Written by Jordan Michelman.
Blueprint Coffee helped set a new standard for specialty coffee in the American Midwest when it opened in St. Louis back in 2013. Founded by an ownership collective that includes the influential late aughts and early 2010s barista competitor Mike Marquard, Blueprint has grown over the last decade to include four distinct cafes across St. Louis, a busy roasting and wholesale division, quality-focused green coffee sourcing, and continued appearances in the world of competitive coffee. At the cafe level, volumetrics and La Marzocco equipment have been integral to the coffee brand’s success—and part of the culture at Blueprint.
To learn more, we spoke with Mike Marquard from St. Louis.
Hi Mike, thanks for talking with us about Blueprint Coffee. By way of introduction, can you give us a little overview of where your company is at now? I remember visiting when it was just the original Delmar cafe, but now you’ve got four shops, you roast, etc—tell us more.
In April, we moved our roasting, training, and qc operations into a new headquarters building in South City. Originally, the building was opened as a Kroger Grocery store in the 1950s. In the years since, it has housed a couple more retail and industrial businesses. We’re happy to have more space to roast and train than we could manage in the Delmar locations. In time, we plan to open another public-facing coffee bar and patio in this location.
Our three coffee bars (Delmar, Watson–2018, and High Low–2019) continue to be well-supported by their communities. We also sell coffee wholesale to several coffee bars, restaurants, grocers, and offices. Most are in the St. Louis metro, but we have a handful of partners scattered around the country as well. We have 31 team members across the four locations.
It’s been awesome to grow our leaders and teams and see specific locations or operations in the business thrive and grow without an owner being in charge. Our training classes have also been very popular since going public with them again (we took a break from doing public-facing classes during the pandemic). Then, in 2022, we brought in a new Director of Quality and Education, who has facilitated 1-3 courses per week along with our coffee leads, the main coffee leader for each coffee bar. Most of these courses are specifically geared toward the barista community, but we do 1 to 2 a month for the general consuming public, and those are also well attended.
At your 4 cafes, how similar are the systems for your team?) at each cafe? Do the cafes share staff, or are staff members dedicated to each location? Are menus the same at each cafe, or are there unique offerings at certain spots?
I would say they are fairly similar systems in terms of how they work, but due to slight differences in the physical construction and layout of each space, they vary a bit. We use a La Marzocco machine with scales at each location, but to be extra hip, they each have a different model (I say that in jest as I’m the repair technician, and that means I have to stock unique parts to each location).
Our Delmar location just got a new machine, which is a GB5 S. Our High Low location has a custom “Blueprint Blue” KB90, and Watson has a Strada AV. We’ve recently adopted the Mahlkonig e80 GbW at 2 of our 3 coffee bars as we really like their speed, consistency, and ease of programming. We’ve long wanted (and tried) GbW grinders, but the e80 is the first one that we feel hit the high volume/ease of use/ease of servicing benchmark we hold.
Our baristas work a specific location and outside of our coffee leads, and typically do not work shifts at other locations. We’ve found this just leads to better team and community building. The base menus are now the same at all locations, but some of the seasonal drinks and food offerings are specific to a location. As we’re growing, we’re realizing there are pros and cons to this approach. Our coffee leads will be working on a more focused seasonal drink program in 2025, which will feature two drinks that are featured at all 3 locations, and then each location will also have one unique seasonal drink.
When did you begin using volumetrics at the cafe level at your bars? What influence has it had, and how have you refined volumetrics as a component of your espresso service over the years?
We first introduced volumetrics (flow meters) at our Delmar location with a Linea PB back in 2015. We did not use them much at all… There was a trend in St. Louis to ditch volumetrics from 2005 to 2015. My belief is that this was a hangover effect from poor water treatment and the difficulty in programming them. When we opened Watson in 2018, we installed a Strada AV w/ scales, and that was a game changer. We were using Acaia scales on the drip tray of the PB at Delmar, so it was part of our workflow, but having the scale built into the tray with the ability to stop a shot led to a lot of contentment with our staff.
It’s always tough to manage scales, steaming pitchers, and shot pitchers during a rush, so having something that would do exactly what we wanted (stop a shot at a specific weight) was a huge bonus. Our staff is still instructed to watch every shot, but the consistency and ease of use with the scales are amazing.
I think a big reason these were successful is twofold. First, the language of our training (grams in and out) matches the “Mass” mode of the machines. No more need to translate pulses to volume or grams. Second, the programming at a user-level is quite simple and easy to access. The ability for us to make an adjustment by grams instead of needing to do a “record/memorize” step saves a lot of time.
At 11 years on, there’s been growth and change, but what do you think has stayed the same about what you have done all this time? What has continued to be the core values of your company? And what continues to surprise and excite you about the coffee business today?
There are a few things that may sound coffee-clichè, but we hold them as integral to our day to day:
1.) Being obsessive about transparency and the quality of the coffees we source. Even though I oversee the entire roasting/wholesale/sourcing side of our business, I still find that the critical work of sourcing great coffees and maintaining good business relationships with our producer partners is what makes our coffee great and lets me believe in it every step of the way.
2.) Cupping every batch of coffee we roast. While we taste subtle differences and make adjustments every day, sometimes to the wits end, we hear frequently from our customers that our consistent quality is what keeps them coming back.
3.) Seeing customers as people and treating each transaction as the most important one keeps our business going. We’ve been slow to adopt the app culture and “ready now” culture that so many counter businesses have turned to because we think what makes us unique is the time people spend with us.
In terms of surprises, I think about just how great it is to have a consistent team that can grow with us… like really growing with us, including buying houses, having kids, and still staying in coffee. Our focus on our own people wasn’t something we talked a lot about at the beginning because 6/7 of us were owners of the business, but now, with only 4 owners in the business day-to-day, both the need and desire to be a company focused on staff well-being has come front and center.
Visit Blueprint Coffee’s website and follow them on Instagram.
