“It’s my passion, and one of my questions was ‘where do I want to be? Where do I want to live?’ said Greg Ubert, during an interview for the Columbus Tastecasting event held at their corporate headquarters in Columbus Ohio this past Saturday, “I love Boston, I love Chicago. For me, I love Columbus more.”

 

Greg founded Crimson Cup in 1991, after a brief stint in the computer software industry. “For me, it was kind of like, at this age, I don’t have much to lose. Here’s what I do know: I know I wanted to do something that I was passionate about, really that’s what I wanted to do. And so I think the passion might have overcome a lot of fears.” Greg said “In 91 coffee was a commodity, but I think people will always find quality, and of course the experience that goes along with that. That’s what we believe here.”

 

Greg’s roots are strong in the Columbus area. His parents lived here, who gave him a step up during his start-up, and one of his first employees was a barista on the campus of Ohio State University.

 

Armando Escobar is Crimson Cup’s CEO – Chief Espresso Officer – and is responsible now for training and assisting coffee houses to getting the most out of their equipment and premium coffees, but in the day, he and Greg worked together to create what is the Crimson Cup’s signature blend.

 

“Greg came in and we put the blend together.” Armando said. “We worked on it. Espresso counts for just one percent of your coffee sales in the US. Americans don’t know what Espresso is. They don’t know how its supposed to be consumed, but at the student union, it accounted for 12 percent of our sales. It was really important that the espresso be really good. The roast level was very good, light enough to make a great tasting espresso, but dark enough for the flavor to come through for the lattes and Mocha and cappucinos. The third criteria we set was to have it be our drip coffee.”

 

Greg and Armando worked on it, and once it was approved, Armando received quite the surprise. “When I got it approved from our headquarters on the West Coast, I told Greg ‘Hey, we can switch.’ and, the first invoice he called it Armando’s Blend. I thought that was really cool. We had it for two or three years before I came to work for Greg.”

 

It’s this level of attention to the individual coffee house managers that makes community so important.

     

They believe that the small business owner who’s spending 80 to 90 hours a week in the coffee house should get to keep it how they want. “We are sort of the Intel inside for coffee.” Said Greg. “What we care about are entrepreneurs who are working in their place. They are working a lot of hours, and we want that place to be theirs. So it’s very important to us to have their expression in the coffee bar. Not necessarily our expression.”

 

This community focus can be seen in their partners, a full list can be found here.

 

Another way that Crimson Cup is looking to increase community involvement is through a “Cupping club”

 

Dave Eldridge, one of the Roastmasters at CC, brought up the idea during the coffee cupping (tasting) of the tastecaster’s tour. Interested participants should contact Anna at Crimson Cup. or drop a tweet to @crimsoncup.