Food-industry maestro Kevin Wencel is brewing adult expansion skeleton while heading operations in a new purpose of boss of Spyhouse Coffee Roasters, that operates 5 coffee cafes in Minneapolis and one in St. Paul.
Possible opportunities for expanding Spyhouse embody new locations and ready-to-drink products for retailers and grocers. Spyhouse wants to place a cold-brew coffee — renouned during a cafes even in winter — with restaurants, indiscriminate accounts and other cafes.
Wencel, who has some-more than dual decades of knowledge in a food and liberality industry, many recently was clamp boss of sales and business growth for Team Four Foodservice. He assimilated Spyhouse in August, though his employing was announced this month.
Wencel’s pierce unites him with Spyhouse owners Christian Johnson, a crony of some-more than a decade. Johnson, who launched Spyhouse in 2000, is relocating into a CEO role.
“Christian is a shining guy, a good designer, good during code management, a starved reader interesting all this information about specialty coffee to request to his business,” Wencel said.
Wencel’s primary shortcoming is to lift out Johnson’s prophesy for a company, that has 55 employees.
“He is a visionary,” Wencel said. “One guarantee we done Christian entrance in was I’m not going to mangle anything that doesn’t need fixing.”
Wencel gained corporate courtesy knowledge during a decade during U.S. Foods and was operative for a food-service placement hulk when he met Johnson as a customer.
Wencel also has worked as sous cook during Restaurant Alma in Minneapolis and corporate executive cook during Blue Plate Restaurant Co., where he managed operations for 5 restaurants.
Q: What brought we to Spyhouse?
A: we was articulate to my mother about a opportunity, and pronounced we consider what Christian is looking for is maybe a reason that we was doing this corporate gig. Maybe this is where I’m ostensible to be. Prior to that we was a cook in a Twin Cities for about 15 years. we had a lot of knowledge with tiny business and startups. we came behind home to a tiny business since we feel gentle here.
Q: What distinguishes a Spyhouse brand?
A: It’s about that crater of coffee and a knowledge around that crater of coffee. At a elemental bottom of Spyhouse is a joining to a communities that we uncover adult in and that starts with a growers. It’s holding caring of that product and treating it with a honour it deserves from dialing in a roasting routine — we have one of a best roasters in a nation in [director of coffee] Tony Querio — and creation certain baristas are trained. Our training routine is dual to 3 months before they make a drink. It’s preserving a firmness of a product. We have that singular caring for a product that extends from a grower to a cup.
Q: How does Spyhouse contest with sequence and eccentric cafes?
A: We continue to listen to a guest for what they’re looking for and yield them with a good place to suffer a coffee since at-home brewing, as most as there are other cafes entrance out, continues to be a square that we need to compensate courtesy to. It’s progressing that experience, a things Christian did to build a code and building on tip of that.
Todd Nelson is a freelance author in Lake Elmo. His e-mail is todd_nelson@mac.com.