It was the perfect mix of spring sunshine, great tasting coffee, served with loads of smiles at my recent visit to one of America’s most talked about coffee businesses. Cat and Cloud Coffee Co. is the creation of three like-minded souls, who all have a passion for great coffee but without all the pretentious carry-ons that are normally attached.
The owners, Jarod, Chris and Charles (mates who love the great town of Santa Cruz, where they live) decided to join their lives’ coffee journey together and form Cat and Cloud.
The roastery/café is in an old beach shack and has been cleverly renovated to let the light and sea air into every corner. It has a main street and corner frontage that has constant people movement, which means lots of customers.
The staff are amazingly friendly (and it is all genuine niceties) and they all have great coffee skills to match. The open layout inside the shop makes for good customer interaction; it was a breath of fresh air seeing people in the café talking versus sitting engrossed in a laptop or phone.
The business has a small 10 kg San Franciscan roaster off to the side, which you can view through a glass window from the café. The roaster is pretty much at capacity, so this little workhorse does some big shifts.
Santa Cruz is known as “Surf City”, but I think it needs to be called “Café City”, as this place has some great business in town, like Verve and Lulu Carpenter’s. The laid back beach town is only one hour’s drive from the hustle and bustle of San Jose in Silicon Valley, so many corporates have called this coastal city home, as it’s a great place to have a family.
The boys have a regular podcast, which is quite fun, where they interview many coffee industry icons, but take the seriousness out of the equation, putting some humanity back into the topic.
Jarod and Chris are heading to Australia in April to be part of the “La Marzocco out of the box” project and will spend a few weeks checking out our cool scene. It was nice to give them a few tips about where to go and a little heads up about our café culture.
Thanks again to the Cat and Cloud team for the hospitality and for being real in our coffee world. It’s great to see a coffee business built on great, happy service and not just output. If you combine both quality coffee and a joyous, smiling team, your business can’t go wrong.
I look forward to hearing a few more podcasts on my global trekking, either sitting on a plane or behind the wheel.
3600 Portola Dr, Santa Cruz, CA 95062, US
