Pigs & Pints - SUMP

Over the next few days, I will be doing a few posts about some of the participants in Pigs & Pints.  If you haven’t stopped in for your tickets, now would be a good time.  They are limited.  Best estimation is they will be sold out before the event begins.  Which as a promoter is quite a nice feeling.

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details.

Enter Scott.  Scott opened Sump Coffee in South City. 

details.  

It’s such a simple word.  People often over look details.  But when a small business begins it’s life is consumed by details.  The look, the feel, the care at which a product is introduced and reproduced.  The descriptions.  The bar, the tables, the sign (not in our case) and most importantly, the product.  All of these details allow an experience to happen.  Details set the stage.  

details. 

Sump. 

I believe in the details and when I look at the wheelhouse of small businesses, it is always the details that impress me.  This lies in stark contrast to the big picture sort of stuff that makes most big multinational companies tick. Suits in boardrooms talking about maximizing profit, streamlining processes, increasing shareholder value and Brand building. Small business owners talk about connecting with each customer, they talk about what makes their product unique.  Sure there are small businesses that dream of being the next McDonald’s or the next Amazon but a majority of small businesses aren’t driven by that, instead they are driven simply by something they believe in and the hope that if they stay true to it you will come along for the ride.   

Such is the SUMP experience. 

details. 

But it just isn’t the details, one must be passionate.  One must have intellectual curiosity.   People that throw themselves into what they are doing in a way that brings others along with them and in a way that encourages each of us to become more curious.  And that in doing so, they change the bar for our own expectations and they encourage us to look further into what we are tasting and what we are eating. 

Go to Sump.  

Scott is partaking in the Pigs & Pints festival.  As with any festival, all of our businesses have to balance our high standards for quality with the logistics of serving a much larger group of people in shorter time than we would ever do on a daily basis.  Our challenge at the brewery is easy, more people mean more taps are needed and more people to serve.  Our product is already finished and as long as the taps are ready we just need hands to pour.  

Coffee is not really the same.  The idea of making 400 top notch expressos in an hour and a half is daunting and actually impossible in our case, especially because small shops and businesses like ours just aren’t equipped for such an event.  

Scott and I discussed how to best serve a large group of people and at the same time not be put in a position in which would lessen what Sump is about, what makes Sump tick.  How do we preserve exceptional high quality and still be able to serve a massive group of people?

details.  

Enter the Kyoto Coffee. (Pictured Right)  

Remember when your mum told you that patience is a virtue.  Well, Kyoto Coffee isn’t something you brew when you get up in the morning with your eyes half open and it isn’t something you can brew at home unless you have one of the beautiful contraptions to the right.  And it isn’t even served hot.  It rather is brewed in the course of twelve hours in a painstakingly slow drip process.  It is served cold and in our case over ice which allows it to perceptively change as you slip further into the cup.  It’s an experience.

Scott is considering a hot coffee option for the event.  Rest assured, if he can do it Sump style, he will.  

I highly recommend a trip to Sump soon to see firsthand the purposefully omitted details of the Sump experience.  I’d say letting Scott and his staff guide you through it is much better than reading my interpretation. Though quite sufficient,  I feared my command of the English language wouldn’t do it justice.  

But there is one detail you should know: Sump is closed on Mondays for Beard Maintenance and that I left thinking Buddha would drink here.  

Sump is located at:

3700 S. Jefferson Ave. (@Winnebago St.) St. Louis, MO 63118 http://www.sumpcoffee.com/