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Trouble Brewing?

Coffee wasn’t only central to the founding of New Orleans; it was also central to its rebuilding.

Eight days after Hurricane Katrina roared through town, Bob Arceneaux called his boss, Bill Siemers, owner of Coffee Roasters of New Orleans, and asked him simply, “What do you want to do?”

This was a reasonable question, with many implications, given the fact that the small roastery on South Rendon Street was, at that point, flooded and would likely remain that way for the foreseeable future, according to the dire reports slowly coming out of New Orleans.

Would they simply fold with the incoming tide? Perhaps wait it out and try to rebuild at the old location, salvaging what equipment that they could? Or would they contract out their business to another roaster somewhere out of the disaster zone?

The answer that Arceneaux heard coming across the line was not the bad news that he expected. Siemers told Arceneaux that they would get started roasting as soon as they could figure out how to do it. Starting now. “Get on the phone, order boxes, bags, flavorings, and coffee and let’s get to work. I’ll start working on getting us somewhere permanent to work, and you work on getting us some temporary space.”

By October 8, Arceneaux had coffee roasted and ready to be delivered to waiting wholesale customers in some of the less hard hit areas. Arceneaux roasted the coffee at a small roastery in Baton Rouge that rented space by the hour with very little oversight of any sort. “They basically handed us the keys and told us to lock up behind ourselves,” says Arceneaux.

Arceneaux, along with his equivalent at PJ’s Coffee, Felton Jones (who initially brewed onsite at the PJ’s plant with the only surviving green beans in the warehouse) and the roasters at Community Coffee in Plaquemines, whose plant was undamaged, did what they felt like they had to do. They processed the basic material for the beverage that has fueled New Orleans for over 100 years — coffee.

Coffee has been an integral part of New Orleans commerce for well over 150 years and a daily ritual for many New Orleanians for at least that long of a time. Rich, dark-roasted coffee, often combined with chicory and hot milk is as much the drink of the city as our native cocktails the Sazerac and the Ramos Gin Fizz. The city has long been one of the largest coffee importing points and roasting centers in North America, and it can still boast that it remains that way today. The largest coffee handling facility in the US is in St Tammany Parish, and several of the largest roasters in the country are located here, as well.

Some of the first businesses in the New Orleans area to open back up were coffee houses. On the Northshore, the PJ’s location on Hwy. 22 and the store on Hwy. 190 in Covington were beehives of activity in October and November. The powerful combination of caffeinated beverages and Internet service proved invaluable to a wide variety of people all over the area. The shops were filled with business people who were shut out of their offices in New Orleans, and to residents who were trying to get current information, file insurance, FEMA, unemployment, and the many other claims that quickly became part of daily life in New Orleans. These stores, along with several in Jefferson Parish were also hubs of government activity, as well, as local officials and FEMA reps often found it more convenient to do business from a coffee house than wherever they were temporarily or permanently relocated.

New Orleans was no different in this regard than the Northshore. In fact, the first shipment that New Orleans coffee roasters made into Orleans Parish was to Café Luna on Nashville Avenue in New Orleans. While local Starbucks’ outlets remained shuttered, local shops such as CC’s and Café Rue De La Course began to open up and residents slowly began to drift back into the city. These shops became meeting places, improvised offices, and informal hubs of information of all sorts.

One November afternoon at Envie, the coffee house and bar on the corner of Barracks and Decatur in the Lower French Quarter, two guys were working on their laptops as a woman was sitting in the corner watched. She finally couldn’t stand it anymore asked them a question, “Do you work for FEMA?”

The FEMA men, clearly uncomfortable with being spotted, quietly admitted that they did and kind of just let the moment hang there. She then asked, “Can you help me fill out this claim? I don’t really know what I am supposed to do and it was rejected the first time that I sent it in.” The FEMA men looked much relieved, given what they normally heard when asked whom they worked for, and one of them went back to her booth with her and happily helped her negotiate the first step in the unraveling of the red tape.

Up at Jefferson and Magazine, similar scenes were unfolding many times a day. The CC’s Coffee House became, for a couple of months, the unofficial City Hall of Uptown New Orleans. There were policemen, firemen, FEMA guys, soldiers, businessmen, city councilmen, and other officials in the shop on a regular basis, buying coffee and dispensing information to those in need. This particular location was also one of the few public places that had wireless Internet and that too was a powerful draw. So powerful, in fact, that even after CC’s closed in the mid afternoon (they worked shortened hours for several months due to a lack of staff) there were people spread out at the tables, on the sidewalks, and on the Jefferson Avenue neutral ground, staring into laptops and tapping away at their keyboards, as the nice folks at CC’s were leaving their connection up even after the store had closed.

The supply of locally roasted coffee was pretty tenuous in the months following the storm. The facilities where coffee is normally held in transit at the Port of New Orleans were damaged and they had to be repaired, cleaned, and sterilized. This meant that roasters like Arceneaux and Jones had to use coffee that was sitting in warehouses in New York, New Jersey, and San Francisco. The long shipping distances, coupled with all of the mechanical difficulties of operating a business in post-Katrina New Orleans made their work very difficult. Jones and his staff basically moved into their roasting facility, working during the week and visiting family on the weekends.

Arceneaux, for his part, was even busier than Jones. Bill Seimers, while Arceneaux was busy roasting in a borrowed facility in Baton Rouge, had decided that there was nothing to be done to save the old plant in New Orleans and purchased a fully equipped roasting facility just beyond Armstrong International Airport. Arceneaux not only was brewing in Baton Rouge, but he was also busy ordering the raw materials for the new plant along with putting the unfamiliar machinery through its paces. In early October, Coffee Roasters of New Orleans moved into the new facility and began producing as much coffee as they could roast in an eight-hour day. Employees were hired on as the business increased due to retail outlets opening up in the area. The plant is currently operating with the help of 10 employees and is back up to about 75 percent of the level of business that they were doing before the storm.

PJ’s now has all but five of its 22 New Orleans area stores open for business, and while many of them are operating on slightly different schedules, mostly due to staffing issues, they are well on their way to being back up to speed citywide. CC’s is operating all but three of their 13 New Orleans area stores. The Louisiana Avenue location is closed, but the Esplanade Avenue store, should be opening very soon.

The coffee handling facilities at the Port of New Orleans are slowly coming back on line and that’s good news for roasters like Jones and Arceneaux, as they can now get a fairly close facsimile of the supplies that they were receiving before the storm, and that is very good news indeed for coffee lovers in New Orleans.