La Colombe Coffee Roasters (originally La Colombe Torrefaction) is a US coffee roaster and retailer headquartered in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

. The company currently has cafés in Philadelphia, New York, Washington D.C, and elsewhere. La Colombe is representative of roasters that originated in the

third wave of coffee Third-wave coffee is a movement in coffee marketing emphasizing high quality. Beans are typically sourced from individual farms and are roasted more lightly to bring out their distinctive flavors. Though the term was coined in 1999, the approach o ...

, and was one of the early pioneers of

direct trade Direct may refer to: Mathematics * Directed set, in order theory * Direct limit of (pre), sheaves * Direct sum of modules, a construction in abstract algebra which combines several vector spaces Computing * Direct access (disambiguation), ...

coffee sourcing.

History

La Colombe was founded by Todd Carmichael and JP Iberti in 1994, with its first location near

Rittenhouse Square Rittenhouse Square is a neighborhood, including a public park, in Center City Philadelphia. The park is one of the five original open-space parks planned by William Penn and his surveyor Thomas Holme during the late 17th century. The neighbo ...

in Philadelphia. In 2015,

Hamdi Ulukaya Hamdi Ulukaya (born 26 October 1972, Iliç) is a Turkish billionaire businessman, activist, and philanthropist of Kurdish ethnicity based in the United States. Ulukaya is the owner, founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Chobani, th ...

(founder of Chobani) purchased a share of the company. Ulukaya bought out private equity firm Goode Partners to gain his stake, and helped the company raise $28.5 million to help fund plans for expansion. La Colombe was one of several small-scale coffee roasters that either received large investments or were acquired outright in 2015. The company continues to expand with cafes in cities with existing locations, such as Washington, D.C., as well as in new cities, including

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the capital city, state capital and List of municipalities in Massachusetts, most populous city of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financ ...

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

, and

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...

. As of 2019, La Colombe owns and operates 30 cafes, all in the US.

Products and collaborations

Products

In 2016, the company began offering a canned version of the Draft Latte, a cold-pressed

espresso Espresso (, ) is a coffee-brewing method of Italian origin, in which a small amount of nearly boiling water (about ) is forced under of pressure through finely-ground coffee beans. Espresso can be made with a wide variety of coffee beans an ...

and frothed milk

latte Caffè latte (), often shortened to just latte () in English, is a coffee beverage of Italian origin made with espresso and steamed milk. Variants include the chocolate-flavored mocha or replacing the coffee with another beverage base such as ...

first offered on tap in their cafes. The beverages are available for purchase at select retailers throughout the United States, as well as at all La Colombe cafes. Draft Lattes are produced at La Colombe's manufacturing facility in Norton Shores, Michigan. The cans for the latte were designed by La Colombe CEO Todd Carmichael, and produced by Philadelphia-based Crown Holdings. A unique plastic cover that resembles a go-to-cup adorns the lid. The Draft Latte is produced in multiple flavors. Other products include Different Drum, a coffee-infused rum, produced at a micro-distillery located in its

Fishtown, Philadelphia Fishtown is a neighborhood in the River Wards section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Located northeast of Center City Philadelphia, its borders are somewhat disputed today due to many factors, but are roughly defined by the triangle created by t ...

cafe, and a line of La Colombe single-origin and blended roasted coffees, which are available for purchase in retail stores or via the company's website. The company also produces a line of ready-to-drink Cold Brew available at grocery stores in larger bottles, as well as cold brew concentrate.

Haiti Coffee Academy

In 2013, La Colombe worked with the

Clinton Foundation The Clinton Foundation (founded in 2001 as the William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation, and renamed in 2013 as the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation) is a nonprofit organization under section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. tax code. It was e ...

to found the Haiti Coffee Academy. The organization aims to improve coffee growers’ livelihoods in

Haiti Haiti (; ht, Ayiti ; French: ), officially the Republic of Haiti (); ) and formerly known as Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and ...

through training programs for

smallholder A smallholding or smallholder is a small farm operating under a small-scale agriculture model. Definitions vary widely for what constitutes a smallholder or small-scale farm, including factors such as size, food production technique or technology ...

farmers, a demonstration farm and nursery, and efforts to strengthen the supply chain for both local and export markets for Haitian coffee.

Other collaborations

La Colombe collaborated with Yards Brewing Company, another Philadelphia-area company, in 2016 to produce a coffee stout to be served in local

Shake Shack Shake Shack is an American fast casual restaurant chain based in New York City. It started out as a hot dog cart inside Madison Square Park in 2001, and its popularity steadily grew. In 2004, it received a permit to open a permanent kiosk wi ...

branches. The company collaborated in 2016 with the Icelandic brewer Einstök and again with Yards on Snorri's Awakening, a coffee

pale ale Pale ale is a golden to amber coloured beer style brewed with pale malt. The term first appeared around 1703 for beers made from malts dried with high-carbon coke, which resulted in a lighter colour than other beers popular at that time. Dif ...

References