Patch.com Holllywood: Brew Coffee Bar Now Open at CNN Tower

The new Hollywood coffee shop aims to provide quality coffee and customer service.

By Maxim Vershinin

We always try to pro­file busi­ness own­ers that can offer some unique advice and show­case their bold busi­ness moves within the indus­try. Today isn’t an excep­tion, as we head down to Santa Monica, CA to chat with Joy Park, the CEO of Brew Coffee Bar.

V. What made you get into the cof­fee busi­ness at such a young age?
P. I got into cof­fee because I was drink­ing crappy cof­fee my entire life, and liv­ing in Los Angeles I saw a pretty huge void in terms of good cof­fee. That is why I wanted to get into the cof­fee busi­ness. My part­ner Charm and I both went to Cornell for hos­pi­tal­ity, so this is very impor­tant to us, we really care about ser­vice nation­ally. He opened up a cof­fee shop in Boston, which was really suc­cess­ful. I wanted to open some­thing in L.A., so we teamed up and started Brew Café Bar. We opened up our first loca­tion in Santa Monica about 9 months ago, we are open in Yahoo cen­ter, and we have a cof­fee truck as well, which we run daily around downtown.
We came in for the pur­pose of spread­ing good cof­fee as quickly as pos­si­ble. All these great lit­tle cof­fee shops in L.A. and even in the greater parts of America, are all in these small neigh­bor­hoods that are hard to get to, and some of them are a lit­tle pre­ten­tious. I real­ized some­times it’s dif­fi­cult to actu­ally have access to some great cof­fee, so our inten­tion was to bring cof­fee to the peo­ple. That’s how we approached this mar­ket, which is why we are in Yahoo cen­ter right now. We under­stand that not every­one knows about great cof­fee, not every­one is will­ing to drive and walk through that alley and get to the cof­fee shop on the corner.

V. How did you get your train­ing?
P. I needed to be able to do the craft. I am not one of those own­ers that are hands-off; I am really hands-on. So, I actu­ally got train­ing in Portland by Stumptown cof­fee roast­ers. We got our offi­cial train­ing there for a week, and then got con­stantly trained for the next 10 months. We had them send two train­ers for at least a month and half.
What is great about us is that we brought in expe­ri­enced skilled baris­tas. Then we added on the Stumptown train­ing, and so we have amaz­ing baris­tas. For me, there is a dif­fer­ence between some­one who cares about cof­fee, who does it as a career ver­sus some­one who just con­sid­ers it as his/her side job. I went through over 400 apps and inter­views to find a great team of less than 10 peo­ple, and I am happy about that. Some even moved from out-of-state to come join our team.
I want to build and main­tain a work place where our team mem­bers are com­fort­able. You have to put the best peo­ple together, but you have to make sure that they get along. I think that is what is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from our com­pany in terms of how we hire, how we keep our employ­ees, and how we have a lower turnover even in this industry.

V. Coffee Truck! What is the idea behind it?
P. We really wanted to do a mobile café, and doing so has been a great expe­ri­ence. We real­ized we could build a cof­fee shop any­where. You give us 100 square feet of space, we will make it work and run effi­ciently. It has been 3 months now, and we are the very first cof­fee truck in Los Angeles. L.A. is the hard­est place to get a per­mit from. What we did dif­fer­ent is that we didn’t get your coach-roach aver­age 1980s truck, instead we took a Mercedes Sprinter van and uplifted it with La Marzocco machines and grinders.
It has been great so far. We are doing events with it, so the truck has been very busy. That truck is great in terms of doing some­thing unique on the side and attract­ing a dif­fer­ent mar­ket. We did the Easter Sunday Church event and the Porsche Boxster launch among oth­ers. I am very for­tu­nate that we got it passed because it was a very dif­fi­cult process to go through.

V. Anything you want to share with the cof­fee com­mu­nity?
P. What I find unique about this busi­ness is how people’s view and their rela­tion­ship with cof­fee are almost tra­di­tional. People are used to what they know and cof­fee is a daily habit. When Starbucks came to the mar­ket, peo­ple believed that they were a supe­rior prod­uct. That is why I respect Starbucks, because they did change the per­cep­tion of cof­fee; but the thing is, they just stopped right there. That did bug me and moti­vated me to start a cof­fee com­pany of my own. There is actu­ally really good cof­fee out there from roast­ers that go on direct trade with the farm­ers. The farm­ers grow bet­ter beans. The qual­ity con­trol starts from the cherry and Stumptown roasts beau­ti­fully. We take it a step fur­ther and we have a great team of baris­tas that can actu­ally craft what­ever you order to its honor. It has been a great jour­ney for me edu­cat­ing and open­ing people’s eyes to what really great cof­fee is. That is why I am really excited. If I can change someone’s view about cof­fee, then I believe the knowl­edge should be shared. For me there are no bound­aries, no per­fect cup of cof­fee, no per­fect latte art and no per­fect baris­tas. There’s always room for more.

BREW COFFEE BAR
2425 Colorado Ave
Santa Monica, CA 90404
www.brewcoffeebar.com
joy@brewcoffeebar.com

http://www.coffeetalk.com/august12-brew-coffee-bar/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=august12-brew-coffee-bar

Convenience. Old-Fashioned Service. Outstanding Product Quality.

Put that together and you have Hollywood’s First Drive Up Pull Up Coffee Bar on Sunset Blvd!

Los Angeles’s Most Innovative Coffee Company is now offering Pull-Up coffee service in their Hollywood Coffee Shop location at the CNN Tower.

Brew Coffee Bar is the first drive up coffee bar on Sunset Blvd at their store location in Hollywood, CA at the CNN Tower. They will create the convenience of serving amazing Stumptown Coffees to the road warriors throughout the week and weekends driving down Sunset Blvd.

Currently, BCB is the only specialty coffee shop to do this in Hollywood and offer this service as a convenience to their customers. They want to couple old-fashioned service with outstanding Stumptown coffee products straight to your car door. This will serve a nice option for residents and employees working in the Hollywood area.

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Here’s How to Do Pull-Up Coffee:

1) Pull Up at Brew Coffee Bar in Hollywood – 6430 Sunset Blvd @ CNN Tower

2) Call (323) 464-1306 and Place Your Order!

3) A Brew Barista will Bring It Out To You

4) Drive Off with Freshly Prepared Beverages and Pastries!

Brew Coffee Bar has been featured in Daily Candy’s deal for the month of July. To obtain this deal, please visit:

http://deals.dailycandy.com/deal/12812/brew-coffee-bar-50-percent-off/los-angeles

Offer ends Friday, July 27th, 2012

Brew Opens Coffee Kiosk at CNN Tower in Hollywood
Thursday, July 19, 2012, by Matthew Kang

Three days ago, Brew Coffee Bar opened its second location, a small kiosk, at the CNN Tower in Hollywood. With a successful first space inside Santa Monica’s Yahoo Center, Brew Hollywood also uses direct trade coffee from Portland’s Stumptown Coffee Roasters. Management plans to hire “career baristas,” or coffee professionals, which means that you’re more likely to get a higher-quality cup here. Along with its coffee truck that parks at 4th and Grand in Downtown (though it seems to be down for the time-being), it looks like Brew is creating a niche in areas where office workers frequent. Brew will also feature teas from MEM Tea Imports. Open daily at 7 a.m. [EaterWire]

Coffee Made With Care

by Michael Ryan

Patrolling the Santa Monica streets with fellow food writer Merv Hecht, a hot lead brought us to the Yahoo! Center on the east side of town. The complex is a major business hub with some high profile tenants like HBO, Apple and, of course, Yahoo. The massive structure has many amenities, but all inconspicuously self contained. So if you are just a passerby it is easy to be completely oblivious to everything that this place has to offer.

Being at one of Santa Monica’s biggest business centers, we were conversely searching for one of the smallest and newest businesses in the entire complex. After some asking around we found The Brew Coffee Bar situated at one of the corners of the main plaza. Brew Coffee Bar is a specialty coffee shop along the lines of the more established Intelligentsia Coffee. Following in the same mantra, Brew Coffee is not just your standard cup of Joe, but more of a coffee experience.

Merv and I did not hold back, taking a whirlwind tour of the menu and really exploring the studio. Off the bat we were offered a complimentary sample of their French hot chocolate. Being so rich and thick, I labeled it more of a melted chocolate, while Merv wasted no time supplementing his sample with a shot of espresso making some sort of mocha concentrate. The tasting was indeed off to a good start.

Merv is the coffee connoisseur, while I consider myself more of a tea guy. I ordered an organic tea, more specifically the rooibos latte with tangerine accents and steamed milk. The flavors blended so well they reminded me of a Creamsicle. Very nice indeed. Merv had no interest, deeming it too sweet, but took to their cappuccino. He compared it to his favorite cappuccino at a small place in the south of France, his highest honor.

The whole coffee experience really comes into play when you opt for the pour over option. It is at the pour over station where we met co-owner Joy Park who talked to us about her desire to open up a specialty coffee place that has somewhat been lacking here in SoCal. I did not know what specialty coffee was until I started picking up all the little details Joy went through to create a cup. From presoaking the filter with hot water, to throwing a couple of beans in the grinder first to expel any staleness, to doing the actual pour over in increments, it all serves a purpose.

This is where the “experience” aspect of Brew Coffee is most noticeable. Personal one-on-one service is something that has long gone by the wayside, especially with something as matter-of-fact as a cup of coffee. For anyone really passionate about coffee, the pour over option is something I recommend. Although it was not quite strong enough for Merv’s robust palette, we both concluded no traces of acidity or any bitter aftertaste was a testament not only to good beans but the perfect pour.

The prices are not so much higher than your standard Starbucks and you seem to get a starkly better product. Plus, supporting a local upstart is much more fashionable than going the way of the corporate monster. The Yahoo! Center also offers wonderful indoor/outdoor seating and common areas and so many shops that neither Merv nor myself even knew existed. If you do indeed visit Brew Coffee Bar by way of automobile, make sure you have them validate your ticket. Do not learn the hard way with a $12 parking charge. Thankfully, Merv was driving.

If you go

Brew Coffee Bar

2425 Colorado Ave., Suite B 118

Santa Monica, Calif.

90404

(310) 635-3355

http://brewcoffeebar.com/