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Seed To Cup on the Sprudge Podcast Network is hosted by Sprudge co-founder, author, and journalist Jordan Michelman. This new show is dedicated to the art of the long-form interview, focusing on the coffee industry’s enigmatic founders, influential executives, and major culture movers. Michelman has been covering the coffee industry for the last decade, and his new monthly show is a coffee-perfect version for fans of podcasts like How I Built That, The Pitch, and other deep-dive interview programs.
Erica Escalante (Photo by Paige Hicks from The Lit List: Michelle Johnson’s Favorite Moments From SCA 2019)
On the first episode of Seed To Cup, Jordan Michelman interviews Erica Escalante, the founder and entrepreneur behind Cafe Reina and Kitchenhood Commissary in Portland, Oregon. Formerly The Arrow Coffeehouse, Cafe Reina [official website] is a specialty coffee shop, bakery, and busy shared-space commercial kitchen in North Portland, located at the intersection of NE Albert and Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Escalante’s story through coffee leads us up to this moment today, where she has emerged as a small business leader and innovator in the time of COVID-19, adapting her business model in a series of fascinating ways and garnering a gaggle of local news coverage along the way.
The entrance to Erica Escalante’s cafe in Portland, Oregon with a hands-free speaker system.
Coronavirus feels like it’s everywhere right now, but it’s not the whole story; on this show we’re trying to dig deep into both the present and the past with our guests. Looking for the story behind the story, learning about how influential people in the coffee world came to love coffee in the first place, and charting often unlikely career paths on their way to coffee industry success. We hope you love this interview with Erica Escalante and come back for more feature-length interviews with the most fascinating people in coffee right here on Seed To Cup.
Listen to the entire episode right here on Sprudge:
Full transcript available here.
This episode is available now via direct download and will be available across all podcast platforms in the coming week. Check out all of the Sprudge Podcast Network shows here.
This season of Seed To Cup is sponsored by La Marzocco.