Barista Magazine

JUN-JUL 2016

Serving People Serving Coffee Since 2005

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"THERE WAS THE WEDDING. Oh, geez ... the wedding." There's a pause on the phone followed by nervous laughter. "That was certainly the most memorable pop-up we've done." The wedding in question was one of the fi rst coffee pop-ups that Tanner Morita and John Michael Cord hosted after opening Hex Coffee in Charlotte, N.C., with Chandler Wrenn. Hex is now a well-established mobile coffee and waffl e pop-up that appears at Charlotte-area events, private parties, and shared locations like art studios and breweries. Back in its coffee infancy, however, it was just the brainchild of two coffee geeks and a burgeoning barista. While these days Hex is known in and around Charlotte for attention to detail, professionalism, and brewing-science acumen, the wedding posits an entirely different side of Hex's pop-up experience—the materialization of Murphy's Law. It all started on a mild September day in Charlotte. After the ceremony, wedding guests trickled into the reception tent on the grassy lawn of a local estate. Hex had been hired to provide pourovers for the 100+ wedding guests after dinner. Ordinarily all three of Hex's co-owners would work the event together, but Chandler was a groomsman in the wedding, so coffee service fell to Tanner and John Michael. "We were set up next to the DJ. We had our grinders and kettles arranged on a table next to the Chemexes and the coffees we were serving," remembers Tanner. "Everything was fi ne until the DJ started up after dinner." It's not diffi cult to imagine: a DJ sporting a loud suit and gelled hair beckons wedding guests to the dance fl oor with the opening sounds of "YMCA" or "Thriller." Uncles, sorority sisters, and childhood friends fi le excitedly onto an island of portable linoleum squares, dragging reluctant spouses and children along with them. Then, just as excitement builds and the crowd begins to bounce and spin like a mighty congregation of buoys, a faint whirring noise is heard in the background and suddenly—silence. "We inevitably kicked the breaker," laments Tanner. From this point forward, Hex's pop-up turned into a lesson in crisis management, (or as others may see it, an ill-timed comedy skit). "I went to try and fi nd a way to reroute the DJ's power, and John Michael stayed to serve our dwindling supply of brewed coffee," Tanner says. Unfortunately, he soon discovered that the wedding venue housed its circuit breakers in a locked room that no one could access. "That means no music, no coffee, just silent, thirsty confusion." Eventually, Tanner found a working circuit for the DJ, but that left Hex without a way to heat water. "Tanner ended up running back and forth between the venue's kitchen and our table, because the kitchen was the only place we could fi nd power for our water boilers," says John Michael. "We were trying to keep water at the right temperature and were having to overheat it and then calculate how rapidly it would cool between the kitchen and the tent." As if to add insult to injury, the weather suddenly changed. "It had started raining and the tent didn't cover our table completely," says John Michael. "So while I'm brewing, rain water is just pouring onto the table, our equipment was just barely kept out of the weather. At times the wind would blow and water would cover the whole table. Let's face it, at some points we were just brewing with rainwater. Eventually, we realized that we'd just be better off doing tableside service, so Tanner started brewing at the tables and I set up squarely on the dance floor. I was dancing and brewing at the same time." At this point in our interview, the retelling of the story devolves into sheer laughter, the kind that comes from articulating the convergence of uncontrollable, insurmountable, and ultimately hysterical circumstances in a fi t of nostalgia. "That was a good one," Tanner says. "It really was a good one," John Michael adds. Hex's experience is just one of the many pop-up horror stories out there. Arguably every coffee professional who has endeavored to create an out-of-shop coffee experience has a story like this one: Supplies get forgotten, equipment fails, weather doesn't cooperate, business owners disagree. The number of possible problems is extensive. It's important to note that myriad coffee concepts fall under the category of "pop-up." A pop-up can be anything from catering services offered by an established company, to a semipermanent coffee bar nestled into an existing business, or temporary curbside setup that serves as a preview to a future shop. Some pop-ups travel the country, while others never move beyond a city block. "T e chal enge, and I t ink it 's a big one, i t at it i far easier to mi r pr sent your brand's intent ons in pop-up mode." —Jared Truby Co-owner, Cat & Cloud Coffee 72 barista magazine

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