AN INTRODUCTION
Ray: Welcome to Unpacking Coffee. I’m Ray.
Kandace: I’m Kandace.
Ray: Who are we talking about this week, Kandace?
Kandace: Modcup Coffee out of Jersey.
Ray: How did we hear about Modcup? Do you know?
Kandace: They sent us some coffee, which is a great way for us to hear about somebody and end up on the show.
Kandace: The idea of Mod is… Well one, probably the cool design factor, because you look inside their coffee shop and they’ve got a lot of that. Also, the idea that they’re making modern coffee, which is super fresh.
Ryan: A mod, especially in the early ’60’s, is a young person of a subculture, characterized by stylish dress, the riding of motor scooters and a liking for soul music.
Kandace: We’re the first people ever to show this package, besides everyone who’s seen it in their shop.
Ray: Right. It’s not just a shop. It’s also a 1972 … Citroen.
Kandace: Are we talking about the truck?
Ray: Yeah.
Kandace: Okay.
Ray: Anyway, they roast coffee and make espresso in this van. This is so cool.
photo courtesy modcup
WHAT IS MOD COFFEE?
Kandace: Well, we talked Modcup’s Ryan Foster about what modern coffee means to them.
Ryan: I’m Ryan Foster, the wholesale director for Modcop Coffee, and also the lead designer for our packaging and for our website.
The idea behind 1% is really just bringing the fact that 99% of the coffee that’s out there on the market is absolutely stale. We’re part of the 1% of coffee companies that are really pushing the idea of freshly roasted coffee being paramount to experiencing what coffee is, which is a wonderfully complex fruit.
We tell our customers, just like bread, when you roast coffee you’re chemically altering … You’re changing it. Just like bread, it’s going to oxidize, it’s going to lose flavor, it’s going to go stale in that period of 14 to 18 days. That plays into the definition of what modern coffee is.
In the coffee industry, everybody talks about it as ‘third wave coffee’ which, to a lot of people, doesn’t make a lot of sense. We thought it was an opportunity to actually brand our message and call it ‘modern coffee’.
Ray: Well, that is probably true. There’s a lot of coffee…
Kandace: (laughs) That’s probably true-
Ray: Most of it’s shit, so-
Kandace: Yeah. Yeah.
COLD BREW
Ryan: Okay, so we have a cold brew retail product. We mostly do every bottle with me here, so we do it as bottles of concentrate, just 16 ounce bottle. We’ve changed up how we’re actually serving cold brew with milk. A lot of times you’ll go into a place that will have cold brew that’s already … The concentrate that’s already diluted. Adding milk to it completely washes out the flavors.
We only want to serve things to people that taste good, so we use … We started using concentrate and milk. To accommodate both sets of people, we started selling bottles of concentrate. Now, the bottle is designed to be portioned out, so there’s all the tick marks on the side here that the people can use to do their own 16 ounce portion. We also sell it with a glass, and it’s also branded and has … This might be hard to see, but a little line on it, for people that didn’t have a concentrate fill level to get exactly what we serve them in our retail locations, to make sure that people are getting the product that we intend to serve them.
WHAT ARE WE DRINKING?
Ray: Kandace, the viewers at home may have noticed that we’re not drinking coffee.
Kandace: Oh, but Ray, we are!
Ray: Is that right, Kandace? Why don’t you tell me more?
Kandace: We are drinking a Modfashioned-
Ray: Looks like she got it on camera-
Kandace: Yeah, they have this awesome cold brew concentrate called ‘The Dredger’, and then they gave us a recipe for making a Modfashioned.
Ryan: We used to sell the concentrate as being a lot more versatile, but now we’re keeping it a little bit more in line with the menu that customers would see in our café or on our truck.
Ray: We might reveal the recipe later in a secret special episode.
Kandace: Maybe, yeah.
Ray: Maybe. Modcup of Jersey City.
Kandace: Mm-hmm (affirmative). We’re going to give it a big high five.
Ray: Big high five.
Kandace: Yeah.