Cold brew is poised for growthCold brew is poised for growth

Cold brew is poised to change the way restaurants serve coffee, proponents of the beverage say.

That’s a bold statement, especially considering that sales of cold brew, made by steeping ground coffee beans in cold water for 15 hours or more, only accounted for around $8 million in sales in 2015, according to research portal Statista. That’s miniscule compared with the more than $56 billion in annual foodservice coffee sales cited by supplier S&D Coffee & Tea.

But a trend is percolating: Consumer research firm Mintel estimated that cold brew sales grew 580 percent from 2011 to 2016.

Starbucks pours nitro cold brew at 1,000 locations.

Consumers who like cold brew praise its smoother, sweeter, lower-acid flavor, as well as its high caffeine content.

Major coffee chains including Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and Peet’s Coffee have started offering cold brew. So has Chick-fil-A and the convenience-store chain Sheetz.

Caribou Coffee offered cold brew for 22 years before it started touting it in 2015. The same year, it began testing nitro cold brew, or cold brew infused with nitrogen to give it a creamy mouthfeel similar to Guinness or other stout beers.

Nitro cold brew has been a favorite in boutique coffee houses and hit the big time when Starbucks introduced it at its Seattle Reserve Roastery in May 2016. Nitro cold brew is now available at 1,000 locations globally, Starbucks said.

Following craft beer’s lead

While some boutique coffee shops make their own cold brew, a growing number are buying it already brewed in kegs. That’s paving the way for a new approach to serving coffee, according to Michael Klong, CEO of Tradecraft Outfitters, a distributor that sets up beverage programs for foodservice, grocery and offices.

Cold brew is on a trajectory similar to craft beer, he said, with a growing number of local manufacturers brewing it and offering different varieties for customers to try.

“Cold brew has kind of transformed the space and is creating its own category,” Klong said.

He has more than 60 cold brew drafts in his portfolio, including those infused with nitrogen, some that already have dairy added, some that are aged in whiskey barrels and coffee with other assorted flavors.

“There’s a honey lavender draft latte that we just picked up,” he said.

Fairgrounds Coffee & Tea orders coffee from many different roasters.

Michael Schultz is taking the multi-tap approach at Chicago-based Fairgrounds Coffee & Tea, which opened its second location in July and has units under construction in Los Angeles and Minneapolis.

“Wouldn’t it be weird if you walked into a bar and your only choices were Budweiser and Bud Lite?” he asked.

Schultz works with 16 or 17 different roasters to give customers choices, similar to the options available if they were ordering craft beer or wine by the glass.

Buying nitro cold brew, bourbon barrel-aged cold brew and a variety of lighter or darker roasts allows customers to explore the nuances of different brews. And some roasters, like local company Dark Matter, offers seasonal blends.

The trend is also seeping into the chain world. Starbucks introduced a whiskey barrel-aged cold brew at select locations for a limited time this fall.

The Seattle-based chain’s Whiskey Barrel-Aged Sulawesi Cold Brew is made with green coffee beans from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. The beans are aged for several weeks in bourbon oak barrels before being roasted, ground and cold-brewed. The coffee is then sweetened with whiskey barrel-aged vanilla syrup, shaken with ice and served alongside a glass of sparkling water for $6.50.

Flavor innovation

Schultz said he’s seen roasters age green coffee beans, while others age the liquid cold brew itself. He’s even seen cold brew flavored with hops, the main flavoring agent of beer.

“It’s almost like you’re drinking a coffee porter, or a coffee IPA,” he said. “We’re just like a bar, without the fruit flies and the fights.”

Vitality Bowls Superfood Café serves cold brew on tap.

Cold brew coffee in kegs also makes achieving consistently good coffee easier for roasters, he said, and saves on labor for operators.

“In the past, coffee was an unfinished product,” Schultz said. “Roasters had a vision, and they could select the beans they bought and roasted it exactly how they wanted, but whether those beans would be brewed properly in a restaurant or coffeehouse was a total crapshoot.”

Now, roasters can supervise production from bean to cup, he said, and serving cold brew is a breeze.

“You can literally pour it in seven seconds,” Schultz said, without the need for a specialized barista. (Fairgrounds still has baristas to serve pour-over coffee and other specialty brews.)

“A cashier can do it,” he said.

Cold brew branches out

With the popularity of cold brew growing, non-coffee specialists are also getting in on the action.

Teremok, a Russian fast-casual chain specializing in an Eastern European crêpe called bliny, introduced nitro cold brew lattes at its two New York City locations.

CEO Mikhail Goncharov said the nitro latte is the chain’s bestselling coffee beverage, although sales drop as the weather cools, and it comes off the menu completely in colder months.

Virtuous Pie, a vegan restaurant with locations in Toronto, Vancouver and Portland, Ore., makes a dairy-free cold brew horchata that accounts for 25 percent of total coffee sales.

Lead barista Jason Anderson makes a rice-based concentrate flavored with dates, vanilla, cinnamon, maple syrup and a little salt. He strains the mixture through a nut milk bag and tops it with cashew-walnut milk. That makes up half of the drink. The other half is locally made cold brew from Heart Coffee Roasters.

“That drink is easily our bestselling coffee-related beverage,” he said.

The beverage is priced at $4 for 12 ounces, the same price as a cold brew, which is delivered in a keg and served on tap in a row alongside beer, wine and kombucha.

Anderson said making cold brew is not particularly complicated, “but doing it in such large quantities and so consistently is difficult to do in house.”

Also, by using a popular local company, and one which only distributes to a few restaurants, he can leverage their prestige.

“It’s nice to be in that small handful of businesses that do it here,” he said.

Vitality Bowls Superfood Café has been serving nitro cold brew for a couple of years, vice president of operations Uriah Blum said. The 43-unit chain based in San Ramon, Calif., continues to find new things to do with it.

The Daily sweetens its cold brew with sorghum. (Photo: Andrew Cebulka)

“People like that potent, concentrated coffee,” he said. “We don’t even put it on ice. It’s served straight up,” at 45 degrees Fahrenheit.

The chain also buys cold brew in a keg, already nitrogenated.

Blum is now working on blending superfoods with cold brew, such as maca powder — the root, not the tea — chia seeds, pea protein and açaí. He hopes to come up with something new by the spring.

Meanwhile, nitro cold brew is available as an option in the chain’s smoothies and açaí bowls.

“We have a string of regulars that use the cold brew in our Nutty Bowl instead of almond milk,” he said, while others add the drink to smoothies.

The Nutty Bowl is typically made with almond milk, peanut butter, açaí, strawberries and bananas. It’s topped with granola, bananas, almonds and honey.

Blum said the chain gets coffee from a local roaster from California, but he’s working on securing local producers for Florida and Texas locations.

At The Daily in Charleston, S.C., co-owner Melody Shemtov takes a different approach to localizing cold brew. Although she sources cold brew from Portland, Ore.-based roaster Stumptown, she sweetens it with local sorghum, which she said gives it a richer flavor. She mixes it with a combination of cream and whole milk for an extra-rich drink, priced at $4.50.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected]

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