Brooklyn Roasting Co.

When people leave, what do you hope they’re saying?

First of all, we hope people literally leave with a good taste in their mouth. They should be impressed with the quality of our coffee and the quality of our drinks, and that means our staff has done a good job. People make great coffee, and our customers should leave appreciating those people in a way that's directly connected with the contents of their cup.

What’s something guests might not notice but you care deeply about?

Over the course of the last 15 years, we've developed three or four signature statements that define our business and our brand, but guests might not know about or notice when they visit our cafés. We say that we celebrate the bold, colorful character of Brooklyn and the colorful characters of the coffees we roast and serve each day. The design of our cafés is meant to suggest this, but people may not appreciate that it points to the core character of our brand.

Our logo is the most obvious distillation of who we are. We say that the outline of our logo never changes, like the boundaries of the borough of Brooklyn, but the bold, colorful characters that make up our logo are always changing, like the colorful characters who make up Brooklyn and the colorful characters of the coffees we purchase and roast in our Brooklyn Navy Yard facility each day.

Where are you choosing to do less these days?

Over the course of the last five years, much of our executive-level decision-making and management direction has centered around stripping away what's unnecessary and discovering the strengths buried within that are key to our success.

As one example: we've focused and aligned our packaging to make it more internally consistent. We thought we were embracing creativity by constantly revising and reinventing our 12-ounce bags and other branded collateral, but we weren't. That focus has made our branding stronger and better able to communicate our values.

The same goes for our coffee lineup. Six or seven years ago, we probably had 17 or 18 different coffees in our portfolio. We've narrowed that to eight or nine truly distinctive and delicious beans that taste excellent as single origins, but also have what it takes to contribute a range of colorful characters to our signature blends. We celebrate simplicity over sophistication. Fewer coffees with greater individual character means we can do a better job roasting and packing them.

Last, we recognize that our most precious resource is time. As a coffee company, there are all kinds of connections with different organizations and businesses who might desire to partner with us. We have to be selective and choose to work with like-minded businesses and organizations. At the end of the day, we are a business, and we need to make decisions aligned with our goal of being profitable and our desire to promote a brand identity we can be proud of. Saying no to some things means being able to say yes to what matters more.

What should someone order on their first visit?

I'd like to think that any of our drinks would make for an excellent first order. For myself, I probably order a straight-up black coffee, the beverage that says the most about who we are as a business and speaks directly to our serious but not snobby approach to our craft. That said, cortados are always delicious, a shot of our espresso is never a bad idea, and our baristas take great pride in their cappuccinos and lattes. Throw a dart pretty much anywhere at our menu and you should find something delicious and satisfying.