In the aftermath of the pandemic, Counter Culture repurposes training centers to provide community service by hosting normal Shift Ingest and other events.
BY SARAH ALLEN
BARISTA magazine
Photos from Counter Culture Coffee. Counter Culture Coffee
Through the gloom and isolation of the pandemic’s worldwide spread Some truly incredible things were born out of it–gatherings or food items which brought people closer in unimaginable ways. And most of them have stayed on for good reasons. Counter Culture Coffee’s (CCC) monthly pop-up event, Shift Ingest, was one of them.
As a wholesale-only coffee business, that is, without retail cafes, CCC has stood out by establishing training facilities across the United States to give its employees and customers a space to meet and understand about workshops and play with the latest equipment, prepare for competitions, or literally hang out. There are twelve CCC Training Labs throughout the U.S.: in Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C., Durham, N.C., Miami, New York, Dallas, Charleston, S.C., Asheville, N.C., and Emeryville, Calif.
In 2020, the training facilities were dark and unoccupied as the country and world went into a state of shut-down. Trevor Clark of the Asheville, N.C., training center determined of interacting with people once more and, perhaps more important, to serve coffee to them.
Shift Beverage Begin
“Trevor created Shift Beverage in Asheville in the year 2020 to revive the training centre space following the pandemic,” says Counter Culture’s national wholesale education manager, Jenna Gotthelf, who is located in New York. “The Asheville Training Center is located in the Center for Craft co-working space–the building is equipped with a roll-up garage door. Trevor came up with the brilliant idea of opening the garage and provide coffee to the Asheville community that is located close to the training facility. The idea came from the idea of making the many delicious coffee experiences accessible through PWYW (pay what you want) donation structure , where the proceeds go to (Asheville nonprofit that is dedicated to healing racial wounds and organizing culturally) Precious.”
Shift Consume started as a simple pop-up that had an uninspiring coffee menu and featured drinks that were signature, Jenna continues, and the model has been so successful in bringing people together that “Trevor graciously entrusted us to create the Shift Beverage idea and bring it to the national extent and expand our reach but still adhering to the objective of the initiative: wonderful coffee is available to everyone.”
Jenna describes the atmosphere of Shift Ingest events as being “like the atmosphere of a coffee shop. Visitors are invited to come to the cafe to meet up with friends. There’s always a chance to understand more about deep dives into the subject and conversations at our training centres. While we all serve similar drinks throughout the nation but, each region is distinct and therefore it could feel a different at the Shift Drink or a Shift Ingest in NYC or Dallas or Miami or L.A.”
Shift Ingest expands across the nation
Under Jenna’s direction, Shift Consume continues in the same altruistic and grassroots style of making things easy and increasing awareness and hopefully money for local nonprofits within the CCC’s regional areas. “Each month, regional teams pick one nonprofit in their area that they will highlight at Shift Beverage,” Jenna says. “This offers us the chance for us to utilize our nationwide platform to raise money locally and gives regional teams the chance to meet with neighbors and triggers they are passionate about.”
The events are held on the Friday that is the end each month.
Shift Consume Event in Emeryville, Calif., July 29
The July Shift Ingest events at CCC’s Training Centers will be on Friday the 29th of July. These will be special, due to the fact that they will be the first time CCC’s Bay Area Training Center, which is located in Emeryville, Calif.–will participate. The events will take place between 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. at each of the training centers.
The July Shift Drink events will be fundraisers for Planting Justice, a nonprofit that aims to empower people affected by mass imprisonment and other social injustices with the tools and resources to promote economic justice, food sovereignty and healing for communities Jenna says. Jenna. (If you are unable take part in any of the Shift Ingest events, you can donate here.)
Additionally, every Shift Drink event will feature an original drink process developed by a member of CCC’s staff. Friday’s event will offer The Good View, created by CCC’s Western Coffee Manager Katie Carguilo as well as Western Roasting Manager Corey Reilly.
“Our drinking inspiration is the Irish Coffee from The Buena Vista The bar that is said to serve the very first Irish Coffee outside of Ireland,” says Katie. “The bar is located in the renowned San Francisco setting (cable cars! Ghirardelli Square! Piers!) and has a reputation for serving the best versions of the traditional coffee ingest. The fundamental ingredients of The Buena Vista’s Irish Coffee are sugar, coffee, whiskey, and a luxuriously whipped-but-drinkable cream.”
The interesting aspect, Katie explains, is that the consume brews use of coffee chaff as a component. “To make a non-alcoholic alternative for whiskey, we pondered that chaff could be a base flavor. Chaff is the coffee bean’s husk that gets removed when roasting. It’s thin and static, which implies it’s messy to use however this doesn’t mean that it’s not valuable: Chaff steeps an great addition to compost. It’s kept from a separate barrel, which roasters empty numerous times a day, and then bagging it into GrainPro bags for gardeners in the area to scoop it up and recycle,” Katie explains. “When it is brewed into a beverage the chaff will have an almost buttery-like, grainy taste. To improve our ‘whiskey’ and increase the complexity we added a good cocoa powder as well as vanilla extract.”
Sponsor Oatly contributes $500 and the amount of product necessary to every event. “Drinks are PWYW. We encourage people to make a donation via QR codes that connect to GoLively fundraisers that we organize every month,” Jenna says. “No one will be denied a donation for not providing.”
Due to a schedule conflict the center for training at Boston will not participate in the July Shift Ingest celebration, but other centers will.
The Shift ingest is open for everyone and is free, however it is recommended to RSVP by submitting the EventBrite invitations for each training center, which can be found from this collection.
This article was first published at Barista Magazine, an online magazine dedicated to baristas and coffee professionals.