It is hard to make good coffee if you don’t start with properly roasted beans, and in order to produce them, a master roaster is needed. One such man is John Weaver, who apprenticed under the legendary Alfred Peet and Sal Bonaviat, and worked for Peets for almost three decades. When Peets acquired new coffee roasters that roasted as much as 800 pounds of beans at a time, Weaver, who was used to roasting 80 pounds at a time, decided it was time to make a move. So in September 2007, he teamed with Pacific Palisades resident Michael Brown (whom he had met two years earlier when Brown was working as a consultant for an Hawaiian coffee company) to launch Weaver’s Coffee & Tea. They also founded Wild Card Roasters, LLC. ’We’re putting 100 percent of our efforts into building Weaver’s,’ said Brown, the company’s CEO. Headquarters are in San Francisco, with branch offices in Hawaii and Toyko. Coffee roasting is done in Emeryville in one of Peet’s original plants, on a vintage Probat machine that Weaver learned on. Currently, Weaver’s is the sole retail brand to be sold through Wild Card Roasters.””” Weaver’s carries organic and fair trade coffees including French roast, Sumatra, Peru, Africa and espresso blends, Hawaiian Kona Reserve and house blends. The French roast is smooth and strong, without the bitterness that sometimes accompanies other brands of that coffee. The Holiday blend is flavorful, with a smooth taste, which was achieved by Weaver mixing seven different coffee beans and three roast levels. ’John is a true artisan,’ Brown told the Palisadian-Post. ‘One reason he left Peets was the new roasters. As he said, it’s the difference between playing a synthesizer and playing a Stradivarius.’ Weaver said that it is still possible to roast great coffee on the large roasters, but with smaller ones, you have more immediate control. ””” The company is expanding, and although people have expressed an interest in opening a Weaver’s coffee store, the short-term business focus is on grocery and specialty stores. The coffee was initially sold in six Whole Foods stores in Northern California and is now available in all of their Northern California stores. ’We’re part of the coffee setups in those stores,’ Brown said. ‘Our shelf space has been tremendous.’ Although the company plans to make inroads into Southern California this year, Brown said he agrees with Weaver that ‘there’s a great business in not getting too big, by not being everywhere. We direct deliver and we have a 90-day pull date on all our grocery coffee to ensure better quality control.’ Weaver’s coffee can be found locally at Chefmakers on Via de la Paz, at the Rosenthal Tasting Room in Malibu, at Vicente Foods in Brentwood and at The Victorian and Duck Duck Mousse on Main Street in Santa Monica. After placing Weaver’s coffee and tea in more specialty grocery stores on the West Coast, the company plans to eventually push eastward. ’We’re only growing as fast as we can control the quality of customer service,’ said Brown, who has spent most of his professional career directing retail activities. ” After graduating from the University of Oregon in 1986 with a degree in political science, Brown worked as a sales representative covering Texas and New Mexico for Koret, a sportswear company. Two years in Lubbock was enough for a fellow who grew up in Newport Beach, and Brown left the company for Banana Republic, working first in San Francisco and then in Hawaii. In 1993, he was hired by Warner Bros. to open their studio stores nationally. His success enabled him to become vice president of international retail business development, where he designed, developed and implemented new retail businesses in the Asia/Pacific region (Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and Korea). In 2003, he returned to Los Angeles. ’When I was in Burbank at the home office, it wasn’t stimulating,’ Brown said. ‘I liked being out of the office.’ In October 2004, he went into private consulting; his first client was an Hawaiian coffee company that wanted to expand into Asian markets. Brown brought aboard Bryce Inouye, whom he had worked with at Warner in Hawaii and Southeast Asia. For two years they strove to expand the coffee company, while learning the ins and outs of the business’and meeting Weaver. About the same time their consulting job ended, Weaver had decided to leave Peets. ’I had a great career at Peets, but after 25 years, it was just time for me to go out on my own,’ Weaver said. Wild Card Roasters was founded, with Inouye as chief operating officer (now based in Toyko) and Weaver as the master roaster. Brown and his wife Renee have a son, Alexander, who attends St. Matthew’s School in Pacific Palisades. She’s a writer and producer with her own company, Chatty Mac. Her good friend Amy Bonetti has a firm called Big Mouth Communications, and the two companies have been handling public relations and marketing for Wild Card Roasters and Weaver’s Coffee & Tea. Visit: www.Weaver’scoffee.com or call (800) 328-1178.
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