INTERVIEW: Horror fans can enjoy scary good coffee, thanks to new Shudder collab
All artwork designed by Marina Tsareva / Head Artist & Design at Concept Cafes with Copyright AMC Film Holdings LLC. All Rights Reserved / Provided by Adrenaline PR with permission.
The good folks at Coterie Coffee Co. and Concept Cafes have recently teamed up with horror streamer Shudder for a delectable blend of brewing goodness for horror aficionados. There’s nothing like enjoying a slasher flick while a solid cup of Joe perfumes the room with a heavenly aroma — that’s straight from hell.
Coterie Coffee Co. and Concept Cafes are in the business of collaborations with a host of private enterprises, according to press notes. They have partnered with many heavy metal bands to offer unique brews, so it’s not much of a surprise they’ve made the jump to the ever-growing world of horror. And Shudder is a perfect colleague. This AMC streaming network, hosting fan favorites like Joe Bob Briggs and the Creepshow TV series, is a mega-popular outlet for horror fans to get their scare on.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Michael Tonsetic, founder of Concept Cafes. He explained this unique collaboration and what horror fans can expect from the new brew. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
What makes this Shudder coffee different than other brews you have?
Well, we’ve always been super adamant (for the better) in always ensuring each coffee collab has its own unique identity and character, kinda like a signature fingerprint that encodes both the bean origin and the roasting profile, and there are of course other distinctive characteristics like i.e. the process, different certifications and even the elevation at which the bean is harvested, etc. These are just some of the different nuances that go into specialty / craft coffee compared to what you may get through the drive thru or off the supermarket shelf.
But, to answer your question here before I start to sound like a politician LOL, for Shudder, we really wanted to expand on these idea(s) we’ve been exploring recently in not only developing coffee(s) and packaging that are beyond the bag, as in completely visualizing and embracing the whole thing as something else (bigger than what it is), but making it a truly interactive coffee experience for the fans as well. So, for Shudder’s signature roast, we really wanted to encapsulate that classic cinema snack bar experience all us have had at one time or another in our life; the sweet enticing aroma and savory taste of i.e. rich chocolate candy bars, delightful caramel filling, raisins, nuts, etc.
No, we’re not Willy Wonka enough yet to naturally recreate a buttery and salty popcorn vibe just yet, but … we never artificially flavor anything we do, which is the true craftsmanship of specialty coffee compared to everything else out there. It was also important to everyone involved in the project for this coffee to balance both as a morning wake-up call, as well as a dessert coffee for an evening steaming Shudder. Since groundbreaking packaging is also part of the recipe, and of which we think is such a critical component to the experience (often negated in the milquetoast blandness which has is the current conventional coffee market), we really wanted to engage the tactile sensory touchpoints by making the packaging mimic a custom Shudder remote control, with all the buttons and even * batteries included.
We also wanted to enhance the interactive experience, by leaving the plot open to interpretation, a kinda ‘choose-your-own-adventure / alternate-ending’ theme. In the end, we think we were able to capture all the (five) senses in the final cut, and even added a new (sixth) sense to the coffee experience.
Are you a fan of horror films? Does this collaboration fit in your wheelhouse?
Actually all of [us] are in the roastery, and self-ashamedly, I can’t hold even a hold a candle to my partner in crime Char [Blanchard], who is our resident roaster aficionado. Let’s just say, don’t ever get involved in any cinema trivia w/ her, especially if money is involved LOL. Her and her husband are both huge cinephiles (both mega into horror) and are involved in multiple festivals and other horror cinema aspects around the country constantly. For me, my personal flavor (of which annoys my own wife) is doom and gloom/no-hope horror LOL.
Most of us here are ’70s babies, so we grew up on all the legendary franchises (probably somewhat the reason for what’s wrong with all of us LOL), so naturally that (PTSD) is engraved in our psyche and DNA, and really comes out in the coffees we collab on. Out of all the mere horror icons out there in the genre, we all knew Shudder was the one we wanted to really work with, just because of the enormity of the ‘cast’ that is synonymous with the streaming network. Again, for the ‘ghost-in-the-TV’ inspiration, that all still goes back to our childhoods of [being] nurtured on legendary genre classics like the Poltergeist franchise, the Elm Street franchise, to the Ring franchise, etc. ad infinitum. So, yes, whether it’s music or horror, we’re definitely nerds LOL.
How successful have your metal collabs been in the past?
That’s a great question, and when we initially started forging coffee in the pit of fire, as metalhead lifers ourselves (raised on an unhealthy diet of metal/horror/coffee LOL), we’ve always accepted the fact that the best gauge of success is fan reaction, whether it’s one single fan living halfway around the world or a horde of metalheads. Yes, it’s critically important for the artist to be absolutely confidently into and supporting, as well as it is to support the artist financially in some way to help them continue to create new music and tour (our main mission statement), but most importantly for us is if we can collaboratively create a coffee that maybe is going to [turn] a coffee drinker into a new fan for the artist, or at least enough for them to give the artist a listen.
Well, damn, how else do you want to gauge success, because that’s so awesome in itself! I mean, until we really got into this whole masochistic passion (LOL JK), we didn’t even realize how many metal artists actually had (or had had) coffee labels out in the market, but we really wanted to be different from everyone else, and focus more on the product and fan experience as opposed to strictly making as low-cost a product as possible to make as much a profit as possible.
Now, we’re not saying any artists are doing this at all, as in actuality it’s more of the direction the actual coffee roasters are guiding them in, in our opinion. Unfortunately, metal coffee has become almost overwhelmingly very gimmicky, and we’re not shy at all about voicing this opinion; I mean what do you expect when you slap a sticker onto a grease fingers generic matte bag with a tin tie and ‘full city’ roast or whatever everything into oblivion. That’s not roasting; that’s called burning, no different than burning a piece of moldy toast to cover up the fact that you left some expired bread in the pantry too long.
Look, we’re just so passionate about (humbly so) getting this right for all our metalhead brothers and sisters out there because we are just so passionate about the music we literally grew up on. I mean, I think the best thing that could’ve ever happened for the genre is the resurgence of all the various vinyl pressing out there; it’s kinda how we envisioned pressing all these coffee collabs. So, as long as the fans are throwing up horns for us, and artist continue to reach out, we’ll keep the coffee forge burning brightly; that is really simply how we gauge success.
When did you drink your first cup of coffee?
Ha! Another great Q&A! I know one of my parentals probably took some brief amusement in watching me wince against the bitterness of instant somewhere along the timeline of childhood, but I recall my first authentic experience being at a bar (because everything in Italia is a bar ya know) in my dad’s office building my first full day in Roma in the ’80s amid my middle-school years.
So, everyone (including the alley cats LOL) chain-smoked in Europe in the ’80s, so as you can imagine, it becomes a little hazy in distinguishing espresso steam from cigarette smoke; but it was just like being in this surreal, almost overwhelming impressionist painting or something, completely overwhelming, completely out of element, but a still life at that brief memorable moment in time [when] you can literally recall the cold touch of the brass bar rail, the clickity-clack tap dance of dress shoes and heels on marble tile (because everything in Roma is marble), polished wood marbled in yellow cigarette stains, a bitter beige fashion show if you will.
Now, ignoring the sage advice — ‘If you can’t pronounce it, don’t order it’ — it wasn’t as dramatic as my brother’s introduction to sardine pizza pie, but a double-shot of Italian-roasted Ethiopian-varietal espresso was more akin to a double shot of Jack for a preteen whose closest comparison was hot chocolate with whipped cream and marshmallow. So, let’s just say, I didn’t really pick up the habit again until really senior year of high school in all modesty.
What is it about coffee that you love so much?
I guess the best analogy / comparison anyone can use for their love / hate relationship with coffee is actually the game of golf; in that generally speaking, everything you thought you knew is actually wrong, and if you really want to love and enjoy the experience, always do the exact uncomfortable opposite. It’s just one of those things that really tests your patience and challenges your instincts, but once you start getting it, you really can’t get enough. …
From an existential perspective, I think coffee is really the underdog when it comes universal communal communication. Think about it, actually it’d be kinda interesting to see a study on ‘let’s grab a cup of coffee sometime’ vs. ‘let’s grab a drink sometime’ as to which ones actually held the reservation. There’s nothing really sexy or striking about coffee; it almost seems obligatory in a way to daily life, as much of a passive routine as brushing your teeth; this is why I think it’s really the dark horse of the beverage market, literally, which is why we think it’s so important that industry disruptors are popping up more and more.
I mean I could ramble on all day about this, but it’s kinda the drink that’s best suited for counterculture. Yet it’s been so marginalized through overcapitalization that it’s kinda sad that we as a culture really know absolutely so little about something that is so common and frequent to our everyday lives.
What’s on the horizon for the company?
Bigger canvases and broader brushstrokes. Coffee roasting / production is actually very zen, so when you’re doing fun activities like meticulously sorting 1K(s) pounds of beans, or packaging much of the same, well, let’s just say you have access to a nirvana of coffee and time to conjure up crazy ideas, at least enough to fill every square pixel of an 8-foot tall whiteboard. …
We actually do what we say we’re gonna do, as long as it takes. This being said, not all concepts see the light of day due to things outside of our control, but if we believe in a project, we will literally throw ourselves in fire to make that happen if that’s what it takes. But yes, there are so many things we want to do, from a skater coffee concept, to working with a major contemporary artist, to even working with maybe a Hollywood A-lister. At the end of the day, we just wanna make cool shit that [we] are really into. We want to continue to expand the footprint of the concepts we are already so humbled to be a part of, and expand that reach globally, so fellow humans around the world have access to better coffee. We also want to explore new coffees and highlighted new incredible processing techniques they are conjuring up in this new wave of coffee. We have absolutely no insane aspirations, nor desire to, be a Starbucks, much less rot away ’til the expiration date on a supermarket shelf, but yeah, if Rick Rubin wants to produce our next coffee, yeah, holla @ your boy Rick! LOL Cheers!
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Coterie Coffee Co. and Concept Cafes has a new coffee collaboration with Shudder. Click here for more information.
