For better cup of coffee, Espresso Smith follows the bean

“Quality over quantity” – words usually seen wandering through corporate propaganda like a boozy flirt at a Christmas party.

Photo by Ben Wiebesiek

Tal Fishman stands with his sculpture, Espresso Smith, the namesake for the Espresso Smith Coffee Co.

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    But when Tal Fishman pulls a shot and quietly invokes that phrase, his eyes have the fierce spark of conviction found only in craggy entrepreneurs who’ve spent decades defending a business against the forces of mindless profiteering.
    Fishman is the owner and president of Espresso Smith Coffee Co., a rapidly expanding business that relocated to Commerce City this year to make room for bigger operations.
    The larger office is part of the growing success Fishman seeks to guide: a hybrid business that combines the repair and servicing of espresso machines with the roasting and blending operations for a retail line of coffee and espresso blends.
    And it’s in this merger that Fishman’s philosophy shines.
    “I like to see the process from start to finish,” Fishman said as he walked down the hallway connecting a room full of welding irons, scrap metal and spare parts, to a brightly-lit warehouse storing roasters amidst piles of burlap bags of un-roasted coffee beans.
    “Sumatra, Ethiopia, Colombia,” Fishman named the bags’ points of origin as if he were reading from an exotic list of airport arrivals.
    Fishman, originally from Israel, got his start on both sides of the business with an Italian company, Petroncini.
    “I used to go around, install coffee roasters and teach people how to roast. All the way from a small roaster to mid-size, to fully sized commercial roasters,” Fishman. “As I’m going around teaching people how to roast coffee and blend coffee, I’d notice we get a lot of calls from people who say that the coffee doesn’t come out right. And I don’t understand why. I know the equipment’s good and the roasters I train really, really care about what they’re doing. And I find out, in the United States, we’re talking about, 15-20 years ago, that nobody knows how to work an espresso machine.”
    His business instinct saw the untapped market for espresso in America, but it was his passion for the product that ultimately drove him to open Espresso Smith in 2000, specializing in high-end coffee and high-end espresso machines.
    Espresso Smith holds multiple patents, some pending, inspired by the necessities of the delicate dynamic between the machines that roast the coffee and the machines that serve the espresso. And part of the calibration of the machines involved removing many computerized components in what Fishman calls “de-modification.”
    “I believe you can’t mass produce quality. You have the philosophy of looking at the big picture because a computer can’t do this job,” Fishman said. “When you roast the coffee, there’s a whole art. You have to listen to the coffee. The coffee will tell you. Coffee pops and makes noises when it’s roasting. There’s a first crack and a second crack, just like with popcorn, and there’s a distance between them. And that’s the degrees of roast, and that’ll never lie.”
    Fishman compares the process to the difference between bread made in a bread maker and bread made by hand.
    “And there’s a difference in the taste. And not everyone can taste the difference and that’s fine, but for me it’s a big difference,” he said. “Coffee changes all the time, even if you have something perfect dialed into your roasters’ computers, the next year the crop is not the same. The computer won’t know that, but the human operator can smell it and see it and pick it up in their hands.”
    He acknowledges that the human element has its limitations.
    “In these roasters, I could produce 20 to 30 more pounds in the roast than I do, but then it would start to get away from us. We’d be chasing it,” he said. “But when you take your time, slow down, you have more control. Costco can’t do that. A bigger, industrial roaster can’t do that.”
    Fishman doesn’t have any judgment about Costco, Starbucks, or anyone who can’t taste the difference between Espresso Smith and the day-old coffee in an employee break room.
    “Some people aren’t about this, about the subtleties, and that’s why I like my customers to come down here in-person so I can meet them and talk about the coffee,” Fishman said. “Sometimes they’re not here for the right reasons, and they leave. But I don’t have any illusions: this isn’t for everyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re a five-star chef or somebody who loves making coffee at home. We serve those who have a passion for this.”
    Fishman is quick to credit his staff, both on the service side and with the roasting operation, for making Espresso Smith successful.
    “I couldn’t do this without them,” he said. “My employees are the reason this works.”
    And scattered through the office and the warehouse, there are the shadow employees: sculptures of robotic men that appear to have sprung from the pages of L. Frank Baum.
    “I made this sculptures in my spare time. Welding is another passion of mine,” Fishman said. “That’s where the name comes from. Espresso Smith is from the idea of the black smith at the forge working on something he loves.”
    The image is apt: artwork born at the hammer. With all of the machinery, metal and method, Fishman seeks something refined and delicate in the sifting crema and latte whorls found in a tiny cup of espresso.
    “This isn’t something I chose to do,” Fishman said. “This is who I am.”
    Espresso Smith, 4980 Monaco St., Suite F, Commerce City, is online at www.espressosmith.com.