Dave Smallhoover sees Commonplace Coffee as the gateway to specialty coffee.
First and foremost, the Roasting Operations Manager of Commonplace, a roastery with a line of coffee shops started at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2003, picks coffees to be approachable and drinkable.
“We welcome guests with open arms to guide them through the journey,” he said. “If someone says, ‘I just want a cup of coffee,’ that’s fine. But as they’re drinking it, they should be able to tell it’s a little different.”
What marks a specialty coffee? Its grade. The Specialty Coffee Association of America classifies coffee as “specialty” if it ranks between 80 and 100 on a 100-point quality scale, which takes various flavor and appearance factors into account. Anything below 80 is labeled “commodity.’
Commonplace’s wheelhouse is 85 to 86-point beans for their single-origin roasts. For their everyday blends, Dave aims a bit lower.
To connect with coffee growers, Commonplace uses third-party buyers.
“There are multiple avenues to buy coffee. There’s direct trade, but it’s hard to do that if you are an organization our size,” Dave explained. “The direct trade model makes sense if you buy containers at a time, but I can’t imagine us handling that. It’s daunting for the farmer and us.”
(Dave emphasizes that they put these partners through a serious vetting process, seeing as they rely on the buyers to pay a fair price and be transparent.)
So, as a way to bridge the gap between Commonplace and direct trade, Dave relies on importers. He gives them a quality range, quantity, and sometimes, a price range, to the importer, then those partners do the traveling and curate the farmer’s lots. It’s a lengthy process to get the beans to Pittsburgh — for example, Dave started conversations for a new Ethiopian coffee in October that will release in May.
When roasting these coffees, Dave tries to keep interference at a minimum. “I believe that the farmer creates all of the quality, and we’re just here to maintain it. I want to make sure that whatever nuance the farmer captured holds up to us roasting it,” he explained.
One exception to this rule is their dark roast. Heavily-roasted coffees like their All Day Dark Roast will hide the nuanced flavor of beans. But, Dave says this “plays a crucial role” in their line, allowing them to prioritize long-term relationships with farmers by purchasing a range in coffee quality and producing a widely accessible coffee.
It all comes back to Dave’s emphasis on making Commonplace coffees approachable and drinkable — a gateway for those new to specialty coffee.
Add a bag of Commonplace’s high-quality blends, All-Day and Morning Blend (a Harvie favorite!) to your next delivery!