Shoppers among us will understand how a window display stopped Stevie Guillory dead in his tracks.
Medical mission work had taken the physician’s assistant on trips south to Cali, Colombia, for several years. One evening, as the Pacific breeze brushed away the day’s mugginess, Guillory and his group wandered through Granada, a ritzy shopping district in the higher altitudes of this valley city. Guillory was on a hunt. “You go [to Colombia] and expect good coffee everywhere, but you don’t get it. They ship it all out! You’ve got to go to specialty shops to find it, but in doing all that … well, I drank really good coffee.”
A café called Palo Alto held just the right cup; and sitting outside the shop with his purchase, Guillory watched as an employee tended to the old roaster gleaming in the front window. “That was the first time I’d ever seen them roast coffee,” recalled Guillory. “We sat outside with that breeze blowing, and it was the best cup of coffee I ever had.”
He took that memory home to the States, where he and his neighbor Chris Peneguy concocted a dream, Why don’t we brew our own coffee?
The Guillorys and the Peneguys live just across the street from one another. Their daughters grew up together, and camaraderie flows freely between the households. (“When I make dinner on the weekends,” said Guillory, “it’s understood that I’m making extra for [the Peneguy family] too.”)
Peneguy liked the idea of a craft; he brewed beer often, and well, but had struggled with turning the hobby into a business. “Opening a brewery is so expensive, and there’s so much government regulation,” said Guillory. “But Chris loved the process [of brewing], and I brought in the coffee. That’s how it mingled.”
Soon the neighbors were researching beans and turning to more seasoned hobbyists for counsel in their new pursuit. Early batches, roasted with a $40 Whirley Pop on the stove, became Christmas presents for friends and family.
Business meetings between the two were organic, even casual. The company name arrived after “a lot of beer,” laughed Peneguy. “In Colombia, you order tinto, a black coffee,” said Guillory. “But a lot of times you want just a little coffee, so you say ‘Un cafecito, por favor.’ So what if you just stick the Cajun ‘eaux’ on the end?”
Christened with a name—and a pelican and fleur-de-lis for the logo—the first bags of Cafeciteaux’s specialty coffee hit Baton Rouge shelves last Fourth of July, debuting at Calandro’s Supermarket on Perkins Road.
Cafeciteaux Coffee Roasters now stocks at both Calandro’s locations as well as Alexander’s Highland Market. Mostly, though, the coffee lands in New Orleans cafés, at home among other specialty brews.
Expansion is in the works. “Our parallel is craft beer,” said Guillory. Baton Rouge taste buds are moving toward an appreciation of full-flavored roasts; they can see that it’s just a matter of time. Peneguy and Guillory aim to open their own coffee shop in the next couple of years—not a crowded lunch spot but a destination for coffee lovers and courageous novices alike.
“I love downtown Baton Rouge,” said Peneguy, of potential locations. “I was working down there when everything started to come up.” But the past decade has seen restaurant after restaurant burn off like morning dew. “I don’t want to be the thing that’s not there in ten years. That’s my biggest reservation.”
Peneguy and Guillory now roast their beans at the Cafeciteaux headquarters on Airline Highway, where a large industrial roaster in the corner has proven a vast upgrade from the Whirley Pop crackling on the kitchen stove.
“One of the things we hear the most is Have you ever thought about roasting a little bit darker? But we’re trying to train people here—train their tastebuds [to appreciate a lighter roast],” said Guillory.
Each batch is geared toward a “Full City” roast (also known as “Light French” or “Light Espresso”), the degree between the first and second crack of the browning beans. Acidity mutes to sweetness, but the particular nuances remain.
Against the back wall, plastic bins hold unroasted beans from throughout the world: the Yirgacheffe Adado, out of Ethiopia, takes fruity notes from the region’s prevalent blueberries; there’s a hint of caramel wafting from the Central American beans. With the Full City roast, Guillory reiterated, “You save all those intricate flavors that are specific to that farm or that region.”
The guys perform taste tests each night through “cupping,” a slurped, all-sensory sample of each new roast. In their talks with wholesalers and other experts, they’re always open to more varieties.
And when the Cafeciteaux coffee shop does finally come to fruition, they hope Baton Rouge is similarly receptive. “We want people to learn and love and say I go to Cafeciteaux because I want an excellent coffee,” said Guillory.
“I want people to live in our coffee shop,” added Peneguy. “I want the guy that comes in two or three times a day, knows everybody, knows my family …”
Details. Details. Details.
