ABD: What was the beginning like for Buona Caffe at your first location, and how have you grown over the years?
Currys: We started the company out of our house when we were renting a little cottage right behind what became our Central Avenue café. It was originally just going to be a web-based business selling coffee online.
Then we started selling to local restaurants (the Polka Dot Pig in Surrey Center – now Oliviana’s – was our first restaurant customer). We were roasting in the back half of an old dental lab next door to Crum’s on Central (now Midtown Tavern). Our first retail operation was the Saturday market; people were always asking us if we had a coffee shop. We opened Central Avenue on June 13, 2013. We outgrew that space and started looking for a location for roasting. We came VERY close to buying the buildings at Telfair and James Brown Boulevard but went with 520 Reynolds – primarily because of the location and the 20-plus off-street parking spaces. And it needed a lot less work. We opened there in August of 2018; at the same time, we opened our café in the lobby of the Georgia Cyber and Innovation Center.
From there, we expanded into selling and servicing commercial espresso machines and coffee brewing equipment, as well as barista training and catering.
We are also very involved in the community. We are the official coffee of Augusta University, the Augusta Symphony, the Morris Museum of Art, and Junior Achievement. We’ve supported the Salvation Army, Lynndale, Safe Homes, Child Enrichment, the Augusta Choral Society, Christ Community Health Services, Clinica Latina, the Ronald McDonald House, Golden Harvest, pet rescues, etc. This is our community – we want to help make it a better place for everyone who lives here.
ABD: I lived in Buffalo in the 1980’s and it seemed as though there was a chicken wing restaurant on every corner. I’m starting to feel that way about coffee shops in Augusta!
What have you noticed since you started Buona Caffe on Central Avenue?
Currys: You are not wrong. When we first opened, we were pretty much the only coffee shop between downtown and I-20. At last count, there were 27 – and that doesn’t include Starbucks and Dunkin. Corporate coffee chains have descended on the CSRA.
But now it is them, and 7Brew, and Caribou, and Ziggi’s, and now Dutch Brothers. There are just so many options now; we just have to keep looking for ways to set ourselves apart from the ever-growing volume of competition.
We would like to be much busier at all of our locations. Plus, the cost of everything – and especially green coffee – has gone up.
ABD: Speaking of (friendly) competition, tell our readers about a recent event Buona Caffe was part of at Goat Kick Coffee.
Currys: We were part of a group of five local coffee shops – us, Trellis, Commander, Cavalier’s, and Goat Kick – that put on a latte art throwdown, which is a contest to choose a latte art champion. Its purpose was to bring together the coffee community and raise funds for Bridge Builder Communities. We raised more than $2,200 to provide quality coffee brewers for the tiny homes in the Bridge Builders Communities neighborhood for teens aging out of foster care.
The group – we call it the Augusta Coffee Collective – meets about once a month. We share trends and best practices and support the community. It’s open to all local coffee shop owners – these are just the ones that have been able to come to the meetings over the last year.
ABD: How does your overall sourcing and roasting process work?
Currys: We source coffee from several suppliers who import specialty coffee from Central and South America, Africa, and Indonesia. It is shipped in 130–150-pound bags and is trucked to our warehouse at 520 Reynolds. We plan our roasting based on our needs and weekly wholesale orders that come in from coffee shops, restaurants, and hotels. We usually roast three days a week – each coffee is roasted to its own individual roast profile so that it is consistent from batch to batch. We deliver and/or ship on Wednesdays and Thursdays. So, everything we sell is extremely fresh.
ABD: What does a good cup of coffee mean to you?
Currys: We have always said that bold does not mean bitter or burned. The coffee is roasted correctly, ground just before brewing, brewed with the proper ratio of beans to water, and the water is filtered and is at the right temperature for the best extraction. A lot goes into making a great cup of coffee, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
ABD: What are the most popular blends of coffee?
Curry’s: Midnight Oil was our first blend, and it is still our most popular, along with the Augusta Blend, Holiday Roast, and Black Ops, our darkest roast.
ABD: What are some of the recent catering jobs you have done, and what is coming up?
Currys: We catered coffee and pastries for 250 people for the AU President’s Brunch during alumni weekend. Last fall, we did our biggest event ever – coffee and bottled water for 700 people for eight hours at the cyber center! We have an afternoon cold brew bar with sweet treats for Leadership Augusta coming up, plus an evening mixer for TechNet that will feature another cold brew bar, hand-held bites, and sweet treats. During AU’s basketball season last year, we did a coffee and cold brew bar in the president’s suite at the Christenberry Field House for every home game.
We have a really fun hot chocolate bar we offer during the holidays, and a lot of people don’t realize we also offer boxed lunches. We’ve done everything from a half dozen salads and sandwiches (with drinks, chips, and cookies or brownies) for a department lunch and learn to feed 100 students on a pre-admission tour of AU. Our catering menu is on our website.
ABD: What is involved in setting up for an event?
Currys: We make many, many checklists. There’s always A LOT of planning – calculating how much coffee we need to roast and brew, when brewing needs to start, the number of cups, lids, stirrers, multiple sweeteners, dairy and nondairy creamers, etc. We call it coffee math.
You need a serving container, a stand, a drip tray, placemats, a trash can, tablecloths – we try to set up the basics the day before, or at least several hours before. That way, if there is a glitch, we have time to fix it before guests arrive. For the coffee and bottled water for 700, we started brewing coffee at about 4 am in two locations. We set up mirror stations in two locations to keep from having bottlenecks, and we brewed coffee all day.
If food is also involved, it gets exponentially more involved, and we usually start prepping several days in advance.
We’ve had customers tell us that we go above and beyond. Apparently, a lot of places just drop off everything in containers and leave. We handle everything – pastries are on matching trays with placards describing them, the coffee station has placemats to keep everything neat, we bring a toaster so people can toast their bagels, we bring a cloth to wipe the water off the bottled water coming out of the ice, we dress the tables with seasonal décor, and we come back and clean up. We can also stay and staff the event if they want that. We did that for the TechNet mixer.
ABD: Who tends to “dine in” at Buona more– AU students, businesspeople, friends?
Currys: All of those, plus neighbors, out-of-town visitors, AU staff, a lot of medical students and faculty, military.
ABD: What would all your addresses, phone numbers, and web be?
Currys: www.buonacaffe.com
1858 Central Avenue, Augusta 30904
520 Reynolds St., Augusta 30901
1 Grace Hopper Lane, Augusta 30901
706-955-8766
John@buonacaffe.com
