Kaldi’s marketer talks coffee at Catapult

A colleague once told Frank McGinty coffee shouldn't work.

McGinty, the director of marketing and culinary development for Missouri-based Kaldi's Coffee, said he agreed -- to a certain extent.

During a lecture Thursday at Southeast Missouri State University's Catapult Creative House, he said coffee's ubiquity belies the creativity, industry and infrastructure necessary to bring it from the hills of Colombia to the soccer moms of Kirkwood, Missouri, and elsewhere.

He held up his own coffee, rattling the ice for the attendees.

"There's a lot that happens before this happens," he said.

McGinty, who graduated from Cape Girardeau Central High School, said he fell in love with food in Florence, Italy, where he studied culinary arts, before "getting my butt kicked in New York," working at a restaurant in the theater district.

He moved back to St. Louis to continue working in the restaurant industry until he was hired by Kaldi's Coffee 10 years ago.

He said from a business perspective, a major component in establishing brand loyalty is offering superior products.

"I literally say we buy the best coffee in the world," he said.

Kaldi's coffees come from "specialty" sources who have scored more than 80 of 100 on an internationally recognized ranking system, he said.

"It's so much like wine," he said. "It's so much like produce. It's farming."

The coffee bean plant can be somewhat more finicky than a grapevine, growing only around the equator, often on hills, he said.

He described the picking process, the de-pulping and drying of the coffee bean and said passion for producing great coffee starts in the field.

The other main component is good people to get that product to customers.

Kaldi's tries to maintain quality by avoiding conventional corporate structure in hiring and management practices.

To staff the nine Kaldi's Coffee shops in the St. Louis area and eight elsewhere, McGinty said his company prefers to recruit people whose backgrounds are in mom-and-pop restaurants. This, he said, helps build a company of problem-solvers rather than box-checkers.

He said it also helps with keeping approachability a core value. He said if a "coffee dork" wants to talk the finer points of bean-grinding, that customer should be able to find knowledgeable staff at Kaldi's locations, because "if they're gonna come in and pay for a coffee, it better be incredible."

Customer service, he said, is just as important.

"If my mom walks in and wants a 16-ounce skim vanilla latte, we'll make her the best one we can."

tgraef@semissourian.com

(573) 388-3627

Pertinent address:

612 Broadway, Cape Girardeau, Mo.