THE CONVERSATION
Ray: In this week’s episode …
Kandace: Supercrown. Supercrown. Supercrown.
Ray: Supercrown of Brooklyn, New York is a fantastic brand. It is roasted by Darleen Scherer, who has been doing this for like a year now, but apparently roasting for longer.
Kandace: 14 years.
Ray: 14 years, which is as you’ve pointed out …
Kandace: Is basically forever.
Ray: Yeah, like, yeah.
Darleen: I’m Darleen Scherer. I’m founder of Supercrown Coffee Roasters in Bushwick, Brooklyn, made coffee since 2002. I started as a, you know, founded Gorilla Coffee in 2002 in Park Slope, Brooklyn and, you know, as a first craft or artisan roaster in Brooklyn in New York at that time.
Ray: The idea behind this brand is that it’s a coffee club. So you subscribe and Darleen finds a new coffee for you every week. Every one is different and includes a little story about the coffee.
Darleen: On our site we have a coffee every week that’s on offer, so like it’s subscription only, so the idea is that someone would get a new coffee every week if they sign up for a weekly subscription. You have a choice for weekly or bi-weekly.
Supercrown website by Needmore Designs
And then, I’m sourcing new coffees all the time. So if you subscribe for a week, it’s 52 coffees for the whole year, a bag in the box that’s 8.8 ounces, it’s 250 grams. It’s seasonally selected, so I’m sourcing coffee that I find really interesting or noteworthy. An award winner, some unique varietal or processing method or a certain producer that seems to be doing really interesting stuff. So on each coffee there’s a card that has info about that.
Ray: What did Darleen tell us about this brand?
Kandace: So Darleen is sourcing 52 coffees a year and she talked to us about how she’s finding these coffees and something that’s really interesting about that is that she is not going to source.
Darleen: I’ve gone to a bunch of, been through Central America and South America and have relationships within the coffee industry from being on Roasters Guild and being a barista judge. So I have relationships with importers that specialize in certain regions or if they’re an exporter/importer that specialize in say Kenyan and Ethiopian coffees or, someone who specializes in, who gets really beautiful Columbian coffees.
Ray: The color palette is bright and friendly and feels extremely modern and approachable and goes really week with this design.
Darleen: Martin Justesen is a really great graphic designer. He designed our logo and the packaging. I really wanted to do a box because it just spoke to the level of quality and care and stuff.
There’s something about a box, where it keeps its shape, you know, that’s nice where you have it on your counter next to your grinder, your coffee setup and it just always looks the same and that’s kind of nice. I like that a lot. Then boxes, you know, recycled paper and the bag inside is compostable.
We have these cards that are on the front of each box. They’re held together with these photo corners. They’re like a Polaroid, kind of as a little nod to the past a little, you know. On the back is a picture of the producer or something about the farm or coffee that’s unique, then a story to the point as I can about why that coffee’s unique.
The colors change all the time and I love that. You know? The coffees are changing all the time the colors of the, you know, we have this one coffee from Los Naranjos and it is orange, the color of it is orange. Then we have a yellow Caturra coffee that’s what we have in house right now, so the color of the card the color of a Caturra.
Supercrown website by Needmore Designs
Kandace: We worked on the website.
Ray: Yep.
Kandace: So we had the opportunity to have a lot of fun with the colors and the logo and just the general playfulness of it.
Ray: Yeah.
Kandace: Got these great coffee cards and on the back there’s a roast report, and then you can go on the site and sort through these. You can read the longer roast reports, find out all about the coffee.
Ray: It’s encourages you to remember it, know the story behind it and the boxes just make it really look high end.
Kandace: Did we talk about this? This is our first box.
Ray: Yeah, the first box we’ve covered on the show.
Kandace: They’re having a lot fun with the menu, and I’m guessing Philip Hoffman had a little bit to do with this part. They have a bialy that’s being made for them.
Ray: Love me a bialy.
Kandace: They have a drink called the Laura Palmer.
Special Agent Dale Cooper: You know, this is, excuse me, a damn fine cup of coffee.
Kandace: You and I were in Austin recently and we visited Houndstooth coffee. They made us an iced coffee that was in the more traditional Japanese style.
Darleen: Basically, like what we call the Arnold Palmer, you know, where we have half lemonade, half iced tea, but we’re doing it with coffee. We make iced coffee, we do iced coffee the Japanese method, so it’s double strength over ice to just get all those beautiful nuances out of coffee.
Ray: Darleen Scherer is the superstar behind behind Supercrown of Brooklyn, New York.
Kandace: Really?
Ray: Yeah. Look, I freely admit, I fucked this recording up twice now.
Kandace: Okay.
