ABOVE: Patrons gather around tables at The Seed in Boca Raton. Photos by Taylor Jones/The Coastal Star
By Janis Fontaine
We love our coffee — and our coffee shops, too. A mundane cup of joe at the kitchen table isn’t enough to satisfy us anymore. We’ve become coffee snobs.
So it comes as no surprise that the coffee café business is booming. In a recent study, FindTheHome and FindTheCompany, two technology companies that collect and interpret data, identified cities in the United States with the most cafes per capita. Palm Beach County contributed four of the top 25 cities, beginning with West Palm Beach at No. 25, Jupiter at No. 23, Delray Beach at No. 7 and Boca Raton at No. 2 with 16.15 cafes per 10,000 people. Fort Lauderdale and Miami also made the list and Miami Beach was at the top.
Traditional latte with organic milk art at The Seed
in Boca Raton.
Two Boca Raton moms tapped into the trend by opening The Seed.
Rachel Eade, 32, and Carly Altier, 31, met through their children’s school. When they shared their ambitions over watermelon-jalapeño cocktails, they found they shared a dream: to be business owners.
Eade wanted a gourmet coffee house. Altier wanted an organic juice bar.
“We married the two ideas,” Altier said, and founded their business, A Squeeze & Drip Company, a year ago. Four months later, they opened the doors of their specialty coffee shop and juice bar, The Seed, at 199 W. Palmetto Park Road, across the street from Boca Raton City Hall. The women call their store, tucked between a salon and a gym, a “farm-to-cup” experience.
The décor is rustic, with high ceilings and an open floor plan. An eclectic mix of seating options, some intimate, some family-style, can accommodate two people or 20. Altier, a trauma nurse who also has years of restaurant work experience, greets guests.
But about the coffee.
Coffee shrubs produce an edible red or purple fruit called a cherry. Each cherry contains two seeds, called beans because they look like beans. A single coffee shrub will produce about a pound of hand-picked beans, er, seeds. The beans are a pale grayish green before they’re roasted to a deep warm brown. Most are organically grown in South or Central America, with Costa Rica and Brazil the most popular sources.
The Seed roasts coffee several times a week through a partnership with Wells Coffee Company, a small Boca Raton business owned by Brandon and Nicole Wells. “We all share a passion for coffee,” Eade said.
Wells employee David Imber, 21, roasts beans in a San Franciscan roaster in the front window of the cafe. It takes about 12 minutes to roast coffee. Imber monitors the beans like a conductor in front of a symphony, watching the temperature gauges and listening to the pop and crackles of the beans as they roast. A 6-pound batch of green coffee seeds will yield 5 pounds of roasted beans.
In-house roasting is a great marketing point, but it’s not being done to be trendy.
“Coffee is not a trend or a seasonal business,” Eade said, “It’s part of people’s lifestyle.”
She is right about that. Coffee consumption has remained pretty static at about two cups per person per day, with men drinking a little bit more than women, since it peaked in the 1940s. Less than 50 percent of people get their coffee at home, and for them, the biggest change in coffee consumption is the popularity of the single-cup “pod” systems.
But for the other half of the people who buy their coffee out, sales are split pretty evenly between large chain coffee sellers (Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts) at 26 percent and independent coffee shops and small chains at 22 percent, according to Zagat.com.
Andres Rodriguez serves customer Doug Marks of Boca Raton on a Sunday morning at Gizzi’s Coffee in Delray Beach.
Good help is hard to find
In Delray Beach, Andres Rodriguez opened Gizzi’s in the corner of a strip center on Federal Highway, just south of Linton Boulevard, 11 years ago. The former cruise ship officer handled food and beverage for Royal Caribbean, but he gave up a life at sea to try to save his marriage. The marriage didn’t survive but the coffee shop did.
“I like the idea of coffee shops,” he said. He greets every customer like an old friend. With tables and sturdy chairs, plus a few couches and armchairs, Gizzi’s is cozy — a place you might run into a friend or a neighbor.
Most of Gizzi’s coffee — about 95 percent — is organic, but a few of the flavored brews aren’t available as organic.
His biggest challenge is getting and keeping good employees.
“I’m constantly training someone new,” Rodriguez said. Many of the employees — like his “right hand,” Ashley Kite — are students at nearby FAU. He says the students taught him the importance of staying connected with social media. He laughs as he describes two young customers who are sitting at the same table “but they’re texting each other!”
The business is constantly changing, he said. Starbucks recently added craft beer and wine to its menu at a few locations (including Orlando) to test the market. It went so well, it plans to add more stores. “People want what they want and you have to be ready to provide it,” Rodriguez said.
Carly Altier (left) and Rachel Eade of The Seed. Photo provided
Customers’ questions
That 10-cent cuppa joe you ordered at the local diner in 1965 is a long way from that $5 cappuccino you got last week. And the coffee snobs are asking: “Were those beans ground this morning?” “Where were they grown?” “On the southern side of the mountain?” “Harvested under a new moon?”
At The Seed, Altier, who grew up in Boca Raton, is never rattled by the questions and she said that she and Eade take their roles as educators seriously. The two recently hosted a coffee class to teach the basics of brewing a perfect cup and the difference between hot and cold brewing.
Much of Altier’s focus is on the juice side of the business. She studied nutrition in college and is super-fit. She’ll gladly explain the reason you need to come back for a juice fix tomorrow.
One trend on point in the summer heat is ice coffees. Who knew that making iced coffee by pouring hot coffee over ice is so yesterday? Now, a good iced coffee is cold-brewed (sometimes called cold-pressed if a coffee press is used). Coarsely ground beans are steeped overnight in room-temperature water, and then the coffee is strained and chilled. Science supports cold-brewing, Eade said.
Locally baked goods
Sometimes, to give your customers the best product, it’s best to bring in a professional. The Seed stocks fresh-baked sweets by local bakers (the coffee crumb cake is a best-seller), and at Gizzi’s, Rodriguez gets baked goods, including vegan and gluten-free options, locally as well.
Getting customers in the door at off-peak times is perhaps the biggest challenge. Gizzi’s hosts open mic nights and poetry readings. The Seed owners have been rallying local merchants to work together, hosting a Pop Up Collective, “a caravan of local and small shops,” one evening in July. Vendors gathered at the store to show off their wares, meet their neighbors, network and build their businesses. Rodriguez has a standing special: Buy any coffee drink before 8 a.m. and get a free refill that same afternoon between 3 and 6 p.m.
Darin Johnson, a student at FAU who ordered an espresso, said there’s no place else in town with coffee like The Seed. Of course it has WiFi, and most of the guests have laptops or tablets open in front of them. Most are young people — under 40 — looking for place to connect in person or online. And most likely to post their feelings on Yelp.
Gizzi’s is surrounded by car dealerships and small businesses, but it attracts soccer moms on iPhones, too.
The Seed has hosted a few open mic nights and plans to do more now that school’s in session. And if things go as planned, The Seed, like Starbucks, will be adding beer and wine to its menu soon.
Barista Cortney Vaughn uses organic milk to make her art on a traditional latte at The Seed coffee shop in Boca Raton. Taylor Jones/The Coastal Star
It’s beautiful and you can drink it
They say you eat first with your eyes, so do you drink first with your eyes?
Some baristas think so, and they go the extra mile to please your vision before they please your palate by creating “consumable art” using a spoon, toothpick and the foam in your latte. You don’t even have to like coffee to appreciate a palm tree or an animal sculpted in the silky foam.
Now it’s a competitive event!
The United States Coffee Championships, which take place annually in Long Beach, Calif., feature five competitions over four days.
For true aficionados of the brewed beans, it doesn’t get any bigger than the World Latte Art Championship, which drew 36 of the world’s top foam artists to Sweden to face challenges including a free-pour of two identical reproductions of the best designs from an earlier contest.
Baristas are judged based on visual attributes, creativity, identical patterns in the pairs, contrast in patterns, and overall performance. In the end, Caleb Cha of Australia took home top honors at this “living gallery of some of the finest consumable art in the world.”
The Seed in Boca is planning a latte art challenge for baristas in early fall.
Oceana Coffee, with locations in Tequesta and Stuart, hosts barista throw-downs every month except November and December. Amy and Scott Angelo opened their business in 2009, and also have a roasting house where they roasted more than 25,000 pounds of coffee beans last year. In their contests, the baristas have four minutes to create as many lattes with art as they can. Celebrity judges pick the winners. Call 401-2453 or email amy.angelo@oceanacoffee.com.
— Janis Fontaine
Local spots
for a cup of joe
Featured coffee houses:
The Seed, 199 W. Palmetto Park Road, Boca Raton; 901-2727 or www.theseedboca.com. ;
Gizzi’s, 2275 S. Federal Hwy., Delray Beach 266-9797; www.gizzisdelray.com.
Some other favorite coffee houses (in no particular order):
Saquella Cafe, 410 Via De Palmas, Boca Raton; 338-8840 or www.saquellacafe.com.
More than a café, it’s an Italian bistro, espresso bar, European bakery, restaurant and tapas bar. Family owned, it roasts boutique coffees and trains the baristas in European-style preparations.
The Beat Cup, 660 Linton Blvd., Suite #110, Delray Beach; 330-4693 or www.thebeatcupcafe.com.
Part art gallery, consignment shop, bookstore, this isn’t what you’d call a coffee shop. Now it serves Panther coffee drinks, cold-brewed iced coffee, iced yerba mate tea and lattes.
The Coffee District, 325 NE Second Ave., #104, Delray Beach; 455-0541 or www.mycoffeedistrict.com.
Coffee District in the Pineapple Grove district of Delray Beach offers bar and table seating to enjoy your choice of hot and cold coffee, espresso and tea drinks, plus panini, salads, soups and gourmet desserts. It also serves more than 100 microbrews.
The Grind Cafe, Delray Marketplace, 14859 Lyons Road, #132, Delray Beach 270-2058; www.grindcafedelray.com
It’s all about the mug, they say at The Grind Café. No paper cups here. But dozens of varieties of coffees from around the world. You’ll find soft couches and comfortable chairs. Homemade desserts and sandwiches, too.
Bond en Smolders, 1622 S. Federal Hwy., Boynton Beach; 877-2462
This European bakery owned by husband and wife team Ralph Bond and Patricia Smolders, who have owned a bakery in the Netherlands for 15 years, recently opened on the southeast corner of Federal and Woolbright. The menu: coffee from Counter Culture Coffee plus tea, breakfast, pastries, sandwiches, salads and bread.
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