Today we’d like to introduce you to Richard Colt and Fielding Cocke.
Richard and Fielding, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I formed Texas Java Company on a lark in 1992 to provide specialty coffee to the Republican National Convention being held here in the old Astrodome that August, after which I needed something to do with all the coffee equipment I’d bought. So, I started calling catering companies, hotels, corporations, charities, and really anyone who might be interested in specialty coffee being catered as part of an event. The idea was novel enough, and specialty coffee was on the national radar, that I immediately started getting business. Concurrently, I was being pursued by various property management companies to place specialty coffee kiosks around the city, the first being located in The Galleria managed by Hines Interest. Others soon followed and I ultimately was operating 6 kiosks around Houston. Unfortunately, in 1997, the city told me that I had to retrofit my coffee carts with ‘grease traps’ which were cost prohibitive, so I was forced to shutter the kiosks (coincidently this happened together with Starbucks entering the Houston market). Meanwhile, the catering side of the business kept flourishing.
Fast forward to 2008, and the arrival of our roasting teacher to Houston. After meeting with Ken, who’d arrived in Houston from the Portland Oregon area after his divorce, I hired him immediately to help with my catering business, with the promise that I’d raise the money to get a roasting facility up and running, allowing him, a true ‘Master’ roaster (he was trained by none other than Alfred Peet of Peet’s Coffee fame) the opportunity to roast again.
I turned to my old friend Fielding Cocke, a coffee enthusiast, and avid wine collector, to see if he might be interested in investing in a specialty coffee roasting business. After Ken and I made our pitch, which was our first (I’d figured we’d be making dozens of presentations in order to raise the money needed) to Fielding, he apparently really liked what he heard, saw, and tasted because he called us back that same day asking if we’d be interested in him being our sole investor. That same evening, we literally outlined, over dinner, what our partnership would look like. Fielding ponied up to be our only investor in creating Java Pura Coffee Roasters, truly understanding our desire to be the first authentic high-end roasting company here in Houston. So, in 2009 Java Pura Coffee Roasters was born.
Sourcing globally and roasting locally, Java Pura quickly gained a cult following in Houston, as well as around the state, with legions of customers becoming fanatics, even evangelists for our coffee. We like to call these folks, our true believers, ‘Java Purists’!
Growing since the beginning, Java Pura Coffee Roasters now counts thousands of individuals, a multitude of coffee shops, many restaurants, dozens of corporations and catering companies, as ‘Java Purists’! All of whom, by enthusiastic word of mouth, are helping us grow into a coffee roasting force to be reckoned with. Additionally, with our new website launching soon, along with our already robust online sales from across the US and beyond, the future looks bright indeed for Java Pura.
Has it been a smooth road?
As with any business, or really any endeavor, there are struggles some of which were outlined in my answer to your question before. One struggle that all true specialty coffee roasters must work through is educating the average coffee aficionado as to what makes some coffees so much better than others.
So, we’ve learned the art, as well as the skill of specialty roasting from some very good teachers along the way, but it really gets down to the farmer level and their attention to detail, that truly creates what we call super specialty coffee. We have to be good at roasting, but no matter how skillful, how artful, we’ve become we can’t magically roast mediocre beans into something extraordinary.
Quality comes from ‘origin’, from the farmers we work directly with, and pay a handsome premium, for doing the things they must do to give us truly exceptional coffees to roast, and hopefully find the ultimate ‘sweet spot’ of. So far so good, but meanwhile we’ll keep sourcing the worlds finest green coffees, expertly roasting them, and proselytizing about their excellence.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Java Pura Coffee Roasters story. Tell us more about the business.
We are a specialty coffee roasting company that takes pride in offering some of the best coffees available in the world. I’m proud of our continued commitment to that quality, and adherence to knowing, and working with our farmers by visiting them each year.
By traveling to origin yearly (a fun aspect of the job!) we’re able to see for ourselves our farmers continued faithfulness in doing the things they need to do in providing us with exceptional coffees. This includes; picking only the ripest ‘cherry’ (coffee is the seed of the fruit of the coffee tree!) while leaving unripe cherry for another picking (added labor cost), the de-pulping (removing the fruits’ outer skin), the washing (depending on which drying process being implemented), the actual drying of the seed on patios (4 days to 3+ weeks of laborious work), the bagging and storing in ‘reposo’ (‘resting’ the coffee in it’s parchment), to re-bagging it (in 69 kilos, 152 pounds) for shipment, to getting it to market to then be shipped to us here in Houston. It’s all a lot of work!
In return for all this grueling, meticulous work, we pay our farmers, in many cases directly, well above (usually about 3x’s) what they’d normally get for their coffees from the local mill (a very gratifying aspect to our job). In return, we get coffees that when our customers try them for the first time, it’s a revelation. They never knew coffee could be as nuanced, as complex, and as downright sweet (remember-ripe fruit tastes sweeter than unripe, which correlates to the seed, and ultimately to the cup!), in their cup. It really is a revelation, and that’s when we’ve got them ‘hooked’!
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
We see the specialty coffee industry continuing to grow indefinitely; with innovation, education, and consumer awareness pushing the industry ever upwards. Everyone from the farmers themselves to specialty coffee roasters like us, to ultimately the baristas (the people at the front lines making/preparing these coffees), we’re all pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.
The industry is akin to the wine industry where the sky’s the limit, especially for continuously raising the bar on quality.
Pricing:
- We offer our coffees in 1/2 pound, 12 ounce, 1 pound, and 5 pound increments, with 1/2 pounds starting at $9 and going up from there. Our 1 pound bags start $17, and go up from there depending on the coffee. We also wholesale coffee to larger accounts.
Contact Info:
- Address: Java Pura Coffee Roasters
5250 Gulfton St., Suite 4G
Houston, Texas 77081 - Website: javapura.com
- Phone: (713) 523-5282
- Email: richard@javapura.com
- Instagram: @javapuracoffee
- Facebook: @javapura
- Twitter: @javapurahouston
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