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“I was impressed while working there (at Boston Stoker) with the quality of coffees from all around the world,” Brown said. “The process also fascinated me.”
Brown worked at Boston Stoker throughout her senior year and continued after she went away to attend Seton Hall University in New Jersey, where she majored in international relations.
“I was interested in how social change impacted the world, so I decided to join the Peace Corps,” Brown said.
Brown ended up traveling to Africa, where she became involved with helping small scale farmers build cooperatives. She was inspired by the people she met to think about starting her own business.
“I went to business school in Michigan,” Brown said. “I realized this would help me in starting a business.”
After two years in Michigan, she moved to Chicago, where she started working for a management consulting firm. And continued drinking her daily coffees.
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“About two years ago, I was working on an intense project and my stress level was very high,” Brown said. “It was the perfect storm – I was working long hours and at the same time my dad was diagnosed with cancer.”
Her worries about her father were compounded by her stressful work load and Brown began to struggle with sleep.
“I was in this pattern where I would get up in the morning and have a few cups of coffee to wake up,” Brown said. “But at night, I was jittery and couldn’t sleep.”
Brown said her high stress level was to blame for her sleep issues, but coffee was intensifying the problem. She found it wasn’t easy giving coffee up.
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“I knew the caffeine in the coffee was a problem for me,” Brown said. “But I missed the taste and the smell.”
She started drinking decaffeinated coffee. But like many people, she struggled to find a brand that she really wanted to drink. She realized she had to make a difficult choice — between reducing her caffeine consumption and drinking full-flavored, high quality coffee.
“I started thinking about how I could start a business selling better decaf coffee,” Brown said. “I knew I wasn’t the only one facing this problem, and I wanted to solve it.”
Brown ended up traveling to four coffee-producing countries — Ethiopia, Columbia, Kenya and Rwanda — with her fiancee and partner, Daniel, to experience the coffee producing process firsthand.
“We visited a decaffeinating facility in Columbia that used a more natural process,” Brown said. “It’s done with a byproduct of sugar cane.”
The couple tasted about 200 different coffees. By the time it was all said and done, Brown had narrowed it down to two that she loved. She was shocked to learn that one of these was a decaffeinated coffee.
“That’s when I realized it was possible to make really good, full-flavored decaf coffee,” Brown said.
That original “shockingly great decaf” coffee, became the impetus for her new business, Savorista Coffee LLC.
“I made the decision to open the business in May of this year,” Brown said. “We started product development and sales were in full swing by September.”
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Brown is selling directly to decaf coffee drinkers online but is hoping her coffee will eventually make its way to restaurants and bakeries.
“I’ve heard coffee drinkers say they are concerned about caffeine and would like to drink less of it,” Brown said.
She says that because there is an extra step in the production process, good decaffeinated coffee can be more expensive.
“If companies are trying to optimize their costs, this means they are probably using lower quality beans to make their coffee,” Brown said. “And this is one of the biggest things that impacts flavor.”
What’s on tap for Savorista in the future? Brown hopes to add additional coffee flavors to her decaf line.
“I would love to see this business reach caffeine-conscious coffee lovers in their homes, coffee shops, restaurants — wherever they drink coffee,” Brown said.
Learn more
Online: For more information or to purchase, go online to Savoristacoffee.com.
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