Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
1000 Faces Coffee of Athens is helping Hector Diaz of Salsa set up coffee at Bomba, Diaz’ new venture in the former Cupcake Corner location downtown, next to Salsa. And they’re using the trip to check out Asheville as a location for a new coffee shop, considering the Leader Building and the space next to Short Street Cakes on Haywood Road.
Here’s the story from Mackensy Lunsford and the Asheville Scene food blog:
The single-origin roaster is owned by Ben Myers of Athens as well as Jason Mann, a founding partner of Farm Burger, the burger restaurant with various locations in Georgia that will add an off-shoot in Asheville’s Leader Building early next year. 1,000 Faces will provide the featured coffee at Hector Diaz’s new Patton Avenue corner cafe and eatery, Bomba, which latest reports peg as opening next week. Jodi Rhoden of Short Street Cakes also serves the roaster’s El Injerto direct-trade coffee to customers.
“We’re exploring (the area),” said Myers from Athens, where he was resting up from a two-month trip through Ethiopia. “First and foremost, I’m going to be up there working with Bomba to make sure that the coffee tastes great.” If all goes well, 1,000 Faces could look to put down permanent roots. “After that, we’ll find the best fit. It could be in that Leader Building, it could be somewhere else.” Myers also said that he’s been looking at the space next to Short Street Cakes.
If 1,000 Faces’ mission statement is any indication, the roaster could be a good fit for Asheville: “Drinking good coffee can become an act of civil disobedience. We believe that choosing the fast and the cheap over quality and consciousness is wrenching the heart out of our communities and tearing the soul out from our land ecology.”
Read the whole thing here.
1000 Faces website
1000 Faces on Facebook
Well said Jared!
I’m gonna go to bat for local roasteries here. As someone who’s been in the industry since 2000, I’ve tasted an awful lot of coffee from a lot of different places. I’ve not had 1000 Faces, but in the past year I’ve run Intelligentsia, Stumptown, Wrecking Ball, Handsome, Ceremony, and others through their paces.
The reason Waking Life chooses to use Mountain Air Roasting and Mountain City Coffee Roasters is because not only do both Marshall and Randall know what they’re doing, but I am able to work with them to source the best tasting coffees we can find, and roast them in the best way. I have cupped their offerings side by side with the aforementioned roasters and they almost always compete – often surpassing the quality of the big boys. Concerning coffees I don’t serve, I had an excellently roasted aged Lintong Sumatra from Bean Werks the other day, and Thomas, Josh, Andy, and Aaron over at Dynamite are also fantastic at what they do and fellow coffee nerds to boot.
That said, I’m confused as to why local businesses would choose to source coffee from Athens where there’s a lot of great coffee being roasted right here. For folks who push “Go Local,” perhaps we should actually, you know, go local.