The Cupping: Yet Another Small Business Harrowing Tale

Meeting with suppliers can be never wracking. These are people you will potentially be in business for a long, long time. You want to impress them. You also want to seem knowledgeable in your chosen industry. I assume that it isn’t just me who feels this way. But I do have to acknowledge that as a fledgling entrepreneur who has chosen an industry (coffee) that she is particularly ignorant about, this feeling of nerve-wrackingness might be more acute in my case. What’s worse, I didn’t have time to fully prepare.

Here’s how it all came about:

About a month ago, someone I barely know gave me a card with a man’s name and cell number. It was not his business card. It was his card for the shelter he volunteers at (because that’s how this practical stranger [to me] knows him). He works at a coffee roaster. One that my brother and I were keen on. So, a couple of weeks later, while staring dejectedly at his cell number, I made up my mind to call. But I was not going to call his cell. How inappropriate would that be? Instead I called the roaster and asked for him. They told me that no one by that name worked there. Awesome. Off to a good start.

“Okay,” I said. “Let me start over. I’m opening a coffee house—”

“That sounds right,” he said. There was laughter in his voice.

“Or trying to anyway, in Oklahoma City. And I’m interested in using you as a supplier. Can I set up a cupping/tour/meetings or whatever…”

I didn’t even take a breath. Just kept right on talking. And I sounded so professional. Clearly. He said sure but that he’d have to check around and see when they could get me in. He’d call me back.

They never called me back.

That was okay, though, because the very next week my brother and I met with lots of professional people and had more of a handle on where we were. Our business’s legal structure was officially formed and filed: LLC! We got an EIN. We were filling in spreadsheets with numbers. And I had even more questions to ask the suppliers when I met with them.

So at the beginning of this week, I resolved to try talking to the supplier—try 2. I was going to be professional and brave. I was going to cold call this man’s cell phone. Monday and Tuesday and most of Wednesday I was mustering up my courage and busying myself with other small tasks so as to avoid this distasteful one. I’m not afraid to talk on the phone. I didn’t hesitate to call the roaster. But this was someone’s cell phone!

Wednesday, at four o’clock, in the parking lot of Wal-Mart (don’t ask), I finally committed the deed. I dialed his number. A deep, deep voice answered.

“Hi. Is this So-and-So?” I asked

“Yes…?”

“My name is B— H—”

“Hi.”

“Yeah and Mutual Acquaintance gave me your number—”

“Okay. It’s nice to meet you.”
I really wanted him to stop interrupting me. I was trying to get it all out in one gasp of breath! And right now it sounded like Mutual had set us up for a date or something. Which I didn’t even think about until just that minute. That he might think that. Son of a gun.

“Because I’m trying to open a coffee house. With my brother—”

“Uh-huh.”

“And Mutual mentioned Topeca and we are interested in using them as a supplier. She told me you work there.”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, I do.” Understanding had dawned on him in bright, warm, fuzzy awareness.

“I’m going to be in Tulsa this weekend. Do you think I could meet with you or someone up there sometime Thursday or Friday? If not I could set up another time. I know it’s a bit last minute.”

“No, yeah. That’s cool. Let me call and set up a time and I’ll call you back.”

I’d heard that before.

But no, he did call me back, and we set the time for ten a.m. In Tulsa. Two hours away. That meant I had to leave the house before eight so I had time to get lost. Which meant getting up at six. And I needed to get all my questions in one place. And study up on cupping. Oh God. Why had I thought I was ready for a cupping? There wasn’t enough time to do a practice! Oh jeez, oh jeez, oh jeez.

Oh jeez pretty much repeated nonstop in my head until I was finished with the meeting at noon the next day. I called my Tulsa friend, Sprinkle, and she insisted I come up that night so that I’d have more time in the morning and we could do a drive-by of the roaster. I have a tendency to get lost and then absolutely lose my mind. I start sweating and foaming at the mouth. I call people in a blind panic and yell about how lost I am. And when they try to talk in calm soothing noises, I yell over them, sometimes not even in coherent words. Just garbled dread.

I agreed to drive up in order to avoid getting lost. But that meant I didn’t have time that night to get ready, because I would be driving two hours. And I had to pack/clean before I left. And get dog food because I forgot I was out and got to Petco a mere eight minutes before it closed and then couldn’t find my dog’s brand of food which is when I began sweating and foaming at the mouth and talking to myself in the aisles as the Petco employees attempted tidy up around me and not-so-subtly suggest I make like a tree and leave. So I got to Tulsa at midnight and crashed. Except not really because I tossed and turned and worried about the cupping. In fact I woke Sprinkle up more than once asking unanswerable questions like, “What if I can’t taste the difference between the coffees? What will happen to me?”

  

We woke up at six in the a.m. Sprinkle had class. We got up, I tried on outfits while she tried to decide which one was appropriate for a supplier meeting, got dressed, got breakfast, did our drive-by, I dropped her off at school, went back to the apartment, and panicked. I turned on Youtube videos of cupping and wrote questions for the supplier out like a madwoman. After an hour, which was all I had to prepare before my ten a.m. meeting, I had three pages of notes and butterflies in my stomach. And sweaty palms.

When I got there, the door was locked. I jiggled it. I peered in. Jiggled it some more. Checked my watch. Jiggle. And then resignedly walked toward the alleyway where the back door resided (it was the instructions I was given). But a man opened the door just in time. He was tall. I was too nervous at this point to look at his face. It was hot outside and I was sweating like a pig when I walked in the door.

“Good morning! I’m at the roaster, right? I found the right address.” I looked up into his face inquiringly for the first time.

He looked confused. Awesome. “Yes, yes, this is the roaster.”

“My name is Kalyn McAlister. I’m supposed to have a ten o’clock cupping and tour?”

He just smiled kindly, as if waiting for me to finish. I had finished.

“Uhm…I’m supposed to be meeting with Bob…”

His face lit up and he held out his hand for me to shake. My palms were sweaty, but I put ‘em there anyway. “Well, that’s me. Welcome to Coffee Roaster.” He looked around again in confusion. “Tell me again who you’re with.”

“My name’s Kalyn McAlister and I’m with Trade Café.”

“Oh yes, yes. So-and-So called and told me yesterday. That’s right.”

I followed him to the back of the building. It wasn’t a cavernous warehouse. Sort of small and intimate, actually. But with lofty ceilings and bags of coffee beans everywhere. The noise of the roasters were loud. It was a comfortable industrial ambiance. And I was trying to make myself relax. I wanted to appear confident. Bob had happy eyes with long crow’s feet spidering out across and down his temples. I hoped he was the sort that laughed with and not at…because there was next to no chance I would make it out of this rite of passage without a misstep.

I had watched four Youtube videos about cupping—all by the same person, which was probably a mistake—before I showed up at the roaster. The videos concentrated on taste, and he used sensations such as sweet, salty, and sour, basing the “flavor” or characteristics of the coffee on the taste buds they aroused. He didn’t talk about smelling the coffee. This would be what I considered my downfall.

Bob set up the coffee, grinding it as I watched, and tried to carry on a conversation. He was endearingly incapable of completing a sentence while doing something with his hands. Cupping requires preciseness from the roaster. Each coffee has two cups that have to be measured to the ounce so that the flavor is as similar as possible. That’s down to the bean in weight. Two cups for each coffee in case there’s a bad bean in the mix. It’s to ensure consistency across the two cups, but also, if there happened to be a bad bean, you’d have one good cup and one…off cup.

About halfway through, someone else came over to do the measuring and grinding for Bob. He sat down and told me about varietals and whatnot. This coffee roaster is a seed-to-cup organization. The farm owners in El Salvador own and opened the roaster in Tulsa, which supplies out to cafés. They also have their own cafés. That allows them to pay themselves fair prices (the ultimate in fair trade!) but also have absolute control over the quality of their coffees. That’s why they’re so scrumptious. And so fanatical about coffee. I was intimidated.

Once the grinding was complete, Bob stood up and moved down the row of six coffees, shaking each cup and smelling it. He explained what he wanted me to do. And then he diagrammed it for me with a silly looking drawing. I was delighted. As he went back to smelling coffees, I giggled over the drawing. He had to tell me to begin smelling. As I worked my way down the line, he described what he smelled. I nodded and made assenting noises. After I’d finished he stood waiting. It was clear he was waiting because his hands were on his hips and he had a focused, expectant look on his face. Which was turned my direction. My stellar response? “…Yup. They smell good.”

…

…

His underwhelmedness was interrupted by the dinging of the water. He moved down the line, pouring an even amount of water over the coarsely ground coffee beans. I said something about it being similar to Turkish coffee. He corrected me. I got sad. He didn’t notice because he was focused on the coffee. A timer was running so he could keep tabs on the brewing. Again, we went down the line and smelled the coffee. There wasn’t much differentiation in aroma. There was a marked different in the coffee grounds. But after the hot water was added, I’d lost the scent. He told me to breath like a dog.

After thinking about this for a minute, I decided he meant pant like a dog. So I opened my mouth slightly, and attempted to breathe in and out of both my nose and mouth simultaneously. I made it through half of the coffees before he finished, looked over at me, and must have been just flabbergasted. Very kindly, considering the fact that I must have looked like a dumb mouth breather, he stopped me and showed me what he meant. His nostrils flared in and out quickly, like a dog smelling something. Which makes much more sense than a dog panting, doesn’t it?

After a few minutes, he went down the line and broke the crust for both of us. This pushes the coffee grounds to the bottom of the cup with a spoon, and then he stirs backwards once and normally twice. I take this to mean that he stirred counterclockwise once and then clockwise twice. But I didn’t watch as I should have, because I was too busy ruminating over how I looked when I was panting above the coffee. He was bent over the coffee as he stirred, smelling the heavenly brew. I followed closely behind, smelling like a dog. I could smell the difference in coffees once more.

A few more minutes go by before you taste it the first time. You wait another five to ten minutes, when the coffee is room temperature, and you taste it again. Hot coffee pretty much tastes like hot coffee, regardless of the bean/roast. But if your roaster knows how to cup properly, he pairs the coffees deliberately. Moving from a sweet to a salty or sour and back again. We started with a heavy bodied, sweet coffee. My favorite. I don’t care about the taste so much as I care about the body. I love something weighty on my tongue. This preference, I take it, is not appropriate in a coffee fanatic. As we moved down the line, I could taste the difference between the coffees, even when hot, because he chose the order very well.

We talked more about the coffees and how the business was set up as we waited for the cups to reach room temperature. We moved back through. I decided this was a good time to bust out some of the terminology I learned while watching my Youtube tutorials. I had totally bombed the smelling portion of the cupping. I was determined to get this part right. So when we reached what I considered thought must be a “salty” cup of coffee, I said, “Is this one salty? It seems soft on my palate.”

I looked at Bob expectantly, waiting for my gold star. All I got was a blank look.

“Well,” he said, moving to stand beside me and reaching for a spoon, “if you taste that it isn’t wrong. There’s no wrong way to taste.” He slurped the coffee noisily. I was jealous of his good slurping technique. He swished it around. Stared at the ceiling in thought. Visibly came to the decision that it was definitely not salty. And then said, “I taste brightness. Very simple acidity. Fruity. What do you mean soft?”

“Oh uhm…” I was blushing. “Neutral on my palate. And it seems to be hitting my salty taste buds on the side…”

He was staring at me like I was crazy. I decided the best thing I could do was move to the next cup of coffee. I made an appreciative noise and said, “Fruity. High acidity!” This turned out to be a good move. The two coffees were the same bean, just washed and roasted differently. Bob had lots to say about that. And then I asked him how he slurped so well, so he taught me. And I made some self-deprecating jokes, managed to spill coffee on myself and up my nose (talented!), and then go back through the line again asking questions instead of trying to sound like I knew anything at all.

In this way, I made it through my first cupping. I have no idea what kind of impression I made. But hopefully they thought I was pleasant, even if woefully ignorant. He made it a point to tell me, multiple times, about the free training they offer shops that serve Topeca exclusively. I assured him that if we chose them as a supplier, we would be taking full advantage of all knowledge, experience, and training they would give us.

And it was great coffee. If you get the chance, go grab a cup while you’re in Tulsa from one of the shops. Or if you’re buying beans, I would suggest the Ethiopia Sidamo (fully washed) or their Bourbon Natural. Both are big bodied coffees with high acidity. Fruity and wet and bold. Delicious.