffee so that wasn't a problem at all!

It was like a coffee party everyday! Every customer who bought a coffee went in to a draw to win a bag of coffee and an Eastpak bumbag, with a big prize at the end to win either an Eastpak backpack. I want to make a special shout out to Eastpak and their team who helped me make it happen. They provided a THE best range of practical but cool looking bumbags and backpacks for me to give away to customers each day! I’m such a fan of their bumbags, especially when I’m working - they have such cool colours and designs so it really added to the excitement of the event. I even got to choose all of the designs and colours that I raffled out and people were stoked, dancing around the shop in them.

THE COFFEE:

It was a huge feat to feature such a large range of coffees over four days with just myself serving - but I’m so so happy with the range of coffee I received. Luckily I’m very familiar with each roastery and their coffees or know them personally so that made it much easier to inform and talk about. I can’t tell you how appreciative I am to all the roasters who got involved. They were extremely co-operative, had initiative, were enthusiastic and so professional, not to mention every single coffee tasted so good because they chose to send their best beans! Every single coffee roaster sent their coffee to my instructions (as I wanted it as fresh as possible) and they all arrived exactly on time. NO customs hold ups either - unbelievable, considering they were coming from all over England and Europe! It’s really great to know that these roasteries are so professional, yet involved and fun! Some of the roasters featured at my pop up are now even exporting to LA. So thats pretty cool!

The best thing? The customers who came by, LOVED the variety of coffee and the bike shop of course! There was a lot of interest in Colonna Coffee’s (Bath, UK) Rare Gesha, as well as Ballies Coffee (Belfast, Ireland) natural Guatemalan and their unique tie-dyed packaging! Also, there were many comments about the “juiciness” of Ozone Coffee’s Ethiopian Guji! We did many different tastings, and it was super interesting for all involved.

The most common question was what was my favourite?! My honest answer was "ALL of them"! Each one was so different and beautiful to drink, which enabled me to talk about them all individually because there were so many origins. I liked hearing what peoples preference and palette was like so I could direct them accordingly. Not one person had a bad thing to say about any of the coffees. It was really positive.

So how did I brew?

At any one time I had three batch brews available to drink (I used a Breville USA latest Precision brewer (see below in photo diary- it’s really great!) in 3 urns which I rotated, so people could try at least three different coffees side by side. I let people choose any coffee they were interested in, then I would make them a pour over from my copper Hario V60 (available in my webshop uk only) it and we could all taste and compare. It was a bit frantic with just myself, but obviously everyone was patient and really looked forward to trying all the different coffees - and of course we could get to know each other!

I tried to give every customer a good run down on all the coffees and some history about each roaster.

It was awesome to see and hear peoples reactions first hand to all the coffees. From packaging, to their opinions on taste, what they usually drink, and to hear the kind of questions they had, what they knew already and it was cool to get a sense of what they value, how they perceive coffee/the industry over this side (LA), what THEY thought about the LA coffee scene, questions they had about the UK/European coffee scene, how they make coffee at home, and how they generally consume was so insightful.

I'm so glad I had it at Golden Saddle Cyclery because Kyle and the whole GSC team was incredible, they’re a unique and special bunch for sure which made for a constantly positive and fun atmosphere and hard to leave!

GSC are a very popular bike shop, known also for their regular shop rides (often meeting at Intelligencia Cafe nearby first). On my last day, Kyle lent me his Surly electric bike took me on a shop ride to Black Top up in the famous Griffith Park to see the sunset. The views were amazing and so was the company and beer! Silver Lake is probably one of the coolest areas in LA so if you get the chance, you should check it out for sure. I'm particularly grateful (and amazed) that there were so many people who made the trip specifically to the pop up and for the coffee because I now know, LA peeps are spoilt for choice on events happening in this city plus everywhere is so far apart! You can’t just jump on connecting tubes or busses. So, many thanks to friends and followers who got behind this concept and helped spread the word through your networks, videos, pictures, texts, all of it! It helped a lot, and hopefully if you posted on Instagram, you saw yourselves being re-grammed too! :)

I had the BEST people on board. My friends at Decent Packaging provided me with their awesome compostable cups and I didn’t realise how into Sparkling water the LA crowd were until this trip. EVERYONE drinks canned sparkling water - its the thing to do apparently! So I was super psyched to introduce them to my UK mates: UGLY Drinks (USA) who came to the party with their whole delicious range of natural flavoured sparkling water. It was the bomb! In fact I made “Espresso Bombs” with them - a natural sugar free take on the Espresso tonic where they could choose which flavour Ugly would go with it. That was super fun and people were really in to it. If you’re in America, look out for them in NYC and in a few spots in LA. Otherwise in the UK they are in most good supermarkets and health food stores.

The Challenges

Milk and bottled water in LA is really expensive! (actually most of their grocery stores are expensive!) So… I decided to only use Oat Milk. My UK Oat milk friends Minor Figures had just recently launched in LA so I was able to use them exclusively. I was a bit nervous as I’ve never done a pop up with only an alternative milk… but it’s LA! So it was awesome. No one even questioned it…How cool is that?

From my experience of traveling around the world trying different coffees you get a taste for a trend or a sense of what the coffee is like overall. Of course there are outliers in every city or country, and I have in the past having visited LA many times (I have family there) that LA, in general seems to have a slightly different roast profile when it comes to coffee. I would say its just a fraction darker than UK/european roastered coffee, but thats not to say its not as good! It is! It’s different which is expected due to slightly different coffee cultures and history, which is why I’m fascinated by and love Americans and their coffee! Theres a genuine love for coffee that exudes from almost every American I’ve met, like it’s air - and I would agree!

There are some amazing reputable roasters in the USA which I hope to discover soon and maybe reciprocate and share with the UK/European coffee with them one day.

Post Pop - up

The day after the pop up finished and after the long pack down, I held a cupping with some coffee I saved, at Dayglow cafe on Sunset Boulevard for anyone who might have missed it during the day. Dayglow Cafe is such a sexy cafe! Tohm and Josh were particularly helpful in lending me some equipment for my pop up too and are one of the few cafes that often order coffees from Scandinavia/Europe and offer a hugely popular subscription and wide range of coffee/coffee roasters. At first I thought no one would turn up bc 1) it’s LA and 2) it was short notice... but in the end I think we had a bout 15-20 people and it was a really interactive evening. It was cool to meet some people in the industry. Dayglow has also just opened a new shop in West Hollywood (Weho) so get in there if you can!

I learned a lot… A LOT on this trip. Watch out for more developments coming soon. I hope you can be apart of it!

*Photos at Dayglow Cafe taken by Jeff Newton from Americano Mondays

Three Lessons I learned:

I learned that good people who not only ‘get’ your vision and are passionate about their own product and work ethic are more reliable. So choose your partners carefully. I’m really grateful to all the people involved who helped make this charity event a success.
You can try to be organised and prepared, but the unexpected will always happen so I had to learn to go with the flow a bit more and set my self up so not to stress as much and do what was needed.
I learned to go outside my comfort zone - especially in a new space, around new people in a new timezone, and it was pretty awesome.

Massive Thanks to:

Eastpak
Golden Saddle Cyclery LA
La Marzocco USA
Ugly Drinks
Minor Figures
Decent Packaging
Olli & Co.
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COFFEE ROASTERS
Bicycle Coffee - LA
Bailies Coffee - Ireland
Bonanza Coffee Roasters - Berlin, Germany
The Roastery Dept - London, UK
The Dept of Coffee - London, UK
Colonna Coffee - Bath, UK
Dark Arts Coffee – London, UK
Three Marks Coffee – Barcelona, Spain
Square Mile Coffee Roasters – London, UK
Ozone Coffee Roasters - London, UK
Koppi Coffee Roasters - Helsingborg, Sweden
Dear Green – Scotland, UK

My PHOTO DIARY!

I’m very grateful to ALL the people who supported the cause - both supplier, brand partners and the people who came in and donated! Not one person or brand let me down. Thank YOU! And thank you for all the online support from afar too! I know the charities were very grateful for all the donations raised.

May be you’ll spot yourself below…