Café de Olla coffee is a way of brewing coffee traditionally used in Mexico. Today (May 27th), I attended a coffee seminar, brewing Starbucks Caffé Verona with the Café de Olla brew method.
Eric Olson, the store manager of the Fourth and Broadway Starbucks in Santa Ana, California, said he likes to use Verona as the natural sweetness of this coffee works perfectly for this special coffee brewing process.
Eric said that it was his wife, Marta (who is Hispanic), that got him to enjoy coffee and this brewing method. He recalls fondly that he first enjoyed Café de Olla on his a rooftop in Mexico, with the coffee brewing on a contraption sitting on an overturned hubcap. This was his honeymoon. He says that in Mexico, it’s fairly common for the ratio of coffee to water to be just eyeballed, though when he makes it, he tries to stick to the Starbucks standard of two tablespoons of coffee for each six ounces of water.
The secret of the coffee is steeping the water first with roughly a half to a whole cinnamon stick (“canella”) and a few ounces of Piloncio, a traditional Mexican sugar similar to a raw sugar or brown sugar. He says that you’ll usually have to go to a Mexican specialty grocery store to find it. Eric puts in now more than about three ounces of the sugar, and joked, “My family thinks you can never put in too much!”
It’s also common to enjoy this coffee with a little sweetened condensed milk.
Eric’s Starbucks is in downtown Santa Ana. He says that early in the morning his customer base is judges, lawyers, and county employees from the nearby Orange County courthouse. But then he says that in the afternoon, his customer base switches to Hispanic families, who often speak little English. By close to closing, his customer base will include young hipsters or young people who have gone out to dine at nearby Santa Ana restaurants. “We have such a unique ability to maintain and create relationships with people. My goal as a store manager is to take my family’s traditions, Starbucks and customer connections, and create a third place and all meet in the middle.”
As Eric poured the coffee, I could smell the strong aroma of cinnamon coming from the pot. The coffee was amazingly sweet and delicious. There was an incredible smoothness to the coffee, and a rich, deep, sweet brown sugar flavor. It was like a fine dessert!
The mugs used in this coffee seminar were purchased by Eric and Marta fifteen years ago in Mexico, and brought back to the United States.
Eric thank you so much for this special coffee event! I really enjoyed the opportunity to try this – it was entirely new to me. You exemplify the best of Starbucks!
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Oh, I love this SO much! I love learning about different cultures and I love how Eric is meeting the needs of his specific community! This is a coffee tasting that I would have loved to attend!
Many thanks for such an interesting article. Will definitely try out this method at home!
@Valerie -Me too! A true 3rd place when you’re embracing your community!
@Melody, great post but I am left with one question: Is Eric able to make the Café de Olla coffee for any customer who requests it or is it a limited experience that can only happen once in awhile?
I agree with you Melody, Eric is a great example of coffee passion that I am sure overflows to his management skills.
@DadCooks – What actually happened was that I got to the store super early. I had talked to him about the idea of being interviewed for Book #2 (Working title is Roasted Just Right: Why Customers Love Starbucks). This coffee seminar was just a big surprise. I will say he’s affirmatively working super hard to figure out ways to improve his store for both his partners and customers. While I was there, a customer redeemed a birthday reward and the partners SANG happy birthday at the register!! I can’t believe how much love, spirit, and enthusiasm I saw in one store. Eric was actually an outside hire (and an amazing one) and so he’s still getting all of it down, but his goal is to do more of this now and then in the stores for both customers and partners – like the coffee education piece you might see at stores like EOW. I believe he will get there! But this isn’t going to become a menu item. He just wanted to make my visit wonderful – Like I said, I was only expecting an interview.
What a great experience. And it’s really nice to see it came from an “outside hire.”
I wish him and his store all the best.
Oh, and those mugs are really nice. It would be nice to see product like that back in Starbucks instead of all the highly branded stuff of late.
Wow! This is so inspiring!! My dad, who is from Guatemala brewed coffee back at home in the same way. The only thing they did different was that they hand roasted and hand ground coffee beans. It is so amazing when you can share different methods of coffee brewing with partners and sometimes be surprised at how lovely it is to connect over coffee. I want to go visit his store now. 😉
I love café de la olla. As a gringo living in Mexico, my first sip was an eye-opener, a taste-bud tantalizer. Working in San Diego with a Starbucks around the corner, I have had them make me a ‘Café de la olla Latte’ with Brown Sugar, Ristretto Shots, LOTS of cinnamon and whole milk. They made more so that all the baristas could try it too, and they all loved it. I know it’s not the exact same, but still very good.