Profile: Mauro Cipolla -- He Knows Beans About Coffee -- The Hard Part Is Making His Name Known

How does a small gourmet roaster get noticed in a city where there are almost as many brews of coffee as rainy days?

Mauro Cipolla hopes he has the answers.

A young entrepreneur from Italy, Cipolla has spent the past six years building his company, Caffe Mauro, from a tiny start-up in his family's garage into a $2 million business.

Although small compared with the likes of Starbucks and SBC, Cipolla's blends have nonetheless won praise for the creamy, rich espresso they produce.

And, even though Mauro is virtually unknown among Seattle's coffee-consuming public, he currently sells his products wholesale to more than 600 cafes, restaurants and espresso carts on the West Coast.

Now, Cipolla says he is ready to make his name as well-known to Seattleites as Starbucks, SBC and Torrefazione Italia.

"I have to get my name out there," he says. "It is time for that."

He is working on several fronts to accomplish this difficult goal:

-- Cipolla replaced his old, drab coffee labels with a flashy, eye-catching design. The red-and-green sign can be seen on paper cups and napkins throughout the city.

-- In July, he opened his first retail shop and espresso bar, in Belltown.

The store at Second Avenue and Virginia loses money, but its slick neon sign and its marble-topped bar are like a billboard for thousands of pedestrians and morning commuters. He opened the retail store to increase his visibility, but he plans to continue focusing on wholesale sales.

-- With professional marketing help, Cipolla is beginning to attract awareness as a coffee connoisseur of sorts. His weekly Academy of Coffee is open to anyone who wants to learn the history and art of good coffee. And he provides "insider" tips on espresso for KIRO-TV.

It is too early to measure results, but Cipolla feels encouraged.

"We used to make a lot of cold sales calls," he says. "Now, most of our new accounts are the result of people calling us."

Starting a retail business is a smart move, say marketing experts.

"As a wholesaler, he is making a wise move by trying to understand the pulse of the public as a retailer," says Dick Outcalt, of Outcalt & Johnson: Retail Strategists. "He is allowing himself a chance to get immediate and unfiltered market feedback."

By picking a heavily trafficked downtown intersection, Cipolla can build name recognition, adds Dick Harvey, a Seattle marketing consultant.

"If he wants to grow, he's got to get his name before the public," Harvey says. "This is a pretty savvy way to create a foothold in a market dominated by big boys."

But convincing restaurants to abandon a tried-and-true brand such as Starbucks is not easy.

"Starbucks is Starbucks," says Joey Perlmutter, manager of A Jays on First Hill. "Our customers know Starbucks, and they like it. We can't afford not to serve it."

Saleh Jovdeh, owner of Saleh al Lago, praises Mauro, but agrees with Perlmutter.

"Mauro has a certain passion and dedication that appeals to me, and his espresso is very good," Jovdeh says.

As he was speaking, a Starbucks' truck arrived with his weekly supply of drip coffee.

"But Starbucks . . . well, let's just say it's important that I also serve it. Now, don't ask me which coffee I drink at home."

David Schomer, who owns two espresso carts, contends that most Seattleites who know good espresso already have discovered Cipolla.

Schomer, who often critiques coffee for the local Cafe Ole magazine, became a Caffe Mauro convert about two years ago.

Other coffee drinkers will follow, Schomer says.

Cipolla "is a person who truly cares about espresso in his heart," Schomer says. "For now, it's a matter of education."

`STUDENT' OF ESPRESSO

In many ways, Cipolla considers himself a "student" of espresso.

On a rainy morning, a visitor dropped by Caffe Mauro for a shot of espresso. Cipolla then urged the visitor to try a newer blend, as well, made with more lightly roasted beans.

He ground the coffee, tamped it into a stainless-steel filter and inserted the device into his espresso machine. Then he held his breath, as if waiting for the results of a great scientific experiment.

The espresso flows, but Cipolla groans. The grind was too fine. One shot should have taken 20 to 25 seconds to be poured, he says. This one took five seconds.

So he tries again . . . and again until, on his fifth attempt, he creates a shot that is thick and heavy with a tan-shaded dollop of crema on the top. He swirls the espresso through the cup, examining its tone and body.

"This one," he says, "is a nice espresso."

On Wednesday nights, he passes along his knowledge to anyone who cares to listen at his informal Academy of Coffee classes at Caffe Mauro. At a recent class, he helped one student perfect her steaming method so the milk was frothy, not flat.

ROASTER ROOTS

Cipolla developed his affinity for coffee as a child, while spending his summers with his grandparents in southern Italy.

As he played soccer in the streets, Cipollo became friends with the son of a local roaster.

Gradually, he began riding his bicycle to the roaster. As his interest in coffee grew, he began taking on odd jobs: carrying beans, loading the roaster, sweeping floors.

Cipolla's family emigrated to the United States in the mid-1970s, and he attended high school and college in Seattle.

As he completed a degree in international business, Cipolla expected to get a job with the American consulate in Italy. The plan was for his family to move back to Italy, where he would support them.

But graduation came, and a job with the consulate no longer seemed appealing. Neither did life in Italy.

"My heart was there," he recalls, "but now I had a life here."

As he pondered his future, Cipolla visited relatives in Italy. He renewed his fascination with coffee roasting and decided to learn more about it.

Through a connection with his childhood friends, Cipolla met a roaster in Naples who agreed to take him on as an apprentice.

"I sort of had an idea then that I might be able to do this as a business, but I didn't know," he says. "I mostly knew this was something I wanted to learn more about."

Today, Cipolla roasts about 4,000 pounds of beans a week in a plant in the industrialized Georgetown area.

Walking through the building with a visitor, he points out 130- to 150-pound bags of uncooked beans, weighing scales and bin after bin of freshly cooked coffee that has been set aside to "cure."

Unlike many others, Cipolla roasts his beans before he blends, a process that results in variously colored beans combined in a single package.

The roast-then-blend process is less efficient, he says, but it produces a better-tasting coffee.

"Every bean has been affected by nature - natural forces - in a different way," he says.

"So every bean reacts to heat differently. By waiting to blend until after roasting, you can use the roasting to bring out the fullest flavor of each individual bean."

This process, he says, wasn't learned overnight.

LEARNING PROCESS

While an apprentice in Naples, Cipolla spent nine months learning the process of roasting. In the first few weeks, he did nothing but load and carry beans. Such menial tasks, he realized later, were part of the learning process.

"By loading beans, I learned to feel the correct temperature for roasting different beans," he says. "By getting my hands in the beans, I began to feel differences in the way that nature shaped the beans."

When Cipolla returned to Seattle, it was 1984 and the gourmet-coffee scene was hot. But after trying espresso at various cafes and bars, Cipolla was convinced he could do a better job.

He had plenty of confidence. What he lacked was money.

His parents were willing to support him, but other family members treated this sudden enthusiasm for roasting coffee as a joke.

" `Here you are, the college graduate, and you want to make coffee' they'd say," Cipolla recalled. "I didn't mind. I felt I had found something that I enjoyed so I didn't mind their jokes."

TASTY BUSINESS

In early 1985, Cipolla officially started Caffe Mauro by setting up an office in his parent's garage.

He used $5,000 he had saved from part-time jobs waiting tables and washing dishes to install a second telephone line and answering machine, to print business cards and buy such essentials as paper bags for his coffee. He also bought a used station wagon so he could make deliveries.

(About two years later, he sold his "other" car - a Maserati he had received as a graduation gift - to expand his business.)

Cipolla could not afford to build his own plant, so he roasted beans once a week at a Vancouver, B.C., plant. He spent the rest of his time visiting restaurants, cafes and other establishments, urging them to try his coffee.

Cipolla's strategy then, as now, was simple: blind tastings.

He made appointments to see the managers of every restaurant, cafe, espresso cart and any other establishment that had an espresso machine.

During each appointment, he would describe his blending philosophy, his thick, light-brown crema that his beans produced and would promise that his espresso would be richer, creamier and have a cleaner aftertaste.

He then would request the opportunity for a tasting.

If the manager was interested, Cipolla would prepare espresso made with the beans the establishment was using and espresso made with Caffe Mauro beans.

"I believe much of it had to do with chemistry and timing," he says. "I wanted the client to see this was something that I loved to do, that I enjoyed my work."

Profile appears occasionally in the Business Monday section of The Seattle Times.