Coffee is one of the world’s favourite drinks. According to Statista, consumer spending on hot drinks in the UK last year was £2.89bn and Brits, traditionally known for being tea lovers, are quickly turning into a nation of coffee drinkers.
Whether it’s an extra hot soy decaf mocha or a simple espresso, many of us rely on a daily caffeine kick to get us through the day. So why is it that most of us have come to accept stale tasting coffee?
Enter Roasting Plant Coffee. Roasting Plant, which launched in the UK in 2019 after coming to life in NYC, is ready to shake up the British coffee scene. With five central London stores, the brand is working to re-define fresh coffee with its unique Javabot technology and aims to reach 300 venues in the next five years. As the only multi-venue coffee retailer in the world to micro-batch beans in every store, they’re keen to offer the convenience and scale of the well-known high-street chains, with the high-quality taste that’s previously been associated with smaller independent roasteries.
Roasting Plant’s head of coffee, Genevieve Kappler, leads on perfecting the company’s just-roasted coffee offering, sourcing only the very best beans for the job directly from farm partners around the world. We sat down with the coffee connoisseur to find out a little more.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself, including your job role?
I’m Genevieve – a coffee lover, coffee technologist and the head of coffee at Roasting Plant. My role involves everything from travelling to different countries to source beans, to designing the brewing profiles for the coffee machines. Everything I do comes down to offering our guests incredible, just-roasted coffee that they won’t find anywhere else.
What or who inspired you to become ‘head of coffee’?
I actually started off in the wine industry before I switched over to coffee. A key moment for me has to be when I met the former Guatemalan ambassador in Paris and began working for her. She sent me to Guatemala to study coffee production, where I was trained by some of the best technicians and cuppers at Anacafe, the country’s national coffee association.
My career in coffee took off after this amazing experience, I haven’t looked back since! There’s always more to learn which keeps things exciting; it’s a wonderful industry that always keeps moving. No two days are ever the same and I am really privileged to travel the world meeting new characters and making new connections as a key part of my role.
What does your experience in the coffee industry look like?
I’ve been working in the industry for more than twenty years, primarily as a private technologist at Coffee Private Investigations Agency. This has taken me from France to New Caledonia to the USA and now I have visited more than 30 other countries for work, working closely at each stage of the bean to cup process. The fact that I’ve been able to travel the world whilst developing my skills is pretty special.
When Roasting Plant ‘micro-batch’ roast coffee, how does this impact the freshness of the coffee, and how do you micro-batch?
Our unique technology for getting the freshest cup of just-roasted coffee is called the Javabot system, which has been described as ‘Willy Wonka meets Apple’, which I loved. Our founder, Mike, designed the Javabot in the US, which micro-batches beans to ensure fresh full flavour with no bitterness and every cup of coffee is brewed to order. The beans haven’t been pre-roasted offsite for many weeks or months before being ground into your cup of coffee, as is the case for most coffee shops, and because of this you can truly taste the difference.
The exceptional taste and aroma, with the silkiest of cremas, which you won’t find in most coffee shops, is what sets us apart. Research from the University of Zurich highlights that roasted coffee is highly volatile and it loses up to 70 per cent of flavour and aroma in five to seven days. Just-roasted coffee is scientifically proven to have fuller flavour and aromas, removing the off-taste produced by natural oils in coffee when they become rancid as a result of oxidation.
We start with the best beans, precisely air roasted in our proprietary state of the art ‘fluid-bed’ Javabot system and always used while fresh. So, don’t just take our word for it – the proof is in the cup – smooth and never bitter!
How to know if your coffee is fresh? Just ask when it was roasted or check the ‘roasted-on’ date.
Finally, what’s your signature coffee origin of choice?
It’s really hard to choose a favourite, especially as flavour is only a small part of what makes the coffees enjoyable for me. My recent experiences often impact my choice of origin. For example, if I’ve just been to Peru and met an amazing farmer with an incredible story, drinking Peruvian coffee would be the most enjoyable experience for me at that time, with that personal memory in front of mind.
We want the characters and stories of the coffee farms we work with to really come out as part of the Roasting Plant experience; the flavours and aromas should transport people to those destinations. To us, coffee should really tell a story and whether you want nutty, floral or chocolatey notes, our baristas are on hand for all of our guests to find their perfect match.
