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were screaming and our tears of joy overflowed!" "Pete helped other competitors [at the South Central Regional] and shared his passion and knowledge of coffee in a gentle manner," says Tooti. "We believe that Pete will carry that forward and be a great ambassador to the specialty-coffee community and all who want to learn. He is very gracious with his time and knowledge." About The Coffee shared space for while with another innovative Kansas City company, the LAB: a specialty-beverage marketing firm founded by Jason Burton. Jason has worked with leading area roasters, and is the founder of the nationwide series of coffeehouse tours known as Caffeine Crawl. Together ATC and the LAB have helped promote Kansas City's reputation as a terrific coffee town. "Traveling around the country at least once a month visiting coffee communities, I can safely say K.C. is a top-five with quality and diversity," Jason says. "It has really taken off in the last three years. Many shops are doing pourovers, but for a city this size the big standout is the number of what I'd call 85+ roasters in town. Maybe not as many per capita, but still similar to Portland and Seattle in that way." Jason says that Kansas City is still growing into the specialtycoffee world, too. "This city gets a lot of support from consumers eager to learn and taste," he says. "That's what has helped the Caffeine Crawl and Big Central [Regional Barista Competition] take off here. K.C.'s Crawl will be double the size of Boston's and San Francisco's combined. People think of K.C. as a fly-over city, but we have some of the best bartenders, chefs, bakers, and now baristas [in the world]. I bet people don't know that we are home to a new James Beard winner, the Bartender of the Year, and now the WBC Champ. Pretty damn awesome." At Pete's place of work, Parisi, folks are also happy to have a WBC Champion on staff. "They're ecstatic right now," Pete says. Joe Paris, the company's co-owner with his brother, Anthony, "acts like a proud parent a lot. He wants me to benefit from [winning] just as much as the company benefits." Holly remembers a time that seems like the distant past now. It was 2004, and Jeff Taylor, who co-owns PT's (where both Pete and Holly were working at the time), flew the current WBC Champ, Tim Wendelboe, to Kansas City from Norway to judge an in-house competition. The 2003 USBC Champ, Heather Perry from Klatch Coffee in San Dimas, Calif., was there, too. Tim trained the staff for a couple of days, and then they had a "competition." Heather won by a mile and Pete came in third. "But it gave [Pete] an idea that there was something more he could do with coffee." This has been a long time coming for Pete. He's been searching for that place in coffee, The spot where he'd fit best. That's why he went to Hawaii. That's why he moved back to Kansas City. "I couldn't figure out how to make coffee successful for me," he says. "I couldn't figure out what to do." In the end, he stepped up to the competition plate one more time, took a chance, and ended up on top of the world. www.baristamagazine.com 61