In today’s Post Gazette, China Millman, PG’s food critic, documented Tazza D’Oro’s 10th year anniversary celebration. Thanks, China - as it turns out the only pictures and stories we have are from the Post Gazette - guess we were focusing on a few other things! Check out the article and the video.

On June 19th, Tazza D’Oro had a blast. We celebrated our 10 year anniversary and man o man what a party. (btw, it has taken me all weekend to recover!) We are pretty sure by the end of the night we had well over 200 people. I was overwhelmed and grateful for how many of you showed and for your generous well-wishes. Thank you! We do appreciate your support and how much coffee you drink everyday!

Diana Nelson-Jones of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette documented some of the evening in her City WalkAbout - check it out. Thanks to all my fellow coffee peeps that showed (Aldo’s, 21st Street, Voluto, Espresso a Mano, Union Project, La Prima, Turner Dairy) and all our locals for the great food, ice cream and beer (Abay, Point Brugge, Buffalo Blues, Oh Yeah, East End Brewery).

For me, Friday was a celebration beginning the next 10 years. Since September, we have been working pretty hard thinking and planning for the future. One of the major changes was the transition to our new coffee roaster - Verve, located in Santa Cruz, CA.

Colby and Ryan, owners of Verve made the trip to Pittsburgh to help us usher in the new decade and to share their philosophies about their company, Verve, purchasing and roasting coffee, single origins, and the coffee business. We also introduced our new espresso blend - we’re calling it “Bicycle Love Espresso Blend” - dude, home run!

I began working on the business plan for Tazza D’Oro 12 years ago. One of the main components of the plan was to find an exceptional coffee roaster. At that time, I was traveling weekly for my job and would spend evenings and weekends tasting coffee and visiting roasters, including 2 places in Canada. After more than a year and a few months before our opening we had a few coffee roasters to pick from but not exceptional coffee roasters. While having lunch in the Farmer’s Market in Olympia, a friend said have you “tried those guys”.  She was pointing to the Batdorf and Bronson Roastry just behind the market. I got up from the table and the rest of the story for the last 10 years you know.

From my initial visit that day to today, I can’t say enough about Batdorf and Bronson and all the employees who work there. Their exceptional coffee, training and customer service helped make Tazza D’Oro the success we are today.

Finding and choosing a roaster 10 years ago was hard and making the decision to change roasters for the next 10 years has been, well, excruciating on many levels.

Batdorf and Bronson is a company of amazing people who love coffee. We are grateful to them and even more grateful for the continued friendships!

Thank you all for ten amazing years! On Friday, June 19th starting at 6:30pm, we will be celebrating our Tazza D’Oro’s 10th Year Anniversary! We decided that part of the celebration should involve many of the places we love and hangout - many of these establishments, their owners and employees have become friends, mentors and loyal customers.  We will be featuring food and beer from some of our favorite places!

I’ve received several emails over the last few weeks asking why we haven’t been posting.  As it turns out, planning for the next 10 years is just as crazy busy as it was 10 years ago!  We have changed our logo - like it?

We are re-working our web site, looking at new and innovative ways of running the business, writing a new business plan AND traveling to Santa Cruz to firm up plans with our new coffee roaster.  A couple of weeks ago, China Millman of the PG, broke the news for us.  Yes, its true - Verve Coffee Roasters is Tazza D’Oro’s new coffee roaster!  (I will write more on our switch in another post or actually several posts)  In fact, you all will have the chance to meet Colby and Ryan, the owners of Verve, next week.  They will be traveling to Pittsburgh for our anniversary party plus we will be holding a public cupping of some of our newly featured coffees.

Hope you all can stop in on Friday!

Tazza D’Oro will be open from 8 am to 12 noon on Monday, May 25th!

My neighborhood, Highland Park, is all a “buzz” this weekend. Tazza D’Oro would like to take credit because of all the coffee and espresso being consumed…but it’s much better than that.  On Friday, Highland Park and Tazza D’Oro appeared in the New York Post travel section. Then that same afternoon, Senator Ferlo, Mayor Ravenstahl and East Liberty Development held a groundbreaking on Bryant Street announcing the opening of a new restaurant by the owners of Point Brugge, located in Point Breeze. Oh, and just for the record - entrepreneurs love to solve problems because problems are where opportunities exist. Jesse, Amy, Elaine and Barry are of some of the smartest entrepreneurs I know.  They are opening a restaurant in Highland Park because they see and have assessed the incredible opportunity and not only cause we’re peeps!(see article)  Nice try though!

Picture of Jesse behind the Mayor’s podium with the Mayor and Ernie as backups. Dude, where’s your bike?

See other pictures of the big day - click here.  Thanks, Rudy Maceyko!

I think I’ve read almost every book on explorers - especially pioneering/early explorers - navigating the globe, specific parts of the world, the U.S. and space - long before any trails were blazed, seas charted, maps, roads and railroads defined, GPS, cell phones, and the unknown beyond our earth . I am fascinated by the spirit, passion and the capacity of some of us to risk and endure all that we define as safe and stable.  A while back I had a really amazing discussion with a history professor from Pitt who informed me that most of what we know on earth has been explored and now we will focus our attention on traveling space and the universe. WOW! However, over the last few years we have followed some of our customers/friends on personal journeys as they traveled many of the routes that were established in the history books long before. I am still fascinated and never, ever get tired of reading the experiences of the journey no matter how challenging or short the journey -hmmm!

So the rad thing about owning a “coffee shop” - we get to be in the know and be one of the stops on the journey! Over the next several weeks we are following 2 different journeys - 3 friends on their bikes traveling across America and 2 actors/artists who left their left their jobs in NYC to act/perform in a summer stock theatre and to explore the country. BTW, one of the actor/artist peeps is Amelia’s brother, Mickey. Mickey and his girl Alex spent the weekend with us exploring the burgh and meeting all the locals.

Here are the links to the journeys: Great stuff - read while drinking your morning coffee - it’s inspiring!

Mickey and Alex

3 friends biking across America

Our idea of a Marathon Sunday at Tazza D’Oro is drinking 26.2 espressos or French Pressed single origin coffees then going on a bike ride. However, this Sunday, May 3rd, Tazza D’Oro will be all about supporting over 10,000 runners of the Pittsburgh Marathon running right past our door (mile marker 21, I think). For all you spectators, Senator Jim Ferlo will be hosting his famous Marathon Party beginning at 8:30 am at Tazza D’Oro. Senator Ferlo has made arrangements for the great James Hovan Jazz Group to play. We will be serving our delicious, carefully prepared coffee, freshly baked pastries and a few other goodies that Senator Ferlo will bring along.  BTW, all the outside goodies are complimentary and please thank the Senator for that.  Inside, Tazza D’Oro we will be conducting business as usual but with a limited food menu, lots of espresso flowing and press of pots of single origin coffees.  I hear you may be able to see Mayor Ravenstahl drink one of our Italian cappuccinos too! So, since the streets will be closed this will be a great time to pull out your bikes and ride them to Tazza D’Oro. Right?

Over the past month I have been dealing with replacing Tazza D’Oro’s front door - picking the door, colors, glass, fixtures, rebuilding of the door frame and the price, but it had to be done. Today, Dave and his guys showed up with our new front door. Turns out the factory who applied the custom paint reversed the colors - dark green on inside and “coffee with cream” color on the outside.  The door was installed and now we will wait another 3 weeks for our correctly painted door.  But here is the real lesson for me - our original door was hung June 19, 1999. That’s almost 10 years and opening faithfully everyday. We estimate the total to be 2,688,000 times!!! So thank you -thank you so very much for opening our door everyday! We hope you like the new one too!

Whoa! China Millman, of the Post Gazette, steps up the Pittsburgh coffee scene again. This time she caught Drew at 21st Coffee and me, at tazza d’oro, on video doing our thing with coffee just like we brew it at home. Drew demonstrates brewing coffee by using a French Press and I use the Chemex. The story is - YOU CAN DO IT TOO and do it really well!  Just watch - Chemex video, French Press video.  China also includes a really great piece on manual brewing techniques which provides some really great advice about brewing awesomely delicious coffee at home - check it out.