The more and more I eat, the more I am amazed at how much better some food is than others. The right ingredients crafted by skilled artisans creates a class of products that help us to remember what food is supposed to taste like. It reminds me why I am so passionate about creating Foodzie.
Case in point: meet Eileen - the founder of Ritual Coffee, an award-winning artisan coffee roaster in San Francisco. Ritual makes darn good coffee. Good enough to convince a gal (me!) who doesn’t like coffee to come back for a second cup. A second cup of straight black coffee nonetheless - no cream, no sugar and I loved it. I was stunned. (For the record it was their Misty Valley roast from Ethiopia - syrupy sweet and wild with intense ripe berry flavors, dates, figs hints of star anise, and a floral aftertaste.)
After I asked, “But it tastes fruity, kinda sweet - not bitter like every other coffee I’ve tried? How is your coffee so different?” Eileen explained.
First it’s about the beans. Eileen travels around the world searching for farmers who have the highest quality coffee beans. These coffee beans hang on the tree long enough to soak up that wonderful fruit flavor (remember coffee is a fruit!) and picked when the time is right. Eileen explains how they take the beans through the roasting process to enhance coffee’s naturally sweet, fruity flavor.
Coffee is already a delicious, sweet, juicy fruit. It has complex sugars, and exquisite acids that deliver wonderful flavors to our palates. Plucked off its tree, it has a flavor that you may compare to strawberry or watermelon. Our job as coffee roasters is to stand out of the way and let the coffee live up to its full potential. We roast the coffee just enough to caramelize the natural sugars and develop the delicate, bright flavors that the terroir and variety instill in the coffee. We favor vintage Probat coffee roasters made of cast iron with direct flame and we pay assiduous attention to our senses and our few rustic gauges while roasting. We taste our coffee every day. Every day we re-approach roasting as if nothing we know, nothing we have done, means anything.
Bottom line. Ritual rocks and so does Eileen. In fact, Eileen is the head curator for the coffee pavilion at Slow Food Nation this upcoming weekend. Eileen hand-picked the other 10 artisan roasters that will be at the event serving their coffee. We had a blast chatting with her because she is just so passionate about making the absolute best coffee around. Great work Eileen!
Rob and I arrived in San Francisco yesterday morning to cool weather, cloudy skies, and of course more food than we could even begin to think about cramming into our bellies. And we were thrilled. This is actually my first visit to San Francisco (I know…how can I even call myself a foodie??) and I’m on a mission to find all the artisan food producers in the area for Foodzie.
Yesterday we stopped into Tartine, the famous bakery in San Fransisco’s Misson District with a constant stream of foodies drooling outside the door. Just about every food writer swoons over the creations that come out of the bakery, so we knew we had to try.
As soon as I walked in, I was lusting after a slice of coconut and passion fruit cake with Bavarian cream, but was turned down by the lady behind the counter. Apparently it was too late in the day to cut into a fresh cake. So instead, we shared a slice of their lemon meringue cake (below) and a heaping bowl of their brioche bread pudding with fresh berries. Both were good, but surprisingly not the exceptional quality that I expected.
Around the corner we stopped into a local market and I found shelves full of California treasures. Plenty of chocolate, cheese, crackers, coffee, honey, jam and a ton of great olive oil. One of the employees setup a tasting of the oils and I found a few favorites. Katz was light and grassy with a peppery finish. Balzana was smooth and buttery. Both fantastic.
Today and tomorrow we’re in Napa. Thanks to the recommendation of a fellow TechStar and foodie friend Susan Mernit - we hung out at Copia’s Edible Garden & Food Festival. We met some really great producers. There was an artisan coffee roaster that turned me (generally not a coffee-lover) into a believer. We have lots to share - check out the blog tomorrow for all the details.
Small producers have lots of challenges when it comes to starting and operating their business, just like any other entrepreneur. But one thing that seems particularly hard is finding a good place to actually produce the product. Home kitchens don’t usually fly because they have to pass all kinds of state regulations and inspections and purchasing your own space that’s fully equipped can cost a lot of dough. Community kitchens are an affordable alternative that allows a producer to rent space to produce their product.
La Cocina an “incubator kitchen” in San Francisco goes far and above what most community kitchens offer - which is typically just space and equipment. La Cocina actually has staff on hand that helps teach these small producers about bringing their product to market and offer many different sessions to help their business succeed. Sort of like a mini TechStars for food producers. Here is nice video they put together that explains more in detail, how it all works.
I was excited to see that one of the Slow Dinners that is a part of the Slow Food Nation event, is actually in partnership with La Cocina. I was bummed to find out it was happening on a night that we already had plans.
A collaboration between the Mission’s Delfina Restaurant and La Cocina Community Kitchen, a nonprofit, shared use commercial kitchen and business incubator for low-income entrepreneurs. The evening’s special alla carte menu will feature Italian-inspired dishes from Delfina’s summer repertoire alongside similar, but Latin-inspired dishes created by La Cocina staff. Delfina Restaurant is committed to using only local, sustainable and seasonal market ingredients. A percentage of the evening’s proceeds will be donated to La Cocina.
I hope the La Cocina model spreads to other cities because while I think the kitchen itself is great, the mentorship from other food professionals is really what helps the small producers get their business off the ground.
For producers in cities that don’t yet have their own La Cocina, here is a great blog that maintains a list of commercial and community kitchens available for rent.
Yesterday was a huge day for the entire Foodzie team. It was Demo Day, the culmination of a busy summer at TechStars building our business. Each company had the chance to show off the product they’ve built in a presentation to a group of 300+ that included investors and people from the tech community. Every team absolutely rocked it.
After we finished the presentation, we were able to share our idea with a ton of investors one-on-one and it was exciting to hear that people were really looking forward to using our product.
Yesterday was also the premiere of a fun TechStars “LibDub” video that shows off the TechStars office and all the great people we’ve had the opportunity to work closely with over the summer. A big thanks to Andrew Hyde for choreographing the video. Check it out!
Rob and I sat down with Rebecca Cole from Colorado Biz Magazine a little earlier in the summer and chatted a bit about Foodzie. I have to admit, I am definitely still a rookie at the whole video thing. I was supposed to keep my eyes glued to Rebecca, but you can tell I occasionally glanced at the camera. Oh well, hopefully I will figure it out one of these days.
In about two weeks we’ll be headed to Slow Food Nation an event bringing together foodies to celebrate artisan food producers from all over the country. The event is in San Francisco from Aug 29th through Sept 1st.
Slow Food is a non-profit, eco-gastronomic organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.
The Foodzie crew will be there meeting incredible food producers from across the country, learning how they produce their food, and of course eating a lot.
Let us know if you will be attending. We’d love to see you in San Francisco!
We all love a good cup of tea here at the Foodzie homebase. In fact, it’s one of my favorite ways to wind down at the end of a long day. Which is why I am particularly excited about the 3rd producer we are introducing on Foodzie, Tetulia Teas.
In my opinion, the best teas are also usually the freshest. Fresh teas need less time to steep and are incredibly aromatic.
Tetulia teas come directly from their garden nestled against the Himalayas to the North and the Brahmaputra and Ganges Rivers to the South. Their teas range from an organic full bodied black tea to an organic light, delicate white tea. Most of their teas are available loose or in a tea bag.
The cool part is that they not only produce incredible organic teas, but they care about the farmers and the environment too!
The Tetulia Cooperative has established revolutionary education, health and cattle-lending programs for the people working in the garden and surrounding areas. All sales of Tetulia Teas contribute to this mission, helping to better the lives of Bangladeshi men, women & children while rebuilding the local ecosystem. Their tea bags are all biodegradable and the canister is compostable.
So check out their store and all their fabulous tea and support both Tetulia Teas and Foodzie!
Normally I wouldn’t find an ad for a casting call appropriate content for our company blog, but…as a foodie, I believe in sharing my love for food. So I thought I’d help spread the word. The Food Network is looking for terrible cooks who want to be transformed by their team of expert chefs. This casting call is in Denver, CO, but I imagine they are doing casting calls all over the country. See the details below.
Whenever I travel to new places, I like to scout out the local markets to find new artisan products for Foodzie. But when I can’t get out and travel, new product discovery comes from simply piggy-backing on the collective experiences of other foodies.
Brad Feld, one of our mentors at TechStars recently traveled to Alaska and shared a bunch of his Alaskan food finds, which included everything from smoked salmon, to mustards, to jam.
Laurel Durham, an attorney with HRO (one of our sponsors at TechStars) told me about Chugwater Chili, which according to people “in the know” is one of the best products from Wyoming. After some research, I discovered they were featured on Food Networks Food Finds.
We love learning about these interesting products from all over the country. So if you have an artisan product that you’ve found in your travels, please share it with us! Send it to @foodtweets on twitter or add it in the comments below.
We’ve added one more store to our “Sneak Preview” on Foodzie. We are excited to share Boulder Popcorn with you! That’s a picture of us below hanging out with Bill Heuston, the founder of Boulder Popcorn at the Boulder Farmers Market.
Boulder Popcorn has a great story. Bill will tell you that his 10 year-old daughter Cambria came home from school wanting to learn about supply and demand (smart cookie!). So his answer? They started a gourmet popcorn business.
They named the heirloom yellow corn after Cambria (that’s her above with Bill). It’s called Cambria’s Cream and it’s one of my absolute favorites. You’ll find these itty bitty kernels (with no GMOs I might add…) pop up nice and tender and have a naturally buttery flavor. I simply pop them with olive oil and toss with a little sea salt - the rest of the flavor comes naturally from the corn. They also have three other varieties, Ryder’s Red, Kailey’s Kernels, and Mayors Mix.
Typical microwave popcorn is bland and coated with that fake butter flavoring usually leaving you with a “popcorn hangover”. Boulder Popcorn is natural, free of GMOs and totally worthy of downing a whole bowlful. Visit their store and buy yourself a bag or two!
Tetulia teas come directly from their garden nestled against the Himalayas to the North and the Brahmaputra and Ganges Rivers to the South. Their teas range from an organic full bodied 
