At Compass Coffee, they sell "tons" of products from Union Kitchen's makers
The partners behind Compass Coffee bonded during their time in the Marines, where coffee was their fuel.
“Michael [Haft] and I went to Washington University [in St. Louis] but didn’t really know each other,” says Compass Coffee co-founder Harrison Suarez, “but were both joining the Marines and ended up at basics togehter in Quanitco, Virginia, in October of 2009.” They knew each other a bit from college and began practicing land navigation in the tree line on Saturday mornings. “The military runs on coffee,” says Harrison, “and we had a ritual where we drank coffee in the mornig, got back to the barracks at night, drank coffee … and it became a thing.”
The two Marines took command of weapons platoons together and ended up deployed to Afganastan together. Through it all, drinking coffee together, which Harrison says was an important reminder of home. They returned Stateside 2011/2012 and were still in Marines, but they were looking for what’s next. They were both into coffee but didn’t really know anything about it, so they decided to make it their hobby — they bought a bunch of toys and started seriously exploring coffee from bean to brew, eventually publishing an iBook on coffee and how to brew it at home. “From the response to that as a tool for brewing coffee and the entire process of learning about coffee, in a format that others could use … we saw that there was an opportunity,” says Harrison. “People wanted to learn how to make good coffee. There wasn’t a coffee experience like what we were looking for in DC, so we decided to start a cafe and start a roastery.” Fast forward from 2013 to today, and they have 10 cafes open, a roastery and a handful more cafes under construction.
“Cullen was at the time running a coffee shop called Blind Dog that we wanted to sell coffe to as their roaster,” remembers Harrison. “By the time Compass got started, Blind Dog had a cult following … we got connected through friends and ended up sitting at the cafe, talking about what we’re doing. We were under construction at this point, but Cullen is more focused on Union Kitchen which at the time was a shared kitchen space. They were getting ready to build the facility and had these big plans of what should the DC food ecosystem look like.”
Today, Compass Coffee sells a ton of products from Union Kitchen makers. “They drop off all of the goods for our cafes, then they get all the green coffee and packaging materials and bring those to us, we do the roasting and packaging, and then we sell those to Union Kitchen, which distributes to their own stores as well as stores like Whoel Foods,” says Harrison. “Through their distribution, we’re participating in this ecosystem that Cullen has built.”
