Brewing a revolution
Stumptown’s Duane Sorenson sees coffee as the perfect
platform to change the world.
By Brian Libby
With his tall frame and vintage clothes, Stumptown Coffee
founder Duane Sorenson cuts an impressive figure. After a
meeting next door at Stumptown’s original Division Street
café in Southeast Portland, Sorenson heads into the
company’s offices in the adjacent Victorian house, where
an immaculate white Apple G5 flat-screen computer monitor is
sole accoutrement atop his chic mid-century metal desk. Except,
of course, for a cup of coffee.
Sorenson is just back from Honduras, one in a long line of
trips to the coffee-growing equatorial zone to meet and educate
growers while seeking out the best beans. “I’ve
only been in Portland about three weeks out of the last four
months,” he says, rattling off Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia
and Rwanda as recent contributors to a robust frequent-flyer
account. “And that takes its toll. I miss my family. But
it’s paying off. The quality of coffee that we’ve
gotten, especially over the last three years, has been
incredible.”
Stumptown has, since its inception in 1999, quickly gained
international notice. This spring, Food & Wine magazine rated it
as one of the “best boutique roasters” in the
world. Sorenson now calls himself Stumptown’s director of
coffee, leaving everyday operations largely to others so that
he can proselytize about quality growing, roasting and brewing
methods.
“He’s very hands-on, with a very great attention
to detail,” says Eric Rose, of New Seasons markets, a
Portland-based chain that’s one of the few allowed to
carry ground Stumptown. “It’s all so we can do the
coffee the justice that it deserves.”
Sorenson even goes so far as to instruct pickers on when the
coffee beans should be picked. Sound pushy? Keep in mind he
also pays more for their product than virtually any other
coffee buyer — routinely above the industry’s
“fair trade” benchmarks for compensation.
He’s also telling their story, hiring local filmmaker
Trevor Fife to make a documentary about Stumptown’s
growers in Central and South America. “I think he wants
people to rethink the cup of coffee they are drinking and
realize that it didn’t get here by the roaster
alone,” Fife says.
The marathon traveling means sometimes Sorenson needs to
crash. The cell phone goes off and e-mail can go unanswered.
Creating the best coffee in the world would be challenge enough
for most, but Sorenson is seeking no less than to transform the
entire coffee industry.
Earlier this year, for example, Stumptown opened a tasting
room next to its café on Southeast Belmont Street in
Portland (one of three in the city). Here customers can learn
about not only different beans and brews but also the farms
where the coffee came from. “It’s empowering them
by education,” he says.
Growing up in Tacoma, Sorenson learned about the food industry
from his father, a maker of artisan sausage and cured meats.
“He was always very selective about using organic
producers and growers of cattle and pork,” Sorenson
recalls. “That was unheard of back in the
’70s.” The younger Sorenson spent his teens working
for his father, but across the street from the family’s
sausage kitchen in Seattle, he took notice of a then-relatively
small coffee roasting plant called Starbucks. “Those guys
just looked cool,” he remembers. “They were wearing
shorts and sandals, driving cool Mercedes and Karmann Ghias and
playing hacky sack. It was like, ‘I want to work with
coffee!’ Plus it smelled great.”
Sorenson worked through college as a barista in Seattle (a
coveted job in the grunge-era ’90s) before being promoted
to roaster for a small coffee company called Lighthouse. Next
he moved to San Diego to head roasting operations for a larger
company, but it didn’t take. “Having to get on a
freeway to go anywhere, and then having to deal with the
machismo, it was like nothing I’d ever seen,” he
says. “I was just too uptight.”
In the late 1990s Sorenson bought a circa-1919 Probat coffee
roaster and packed his belongings for Portland. When he bought
a small storefront 50 blocks from downtown, his friends thought
he was crazy. But from there the Stumptown empire has grown
steadily.
Sorenson has kept the reins tight. Stumptown now routinely
declines offers from other outlets to carry its coffee, and
plans little future expansion beyond its three cafés.
“We don’t want to get too big too fast in a way
that affects quality,” Sorenson explains. Starbucks may
have inspired him to leave sausage making for quality, but
Stumptown endeavors to remain a boutique roaster and leave the
McDonalds-esque ubiquity to others.
It’s a model people respect. Real estate developer Randy
Rapaport, who started Portland’s Three Friends Coffee,
remembers how Stumptown happily drove him out of the business.
“I realized I couldn’t even drink my own coffee
anymore,” he says, laughing. “I found myself going
to Stumptown. It was so much better.” Sorenson and
Rapaport are now friends, sharing a love of indie rock.
Rapaport raves about how Sorenson helps members of their
favorite bands balance concerts with easy-come-easy-go barista
shifts.
But therein lies the dilemma. “Stumptown has a very
focused customer niche,” says Mike Ferguson of the
Specialty Coffee Association of America. “It may not
appeal to as broad a customer base. That’s a tough line
to walk. But probably less so in Portland than in Kansas
City.” Sorenson has decided to strictly limit the amount
of cafés Stumptown opens, but even with its ground
coffee, there are questions. “Maintaining quality
standards becomes harder as you buy more and more,”
Ferguson adds. “There’s only so much of the best
coffee on the planet to go around.”
Which is why Sorenson isn’t taking any chances. He may
have already gone from barista to founder of arguably the best
boutique coffee roaster in the world, but soon this coffee
crusader will be on the road again — Portland’s own
Juan Valdez, but with a Penguin shirt instead of a poncho.
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