About

Meet Team Barrett

Michael and Teresa Barrett

Join us as we share our coffee journey: searching, investigating, discovering, visiting and journaling new coffee places.

Both of us truly appreciate a fine cup of French Roast or an excellent espresso. We enjoy meeting baristas and staff in the comfort of great coffeehouses across the country.

We love coffee people. Wherever we go, they’re a nice bunch of folks.

Michael and coffee…

The original coffee house that started all this for me was the flagship store of Peet’s Coffee and Tea at Walnut Square in Berkeley, California in 1967.

That’s where my love of specialty coffee began as a 14 year old kid, standing in line with all the long haired hippee freaks in Berkeley every day.

Alfred Peet, a native of the Netherlands, was a coffee pioneer. He set the standard for exceptional coffee and created the business model that became the most successful format for specialty coffee in the industry.

For the next 25 years, Peets was the ‘control’ for me against which all other coffee was measured. Unknowingly, I had made the assumption that excellent coffee was the standard. When I left the bay area in ’81, it was a shock to learn that it was the exception – not the norm.

In many respects that is still true today.

Seattle – my next coffee experience…

It wasn’t until 1991 that I had the pleasure of discovering the wonderful flavors and variations available from the many micro-roasters springing up in Seattle and throughout the northwest.

Seattle is where I was partners in an espresso operation for 3.5 years and really learned the business inside and out while developing professional barista skills and a ‘coffee palate’.

Teresa and coffee…

Mornings throughout my childhood meant waking up to the smell of coffee, wafting throughout the house. If only it could taste as good as it smells, silly girl !! I had no idea how much joy coffee was going to bring into my life.

At my house, coffee was the first order of business when someone came over (and this was common in a big, close family). Where there was coffee, there were sure to be adults, conversation, laughter and usually dessert.

My first taste of coffee – that I actually liked – was around the age of six. I remember dunking a cookie in my mother’s coffee and thinking that I rather liked it.

Fast forward 15 years to a quaint little coffee shop in my hometown of Galesburg, Il: Landmark Cafe.

This is when I seriously began to drink coffee. So many flavors to explore. I purchased my first coffee grinder and, each payday, I would visit for a new flavor, experience and taste.

There’s something therapeutic about grinding your own beans and the aroma is exhilarating. Needless to say, I was hooked.

Now, nearly 30 years later, I am married to a man who shares my love of coffee. He is so much more knowledgeable than I. He even owned a coffee shop at one time. My prince charming is a coffee guy who brews a perfect cup to my exact liking every morning.

Together, we are having a great time exploring the good, the bad and occasionally an outstanding cup of joe, one city at a time. We hope you’ll join us and share your love of coffee with us.

The Coffee Travelers…

And as we travel about we are going to chronicle all of our coffee experiences.

We will document our travels with pictures, videos, interviews with specialty coffee experts, vendors, roasters, baristas and coffee store owners across North America.

As we travel, we frequently have several bad cups of coffee (in a new location) before we find a good one. And that’s after doing local Google searches, asking locals, and reading extensive Yelp (and other) coffee reviews before we try one. The problem really stems from the fact that coffee is such a subjective and personal experience.

How do you know if the person you are asking, or who wrote the Yelp review you are reading, knows anything about coffee? Or if their interpretation of “a good coffee experience”  matches yours?

Not necessarily that theirs is wrong, just different. How do you identify who has a refined palate that corresponds to your personal coffee taste and preferences? It’s kind of a crap shoot.

In our experience, many times the recommendations result in a poor experience – at least according to our standards.

So who can you trust?

We’ll keep finding the good stuff – and sharing our results – so you don’t have to. Our mission is to become the trusted ‘watchful eye’, the voice of objective reason and the coffee advisor you can always rely on. We think when you get to know us and after you have tried some of our recommendations, you’ll agree.

Stay tuned and give us your feedback…

If you know of an awesome coffee shop we should visit, let us know, we will.

And feel free to share your coffee stories with us.

If they’re interesting and fun, maybe we can interview you too. If you own a neat little coffee shop that people should know about. Send us a bio and some pictures and we’ll give you a call, Team Barrett…

We Love Really Good Coffee
** Team Barrett **