Charlie Jordan of Kinetic Koffee

So, how did Kinetic Koffee start?

Well, my husband and I are from the outdoor industry, and we both worked at Yakima, I was an executive over there and he was a product manager. And Yakima decided to leave the area, and we decided we wanted to stay. We love it here. And we decided that we wanted to do something that we were passionate about. So other than the outdoor industry, we’re both passionate about our coffee. And as the story goes, we’re also passionate about wine. But if we went in that direction, we were going to drink all the profits… which we kind of do anyway, but at least we’re sober, so that’s how that goes.

We wanted to stay in the area, we wanted to contribute to the community, and we wanted to bring money in from the outside of the county, and Kinetic Koffee was born.

What year was this?

This was 2005.

Had you had any coffee roasting experience before that?

We had a lot of coffee tasting experience, and we did a deep dive very quickly. My husband went to school, learned how to roast, and talked to a lot of master roasters. The master roaster is somebody that has trained and has worked in roasting for 10-plus years, most of them are 20-plus year veterans. And so, he went to school, and then spent the first two or three years connecting with a number of master roasters and taking classes with them. And then he actually ran the business for the first seven years. We have a niche in the outdoor industry, so if you’re in New York and you’re at Bills Bike Shop and he’s serving you coffee and/or selling you Bills Beans, typically, that’s from us. We do a lot of custom labels, and we do a lot of fundraising coffee, especially locally.

And that was a really exciting venue or sales channel to get into. We wanted our product to definitely be artisanal, and high-end. We do not do anything that is electronic or programmed, it’s all hands-on. Our coffee is organic, but as a crop and agriculturally, it responds to the weather and the moisture and all of those things. So each crop is a little different year to year, and if you don’t respond to how you’re cooking it, how you’re roasting it, it just becomes about the roast and you forget about all of those organic flavor profiles that you get out of the different beans.

We are 100% organic, and that’s important because coffee is a bio-accumulator. It concentrates anything that’s in the soil and is put on it into the bean itself. It’s one of the highest sprayed crops in the world. And we only purchase 100% organic which allows for the natural flora and fauna in the area to come through the beans. We purchase strictly high grown, which is the higher altitude. You can get the better beans because of the weather that’s up there and the soil that is typically at the higher elevations.

Where’s your coffee sourced from?

We source our beans all over the world. Coffee grows between two parallels around the equator, which of course with global warming, that’s changing, but that’s a whole other conversation. We source primarily from farms and co-ops that are owned or operated by families or women. In fact, every one of the co-ops that we work with has programs where they will do industry education for the farms they produce or provide for the families of the children and school for them. We think that’s just a really important piece. There’s also an economic development element to this where we have worked with co-ops that have gone in and planted an entire blighted area and the indigenous folks didn’t have any means of a livelihood. And this has provided an economic development increase for them to have a life.

So have you had to travel a lot?

We get to travel! We get to travel and we’ve been to a number of farms and it’s very rewarding to meet the folks. Almost everybody that we purchase from is small. And the co-ops have better purchasing power when they get together, but they’re all made up of these small farmers. We practice fair trade, but we are not fair trade certified. And the reason for that is it would not allow us to work directly with the farmers, and we want the farmers to benefit directly rather than an organization.

How many pounds of coffee do you go through now per month or week or however you measure that?

We go through a lot of coffee.  We have many pallets that come in and they come in regularly every month, multiple times a month. I can tell you that.

You’ve become a coffee expert, is there more to it than you initially thought?

Oh, there always is!  I personally was fortunate enough, as my husband was running the company, to be able to finish my MBA in business development and then spend the next 15 years doing business development locally in several different industries, food and beverage was certainly one of them. The reason I bring that up is because there’s a discipline that definitely is cross-functional, you know what I’m saying? It will apply across all industries. So it applies here as well in our industry and in our business.

The thing that I believe makes or breaks a really good organization is the deep dive into the knowledge of that particular industry. And having spent now almost 18 years in the coffee industry, specifically on the roast side of the business, although now we’re in the retail side of the business, we understand the nuances. That’s another thing that we pride ourselves on about our coffee, and coffee beans have more flavor profiles than wine. I love and appreciate the large corporations that have come in, coffee corporations because they’ve brought forward and educated our country about all the different types of coffees.

And there are new people that have really developed a sensitivity in the types of flavor that they like and they can distinguish the coffees. So we call ourselves coffee snobs off the cuff because once you’ve started to develop your taste and your ability to distinguish the different flavors, you’re like, “Oh, there’s a lot of orange in this. And, oh, there’s a lot of chocolate in that.” And you can pick it up. One of the things I really like is that it’s really important how we roast our coffee when we’ve developed our proprietary blends and the type of coffee that we use and how we roast to maximize the flavor of the bean and minimize the acidity.

So I get it, certainly monthly, almost weekly from people all over the country that say, “I gave up coffee because I just couldn’t handle it anymore in my stomach,” because they were urged by a friend, they started drinking our coffee and they can drink coffee again because we really manage the acidity. And you get the antioxidant health benefits without the negative stuff.

That’s a great journey… so now you’re at Cal Poly Humboldt, is that a good thing?

Yes, we’re at Cal Poly Humboldt and it’s been fun. We were there last year, and now we have two locations this year, at the Depot and at the library, and it’s just a lot of fun because normally, the coffee, once it leaves here, we don’t know really how it’s stored, we don’t really know how people prepare it, but now, if you go to one of our cafes, we have control all the way through. And it’s awesome, we’ve got people who come onto campus just to get our coffee, and they pay us the best compliments, like,  “I could get free coffee over here,” because there was some event or whatever, “But I just can’t drink anything but you guys now,” which is, I think, the best compliment ever.

Okay. Last question. What is it about Humboldt?

What isn’t it about Humboldt?  I’ve been fortunate to be here for 42 years. My children are locals and they have left and come back and a couple haven’t even left, which is wonderful. … That question has new meaning, here we are three years into a pandemic and our fires and the climate change and whatnot, and it has even more of a meaning to me about what is it about Humboldt. Humboldt in short form is just magical. I love the weather, I love the people. We are really fortunate that at our roastery, we get to look out the back and see cows in a pasture and then a forested hillside behind them, which is awesome.  We are steps away from the bay where we can just take a walk into the marsh and enjoy that.

And the community here is truly integrated with each other. Historically, when we would have big storms come in, we would be landlocked because of slides and whatnot, because we’re very rural, and the neighbors just get together and say, “Hey, I have this. Do you need some?” And other people will say, “Hey, I have that. Do you need some?” and I think that really builds that sense of community.

Humboldt is very community-focused,  and I think there’s a sense of belonging, which I believe, not just in our country, but certainly in our country, and I think even worldwide now since we’ve experienced what we have in the last two, three years, there’s just a lack of that sense of belonging and being a part of something that matters. And it matters here. You are definitely part of the tribe.

One more last question, what’s your best-selling coffee?

Our top selling dark is Morning Mayhem and a very, very close second is the Espresso Nero as a brewed coffee. Our best-selling medium is Breakfast Buzz. And again, a very close second is our Mighty Mayan and our Frog Fuel, which is a Memorial Roast. That’s it.