In much the same way that no one ever stands on a soapbox to talk about soap, coffee-table books are almost never about coffee.
The most notable recent exception to the latter is the gorgeous new volume “Coffee Culture: Hot Coffee + Cool Spaces” (Images Publishing) by Robert Schneider, which is, to be more precise, not so much about coffee as it is about the beautifully re-imagined places where coffee is made, sold and enjoyed.
“Coffee Culture” features photo spreads of 33 of the country’s most charming independent coffeehouses and right there among places such as New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles is Santa Cruz’s own Verve Coffee Roasters.
Those who believe in the doctrine of saving the best for last may be thrilled to note (though alphabetical order is probably a better explanation) that Verve’s Seabright-area roasting center and office is, in fact, the last spread in the book.
Verve’s HQ is not the most prominent of the company’s outlets in Santa Cruz County. Its Pacific Avenue shop and its 41st Avenue shop get much more traffic. But the Seabright shop is a vivid example of smart re-purposing of an urban space to create a new use for a building that still has a historic story to tell.
The building — which houses Verve’s roasting operation, its headquarters and a small coffee bar to buy beans and drinks — is the vision of architects Daniel Gomez and Daniel Townsend of Capitola’s Fuse Architecture, and represents, said the architects, the company’s signature aesthetic. It exists in part of what used to be the vast Seabright Cannery, which opened in 1914 and for decades provided jobs for hundreds of locals canning pears, artichokes, apricots and other fruits and vegetables.
Instead of razing the building and starting over, Fuse decided to keep the integrity of the look of the adjacent buildings of the cannery. New corrugated panels were erected on the outside, made of Corten steel, an alloy that is designed to rust (“We spent a lot of time spraying these with salt water,” said architect Townsend on a recent tour of the building). The result is a building that pays homage to its roots as a cannery while also mixing in a bit of architectural whimsy (The building is famous in the neighborhood for its around-the-corner signage, which bends the first E in “Verve” at a 90-degree angle).
Inside, much of the interior support architecture was salvaged and sandblasted imperfectly for aesthetic reasons. “We wanted to keep that raw look,” said Gomez, pointing to the paint-flecked raw-wood beams on the inside. Many of those beams were re-used, including as part of the interior design of Verve’s Pacific Avenue store.
The new building opened in 2011 and the next year, it won the “Good Design is Good Business” award from Architectural Digest.
“It’s really quite a unique space and setting,” said Robert Schneider, the author of “Coffee Culture.” “The great coffee that they have, the architecture and the design of the building, they’re all connected. It’s a unified whole.”
Schneider traveled across the country in 2015, carrying a notebook featuring notes on almost 1,500 coffeehouses. From that prodigious list, he selected 33 that fit his two criteria: great coffee and great design. Verve made the cut alongside such popular destinations (for coffee snobs) as Saint Frank Coffee in San Francisco and G&B Coffee in the Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles. “I’m not saying that these are the best coffee shops in the country,” said Schneider from his home in Minneapolis. “I didn’t rank them. The book is meant to be a pleasing presentation of some coffee shops who are providing really good coffee in interesting spaces, all of which have a story.”
He is convinced that we are living in a coffee golden age — “third-wave” coffee, as it is sometimes referred to — when wider access to high-quality coffee beans has created a blossoming economy of small roasters and independent coffeehouses, not only in major urban areas but in suburban, even rural spots across the map. “One of the trends that we’re seeing in specialty coffee is that many roasters and baristas are coming from places like New York and San Francisco and, for whatever reason, moving to really small towns. Which means you can now get great coffee almost anywhere. And that’s what it’s all about. It’s one of the simple pleasures that makes life really enjoyable.”
For more information on Fuse Architecture of Capitola, go to www.fusearchitecture.com.
For more information on Verve Coffee Roasters, go to www.vervecoffee.com.
