Appendix E-J

The past two years, this nearly hasn’t happened. Last year, we had a change of heart. This year, the people of the Twitter-sphere poked at us until we said yes. And we are glad for that poking, because this turned out so great.

There is a free compilation album waiting for you to download it. It’s full of music from our fav musicians who released albums this year. Nine songs in all. Nine songs you’ll put on repeat and strut around the house to. Nine songs that will slay you. Nine songs…enough already.

Again, the compilation is free. Our gift to you, our community. The musicians donated the songs, so we would recommend buying their albums as last minute gifts or with that cash your great aunt sends you. Also, if you want to donate to Everyday Joe’s, you can do that too. All donated funds will go towards paying for a new espresso machine. We’ve made it very easy for you to do all these things: download the album, support the musicians, donate to EDJ if you see fit. Just click the cover art below and start treating your ears to what they’ve been waiting for their entire lifespans.

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The art scene in FoCo is a fun one, but has taken some odd and tragic hits over the past little while. Today, though, a bright glimpse of light popped it’s head up over the horizon.

Our friend Bryan Collins seems to have had this stewing in him for some time, and today he announced it officially. Rendition Gallery will be opening on September 2 .

From the official Rendition site:

Rendition is the only Fort Collins art gallery to showcase an internationally recognized collection of artists from the neobrow and pop-surreal movement, and the only gallery to offer custom art-toys, limited edition vinyl figures, and DIY (do-it-yourself) art toys.

Our main floor exhibit area will be featuring artists such as Aaron Jasinski, Owen Dewitt(GrimSheep), Graham Franciose, Mary Spring, Rachel Ann, Matthew Hamblen, Bryan A. Collins, and many more to be announced. The downstairs and mezzanine areas feature top-notch talent from local artists who use the two rooms as studio space. The back of the main floor will host local and touring musicians as we are building a stage, installing stage lights, and setting up a sound system to rock the house 2nd and 4th Fridays.

We will be announcing studio artists, exhibiting artists, and performing musicians as they are confirmed. Special events, art classes, sketch nights, open mic nights, and all of the other things going on at Rendition will be posted here, as well as on Facebook and follow on Twitter @rendition251 for instant updates.

We recommend keeping a pulse on Rendition via those ways of social media mentioned in that last line there. We’re excited to have Rendition in Ft. Collins. It seems long overdue and feels like a breath of freshness. Like it’s fresh. Like 80s hiphop.

All those links for you. Check yo’ self fo’ you wreck yo’ self:

Official Page

Twitter

Facebook

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Something exciting just might could be on the horizon. Branching out. Collaboration. Continuance. Cryptic hinting.

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To our patron, whom we respect more than you know -

First off – thank you for coming to this place. Thank you for supporting Everyday Joe’s and for allowing us to be a part of your universe and community. We appreciate it and we appreciate you. We think of you often, and that is no lie.

Part of this thinking of you often is thinking of you when we make business decisions. We do not take lightly decisions concerning the product we put forth and the prices we charge for that product. We don’t even feel right putting anything out there that isn’t of high quality. Part of the heart of Everyday Joe’s is to serve you – through love, through welcome handshakes, and through delicious beverages. Giving you specialty coffee at an affordable price is part of that service. Giving you low quality coffee is not.

Over the past year, the price of “green” (that is, unroasted beans our roaster buys) coffee has soared. That is putting it mildly, perhaps. Here are some handy line graphs:

We opened in June 2003. As you can see, there is a bit of a steady rise in coffee prices. That is expected. You can also see towards the right side of the above graph what looks like the really tiring part of your elliptical workout. Here’s a closer look at that:

Over the past year, green prices on the commodities market have gone up nearly 77%.  Much of this is due to bad weather affecting crops (the earth…it doth groan), therefore lowering supply for an ever-increasing demand. It turns out most of the world loves fine coffee.

The roaster we buy from – Novo – buys coffee green. They roast it. They pass it on to us. We pass it on to you with care…as to not ruin the efforts of the countless people who handled the coffee before us.

Novo has tried their hardest not to pass on is the price increase they were experiencing on the green coffee side. However, we knew it was coming. Last month, the price we pay for our beans jumped 6% on average. In anticipation of this, we raised prices on most things back in December. Two things we left mostly alone were French Press  and our drip bar offerings.

In order to make up for this recent jump (our house coffee was the biggest one – going up $0.80/lb), we are raising prices on French Press and drip bar. A raise in price here does two things:

• Helps make up for the cost increase we have felt across the board (milk prices have gone up as well)
• Brings our French Press & drip bar more in line – both in terms of reflection of quality and in sustainable pricing – with the rest of our coffee & tea beverages

Our new pricing will go into effect on Monday, June 6th. It will look like this:

FRENCH PRESS
10 oz. $2.00 (up from $1.50)
12 oz. $2.15 (up from $1.65)
16 oz. $2.40 (up from $1.90)

DRIP BAR
12 oz. $2.65 (up from $2.15)

You may notice a few sizes missing under the brew bar pricing. That is because we are eliminating 10 & 16 oz. as size options there. The reasons? Quality control, consistency, and the sanity of our volunteers.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you would like to chat about it more, we’d love to. We’ll even buy you a cup of coffee. And again, thank you for the support and for allowing us to be around. You’re awfully kind. Our appreciation for you is simply un-graphable.

love.
everyday joe’s

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This has been coming for a bit now, tho it is not the secret project some of you have asked about. That is coming soon (still fleshing out some philosophy).

The Rocky Mountain Craft Coffee Alliance has been coming and we didn’t really want to say anything about it because we wanted it to be ready for you. It is the idea of our friend Chris Schooley. We all sat at Choice City Butcher this past fall and talked about promoting craft coffee up and down the great rockies. Who were “we all”? Folks from Everyday Joe’s, from Coal Creek, from Coffee Shrub, from Ozo, from Allegro, and more. We formed an alliance, tho not like Voltron because that is played out. More like a sincere handshake.

The charter for the RMCCA is up over at its official web presence, but here is a snapshot:

From our heart:
The Rocky Mountain Craft Coffee Alliance is a group of folks dedicated to promoting…well…craft coffee. Coffee can be a craft – just like beer brewing or knife making or wood working. We want you to taste that.

From the charter:
A group of coffee professionals and amateurs seeking to promote coffee that has been skillfully and carefully sourced, profiled, analyzed, roasted, prepared, and monitored for quality.

And here is a logo that shows how snappy a pink dot can look:

Membership details are coming, but they are horizontal. This is not just for the professional roaster or the retailer. It’s for anyone who loves the craft of fine coffee and can’t wait for the next time you have people over for breakfast because you can’t wait to make them coffee.

But now, it’s time to promote craft coffee and introduce the RMCCA. It was determined via conversation that the best way to do this would be to hold an event. An event with a reception to follow.

On June 25, Everyday Joe’s will be hosting Sensory Science: Testing Coffee Beyond The Cupping Table. The morning will be a lecture and presentation (redundant??) by Paul Songer (Cup Of Excellence). The afternoon will be roasting and brew method workshops. The reception will blow your mind if what we think might happen happens.

More details about the event (i.e. a in-depth descriptions of the lecture & workshops) will come to you soon. For now, you can register for the event here. Cost is $35 in advance or $50 the day of. Still need convincing? Poster form:

We’re very excited for all of this. We’ll see you very soon.

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So…apparently the rapture is supposed to go down this coming Saturday – 5.21.11. We’re going to ring it in by hosting a benefit coffee tasting for one of our favorite things: Ruminate Magazine.

Quite a few coffee shops hold coffee tastings & cuppings. They are important. They teach you about what you are drinking, and that is important to know.

Everyday Joe’s wants to continue this idea, but put our twist on it. Enter: Coffee & Goodness. Each Coffee & Goodness event serves two purposes:

1. Educate you about coffee & its intricacies

2. Benefit an organization doing Good.

We’ll be serving one coffee bean four ways so you can taste it in all its glory. Admission ($8) will include a sample of each preperation: Hario V60 Pourover, Clever Coffee Dripper, French Press, and Espresso. At each brew station, there will be folks to help your palate along and tell you what tastes to be looking for.

Back a few years ago, we hosted the Ruminate Magazine launch party…& we’re so glad that our relationship with them continues. They produce good and great art and the future for them is exciting. Come down and drink coffee and learn about these good folks.

The bean this time around in the PNG Kunjin from the fellas at Novo Coffee. It’s become one of our favs as of late, and we think you’ll agree it’s definitely worth taking the time to imbibe it.

Your $8 will get you a 4 oz. sample of each of the three brew methods, plus a single espresso. The good people of Novo were kind enough to donate all the coffee for the event, so Ruminate will walk away with $7 for every person that comes through the doors. The event starts at 1 pm, and is run open house style until we’re done at 4 pm.

Come and get it.

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Did you know Everyday Joe’s has been on the Twitter for 2 years now? It’s a good place to get infos. Same with the Facebook. We pay an awful lot of attention to Twitter, and find interesting things on it, and report them to you, here.

Now, a progression of tweets – beginning yesterday afternoon and wrapping up in the wee hours of this morning – from our friend Tim Thornton:

Tim is a man who is always thinking. He has the mind of a person who starts things.

A value at the core of Everyday Joe’s is relationship and collaboration. Doing things together is how this place runs. It is how coffee gets made. It is how sound gets put through speakers at shows. People throwing their talents into a pool and seeing what grows.

The Recording Bazaar is like this, tho you pay folks money. But it is a pool of musical talent that is deep and wonderful. They will help you write songs…or come up with that string part you know would put your song on an iTunes commercial…or produce that album that will make you friends with Tom Hanks.

Or in their words:

“Why, hello there. I’m Tim. My wife and I play instruments that not everyone plays, and we play them in a unique way. People frequently ask us to play on their records when they’re looking for an indie sound and an interesting approach.

We will always love working together in recording studios with producers, engineers, and other artists, but we’ve figured out that we can do more work and bring more value to our clients if we work remotely. A good home studio and a fast internet connection go a long way.

One day we said to each other, “hey, we could do this for anyone. Let’s make a website.” Then we said “OK.”

After doing quite a few projects and creating several happy and repeat clients through our fist website, StringOverdubs.com, we started thinking about our workload. We started thinking about our many musician and engineer friends who would be a great fit for our clients.

While a lot of musicians are doing remote recording (or virtual recording, if you want to be more sci-fi), we felt a need for a strong connection point online.

We’ve carefully selected a group of people who not only capable musicians/engineers, but also remarkable people who are fun to work with in creative things.”

Or in sci-fi talk:

“It’s the year 2011. Robots are quietly honing their cultural war on planet earth.

The people haven’t yet realized the danger, even though as an online minority they have to type near-indecipherable letters into websites to verify their humanity every time they post a classifieds ad or reset their email password. The Mechanization is nearly complete.

Only one hope remains: the most human of all endeavors, the arts. But The Mechanization has been busy coding software to capture and approximate the sounds of violins, acoustic guitars, and yes, even voices.

One rag-tag, fugitive crew of human artists has cordoned of a robot-free zone in a corner of the world wide web: the rebels known as Recording Bazaar.

As a protest against the robot conquest of art, Recording Bazaar artists use the internet against The Mechanization to run an open market of collaboration with other humans in the creation of actual art. Joined by their zany robot-rebel friends (the ever-rebellious Electric Guitar and the brilliant but conflicted Logic Pro) they struggle against a digitized and passionless future.

Will you support the rebellion and hire a Recording Bazaar collaborator to keep your art human?”

We suggest supporting the rebellion. We doubt thou will regret it.

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While out in Hollywood for the Southwest Regional Barista Competition, our fine Diana Sitzman spent a day at the SCAA headquarters for judges training. What did Everyday Joe’s board member David Runkles do? Asked for a tour of the place. And filmed it.

Everyday Joe’s is a member of the SCAA, and it is one of the communities we sincerely love being a part of. It is also a bit of a nerve center for coffee things, as you may gather from the video tour. We’ll be attending the annual SCAA Event again this year…and we hope this trip is free of stomach sickness. We’ll blog it again…from the wonders/heat/humidity of Houston, TX. Until then, enjoy the tour.

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Sometimes you read things that make you go “wow wow.”

I just went “wow wow” followed by “like, whoa.”

Our good friend Barton Dahl – who also manages Nathaniel Rateliff – sent over a message on the Google chat, insisting I go read what he posted on the shop’s Facebook wall. I did what he said.

Again…wow wow. Like, whoa.

The link took me to the MR PORTER Journal, where current “Man Of Note” Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin, Allison Krauss collaborator) lists his current musical playlist favs. Number one on that list? Oh…just NATHANIEL RATELIFF.

“Empty, fragmented and poignant” he says of Rateliff’s “Early Spring Till”. It’s a song I’m sure you’ve heard if you’ve been in the shop over the past couple weeks, as the volunteers have been playing Rateliff’s In Memory Of Loss on what seems like repeat in anticipation of his show at Everyday Joe’s on February 25 (tomorrow!).

Listen to “Early Spring Till” below. Head over to MR PORTER to get more musical suggestions from Mr. Plant. Tickets for the show- which are $10 in advance or $12 at the door – can be purchased here. Reed Foehl will be opening (that’s a treat), and the show starts at 7 pm.

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In 2011, we have decided to host less formal concerts in hopes to better the quality of the shows we do host. We have also decided to put more effort into helping develop local songwriters.

The Everyday Joe’s Songwriters Circle will be a chance to meet local musicians, share your music, and receive helpful feedback and critique. Our hope is that your craft will be bettered by this community, preparing you for when it is time to play out.

The circle takes place each Wednesday night from 7-9 pm in the downstairs auxiliary room at Everyday Joe’s. Each songwriter in attendance will have the opportunity to play at least one song and receive feedback, as well as offering feedback to the other musicians in attendance.

This whole thing started as an idea, and out of not wanting to abandon our beloved local artists. Through conversations with good people, our friends at Magnolia School Of Music and some of their friends are making this happen. We could not be giddier.

See you soon!

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