Espresso Vivace
 Espresso Vivace bar on Broadway, Capitol Hill, Seattle, Washington | |||||||||||||||||
| Founded | Seattle, Washington, United States (1988) | ||||||||||||||||
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| Founders | David C. Schomer and Geneva Sullivan | ||||||||||||||||
| Headquarters | |||||||||||||||||
Number of locations | 3[1] | ||||||||||||||||
Number of employees | ~30 (2016) | ||||||||||||||||
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| Website | espressovivace | ||||||||||||||||
Espresso Vivace is a Seattle area coffee shop and roaster known for its coffee and roasting practices. Vivace's owner, David Schomer,[5] is credited with developing and popularizing latte art in the United States.[2]
David Schomer
Espresso Vivace was founded in 1988 by former Boeing engineer David C. Schomer and Digital Equipment Corporation mainframe technician Geneva Sullivan, who were married at that time.[2][6] Schomer credits Vivace's survival in a competitive market to his own "absolute fidelity" to the goal of "making a better cup", along with the equally important business acumen of Sullivan in managing costs, maintaining the books and tax records, and avoiding the financial pitfalls that often plague small business entrepreneurs.[7] Espresso Vivaces's first incarnation was a coffee cart at 5th and Union, serving mainly financial industry workers, whom Schomer says did not consistently frequent the same cafes or pay close attention to quality.[7]
Schomer and Sullivan opened a second location on South Broadway in Capitol Hill, where customers took greater notice, though the Seattle Community College customers "didn't know any better" without other nearby coffee shops operating on the game gourmet level.[7] To make way for the Capitol Hill light rail station they were forced to move, choosing a new location five blocks north, near "high-end housing" where Espresso Vivace found customers who Schomer said were more able to appreciate gourmet coffee as an art form, and who generally became "rabidly loyal" to their favorite haunts.[8] Sullivan and Schomer's business partnership continued after their divorce in 2008.[2][3]
Schomer became known within the coffee industry for his innovations, such as how he customizes his grinders and espresso machines to achieve a more constant water temperature, which ultimately leads to a quality cup of coffee.[9] The Seattle Times said "Schomer is as influential in the gourmet coffee world as Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is in the mainstream coffee industry." His methods have influenced latte making at Portland's Stumptown Coffee Roasters, New York's Ninth Street Espresso, and Los Angeles' Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea. Ninth Street's Kenneth Nye said Schomer's work developing his techniques, "was light-years ahead of the conversation at the time". Schomer thought that when he opened Vivace in 1988, he had "missed the peak" of the espresso explosion, when in fact his scientific exploration of extraction methods was not happening elsewhere.
Besides training hundreds of baristas who went on to influence coffee shops across the country, Schomer self published a book on espresso techniques in 1994, while also writing columns for Café Ole magazine in the 1990s.[4] Mark Pendergrast said that Schomer inherited the title of "world's most passionate espresso engineer" upon the death of Italian food chemist Ernesto Illy in 2008.[10]
References
- ^ "Locations". Espresso Vivace. Retrieved November 18, 2017.
- ^ a b c d Bonné, Jon (May 9, 2003). "Meet espresso's exacting master — Food Inc". NBC News, MSNBC.
{{cite web}}: Check|archiveurl=value (help); Unknown parameter|dead-url=ignored (|url-status=suggested) (help) - ^ a b Washington State Divorce Indexes, 1969-2014, Olympia, Washington: Washington State Archives
- ^ a b Romano, Tricia (October 22, 2015), "Vivace's David Schomer — not Starbucks — 'made coffee huge in Seattle'", The Seattle Times
- ^ Allison, Melissa. Vivace founder, David Schomer is a coffee prophet. Seattle Times. Sunday, July 2, 2006
- ^ Geiger, Grace (December 31, 2009), "Seattle Coffee Guide: The Personalities; The people behind Seattle's coffee culture", Seattle Magazine, archived from the original on October 30, 2013
{{citation}}: Unknown parameter|dead-url=ignored (|url-status=suggested) (help) - ^ a b c Richardson, John; Gilmartin, Hugh (December 17, 2015), Wake Up and Sell More Coffee: Fresh Ways to Make Money from Your Coffee Business, Little, Brown Book Group, pp. 131–135, ISBN 9781472135971
- ^ Murakami, Kery (May 16, 2006), "Whirr of Espresso Vivace soon silenced by new rail; Capitol Hill coffee shop will give way to Sound Transit", Seattle Post-Intelligencer
- ^ BW Smallbiz Gurus (Winter 2007). "Higher Grounds". Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved November 27, 2011.
- ^ Pendergrast, Mark, Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, p. 360
Further reading
- David Schomer (1994). Espresso Coffee: Professional Techniques. Classic Day Publishing. ISBN 1-59404-031-1. David Schomer's book on professional espresso making.