Automatic Merchandiser - 12

OCS UPDATE

Cold Is Hot

Todd Carmichael, CEO and co-founder of La Colombe Coffee Roasters
talks cold brew, OCS and innovation
By Abby White, Editor

TODD CARMICHAEL, CEO AND CO-FOUNDER OF LA

Colombe Coffee Roasters, first learned about coffee through
a college job back in 1982. Carmichael and his best friend,
JP Iberti (president and co-founder), subsequently started
envisioning what the perfect coffee company would look like,
and they've spent decades building upon that vision. After
opening their first café in Philadelphia in 1994, Carmichael
and Iberti have grown La Colombe into a company with
more than 800 employees and 30 cafes across the country.
More than 25 years later, Carmichael remains dedicated to
responsibly sourcing the world's best coffee, and also to innovation. La Colombe's ready-to-drink Draft Latte, launched
in 2016, features a patented InnoValve® can designed by
Carmichael which, upon opening, creates a frothy, texturized
beverage that has been flying off the shelves.
Carmichael will deliver the keynote address at the NAMA
Coffee, Tea & Water (CTW) event on Nov. 18.

Alexander Mansour

Automatic Merchandiser * October/November 2019

HISTORY AND THE FOUNDING OF LA COLOMBE?

A: I'll start in 1982 - that's when I discovered coffee. I'm
a farm boy from the eastern part of Washington, and I got
the opportunity to go to university. I ran cross-country/
track for the University of Washington. When I got to the
big city, I needed a job, and I found one lugging grain sacks
in a small warehouse. When I looked at the names on those
sacks - Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania - they weren't names I
recognized. In another part of the building, I saw the roaster,
and I went, "Wait a minute." It was coffee. It was for a really
tiny company at the time - they had three cafes - called
Starbucks. I was in the right place at the right time. So, I'm
like the Forrest Gump of coffee. I was a runner, and I was a
little bit thick-skulled [laughs].
While I was in Seattle I met my best friend Jean Philippe
[Iberti], and we were concocting the philosophy of what the
perfect coffee company would be. We were just kids and we
were both broke. The idea was going all the way back to the
farm, because I knew that if anyone took the time to get in
the truck and come out to our farm, they'd always get the best
food. So farm-to-table was really based on this concept, that
we could get a higher grade of coffee if we would just take the
time to go and get it and create a relationship with farmers.
I was studying business and learned about vertical
integration, so I said, "OK, that's it - let's vertically integrate.
We'll make everything we sell, and we'll source directly at the
farms." And that philosophy has taken us pretty far. We know
that nothing is ever finished - even coffee - and that you
need to take that vertical integration concept and combine
it with another idea. So, we opened up our first cafe at the
beginning of 1994. We had $200 in our bank account, and we
really needed it to work, or we wouldn't be able to eat. And
it did. Today I'm told that we're valued at somewhere around
$1 billion, and we're growing at about 60 percent.

Q:
Todd Carmichael, CEO and co-founder of La Colombe Coffee
Roasters, with the popular RTD Draft Latte.

CAN YOU SHARE A LITTLE ABOUT YOUR

WHAT ROLE HAS PHILANTHROPY PLAYED
IN THE COMPANY?

A: It's not a strategy - it comes from the heart, and it comes
from the team. We get involved in lots of different things that
speak to us. There's a group of really talented people in [La
Colombe] marketing who feel very passionately about school

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