27 Jan 2011 No Comments
Caffeination Destination: Intelligentsia
Definitely one of the most popular, if not the most popular, coffee places in Chicago, Intelligentsia continues to surge ahead even with the bad economy and steep, visit site Starbucks-like coffee prices. With most Chicagoans usually pretty spoiled with good microdermabrasion machines coffee options, it’s quite an achievement to lead a pack in an industry filled with coffee perfectionist, and high-achievers. Business people intent on making really, really good cups of coffee and making money while they’re at it but not quite selling their souls. The business of coffee is after all, that, a business. It takes money to grow and harvest and roast the camera stabilizer beans so we can all enjoy that delicious cup. Chicago’s premiere coffee destination and best friend mobility success story, Intelligentsia Coffee, is known as much for its green, or raw coffee beans, as it is anything. They offer coffee flavors from all around the globe in an atmosphere of great service and friendliness. Few of their offerings are in spite of this, more characteristic and delightful than their own customary house blend. Their brand is found in frozen yogurt machines culinary establishments from corner to corner in Chicago, but only guests to the camera stabilizers café itself can avail of packages, encounter these and all the additional flavors, and take pleasure in fresh pastries on the spot. Intelligentsia offers Tuesday discount day too; and you can save $2 off each pound of coffee you buy. The real gratification though, is sipping a cup with friends right there. Doug Zell, Emily Mange, and Geoff Watts are the founders of Intelligentsia Coffee; they did so in October, 1995, with what they dermabrasion machines deemed to be a straightforward premise: buy, roast, and serve the best steadicam coffees available. “Our fanatical attention to detail results in distinctive, award-winning coffees that will please the most discriminating palate,” they say. Intelligentsia acquires green coffee from either the world’s most well-known importers or straight from the growers themselves. Acquisitions are founded on the snoring mouthguard cup quality of the coffee. “Whenever possible, we seek growers and diamond microdermabrasion machines importers that are known to be both environmentally and socially responsible. It is almost always the case that these individuals produce and offer the best quality. Our coffee is roasted daily in our vintage German roasters. As a result, you will not find a fresher, more flavorful cup anywhere,” they say. In February of 1997, two years after the launch of their pet wheelchairs retail store on Broadway, Doug Zell and Emily Mange transported the 27,000-pound glidegear roaster from the retail shop into a 4000 square foot depot in the close by Bucktown neighborhood. They had grown too big for the confines of their retail store and required space for the wholesale business to expand. Chicago had turned into a rising star in the gastronomic world. Young chefs put a lot of weight on quality and fresh ingredients, and Intelligentsia was both a contributing check them out factor to and gained from the city’s developing palate. A 23-kilo, then a 40-kilo website quickly joined the little roaster. After a year of operations in the Bucktown neighborhood they had put out what looked like like a mind-blowing 50,000 pounds of coffee! In just four hectic years, the Bucktown space had grown to be wholly too overcrowded: there wasn’t sufficient space for green coffee, the parking for the dog wheelchairs delivery truck (and even the basketball court) had been swept over by yogurt in love dry goods, and the production workforce was plainly rubbing elbows! In October of 2001, the Roasting Works employees packed up the whole lot and transferred a few miles South to a 25,000 square foot storehouse located at 1850 W. Fulton Street. Going toward the most hectic time of year, taking apart antique coffee roasters, hooking up gas lines, power and water, all the while still supplying camerastabilizer.org customers with grand service and wonderfully fresh stop snoring mouthpiece coffee, was not easy, to say the least. The new Roasting Works is huge and gleaming, with lots of breathing room for the next step in Intelligentsia’s development. In past the few months, Intelligentsia rocked the boat by taking out its 20-ounce drip coffee offering for the sake of maintaining quality coffee flavors throughout the dog wheelchair drinking experience. But on this last day of 2008, the esteemed roaster and microderm machine coffee brewer pushed the quality envelope even further: It has forsaken the coffee urns at its flagship Lakeview store (3123 N. Broadway; 773-348-8058) in favor freshly brewed mugs for each patron. Doug Zell, CEO and founder of Intelligentsia, stated that he was inspired to switch to the latest freshly brewed single cup policy because, he said, “it lets us offer great seasonal choices to every customer—more akin to a wine bar than a cafe. We want to push people’s understanding and engagement of how great coffee can be.” In the upcoming months all of the certified Intelligentsia cafes in Chicago and Los Angeles will implement the all-freshly brewed exercise, and Zell said that they are going to encourage coffeehouses that use their beans to follow suit. Will this turn down your coffee pickup during your morning commute? “Only marginally,” Zell answers. “We will be taking orders while people are in line so that when they get up to the register their coffee will almost be ready.” So just to make clear: now when a patron goes to the Lakeview store—and, eventually, the others—the default selection will be a clover brewed coffee of the day for $2 to $2.65 for an 8-to-16-ounce cup. But if they choose one of the costlier coffee beans, Zell said, “customers will be allowed for the first time to participate in the process of rewarding great growers for their work and allow us to remunerate the grower accordingly as you would a great winemaker.” Zell thinks this will “change the face of coffee by allowing customer to always select exactly the cup they want to drink, drink it fresh and be part of the equation of appropriately paying the growers for their coffee.” More transformations to come for the coffee geeks and aficianados: “We will soon have vacuum pots” as a new brewing option at Intelligentsia locations, Zell said. When we asked a Lakeview store barista earlier today, she said that customers this morning have been “quite receptive” about the changes. Other moves, she said, include using real ganache to make mochas and hot chocolates.