Photos by Neil DaCosta and La Marzocco
Back in 2009, Wille Yli-Luoma launched Heart Coffee Roasters in Portland, Oregon. “I was actually roasting coffee in my basement in 2008,” he says about the company’s humble beginnings. Built around the goal of highlighting the distinct fruit flavors found in coffee, Yli-Luoma knew that Heart’s approach had to be all-encompassing: sourcing, roasting, and brewing. All three aspects of coffee can have a major impact on the flavors found in the cup, and Yli-Luoma viewed coffee as a holistic process.
With the launch of their first café, Heart was dedicated to creating a space dedicated to coffee quality. Throughout the first few years, Yli-Luoma was focused on pushing boundaries with espresso preparation by adopting new technology and learning about new techniques. “The precision espresso baskets really changed how we were pulling espresso shots,” he says. “We learned we were able to extract so many new flavors and showcase exactly what we wanted to the customer.”
Heart was an early adopter of using scales for espresso, weighing out the dose of coffee they were pulling, and also placing scales on the drip tray to measure the espresso output. This was a big shift from how baristas normally pulled shots at the time. In order to keep up with workflow and busier rushes, baristas were trained to level out coffee dose by feel and pull shots by sight and time. Though this method did lead to tasty espresso, shifting to using scales offered much more precision. This data allowed Yli-Luoma to get the exact feedback from their espresso bar that he needed to make sure roast profiles were delivering exactly what he was hoping for.
But around 2013, things started to shift. As Heart grew to multiple locations, each one started getting busier. Yli-Luoma was still dedicated to delivering the highest quality espresso he could, but he started to feel that weighing every shot was interrupting their workflow. “I really wanted the cafés to have a strong community feel, and I wanted people to feel comfortable ordering a coffee and get exactly what they wanted quickly,” he says. That’s when he swapped out Heart’s espresso machines for the newly launched Linea PB AV.
With volumetric dosing, the Linea PB was able to consistently deliver the same espresso shot volume accurate to a few milliliters. Says Yli-Luoma, “We started to check the volumetrics with a scale, and there was some fluctuation, but it was pretty close.” Though the change was subtle, Heart’s cafes were able to increase their speed of service while also increasing connections with customers. Because the volumetric espresso shots were consistent, baristas were confident serving drinks without having to watch every single shot as it pulled. This helped Heart’s engage with customers while on bar, helping each space feel more connected to the community around them.
When La Marzocco the Linea PB with scales, Yli-Luoma knew it was the perfect solution for Heart. By combining the precision of drip-tray scales with the convenience of automation, Heart was able to adapt to a workflow that was fast, efficient, and accurate. “As soon as I saw them, I knew I wanted my espresso machines to have drip tray scales,” says Yli-Luoma.
Now, in Heart’s 15th year, not much has changed for the company. They currently have two busy Portland cafés and over 120 wholesale accounts, but their main mission hasn’t changed. When asked what was in Heart’s future, Yli-Luoma had a simple answer: “We’re not going to change anything. Every year, we’ll keep putting more focus on sourcing green coffee and roasting. It’s important for us to have close relationships with coffee producers, and every decision we make is geared towards bringing out the best flavors in coffee.”
Visit Heart Coffee Roasters’s official website and follow them on Instagram.
