Meet Amber Fox

Amber Fox (photo by Tonx)

Sitting across a booth from barista, consultant and forward-thinking coffee professional Amber Fox in a Manhattan diner, I couldn’t help but regret that the tape recorder could pick up her “aboot”s as clear as day but not the twinkle in her eye. (That’s only one of many reasons I hate tape recorders.) Canada’s coffee scene must be mourning the loss of this recent New York transplant, but it sounds like if we’re not careful, Gotham might be doing the same before long.

After the jump, Amber talks about why she isn’t grumpy about working at Café Grumpy, the role of gender in producing nations, and how poor Grandpa just can’t seem to understand why his little Amber would want to work so hard, for what, just a cup of coffee?

So tell me a little about your life in coffee so far.
I started a little over four and half years ago. I was living in a city about an hour outside of Toronto, and there was a café that just opened; they were starting to do third-wave type coffee. I kept going in there, and I had a brewed coffee that blew me away. They had an espresso machine and they were pouring latte art, which is something I had never seen. I went in and had this cup of coffee and kept going back and bothering them, saying, “You know, when you hire someone I think you should hire me!” [Laughs] In the summer, just on a whim, I wrote up a cover letter and a résumé for them. It was a couple who owned it, Dawn and Phong Tran—but not the Phuong Tran who is in Washington! [Laughs] When I brought in the cover letter, Phong said, “Oh, we were just talking about you today because we’re going to hire!” I was their first employee. At the end of the summer, I moved to Toronto to transfer schools.

And already you knew you wanted to stay in coffee?
I knew I wanted to work in coffee because I became enamored with it—I started to fall down the black hole. [Laughs] I started walking around in Toronto trying espressos in different coffeeshops. There’s a huge Italian and Portuguese community in Toronto, and I would go into every Italian coffee bar and keep having these horrible espresso everywhere. Finally I just did a Google search—“latte art” Toronto—and I came up with Bull Dog Coffee. [Ed. note: Bull Dog Coffee is still the first item that comes up when you do this search.] That was where I really learned how to pour latte art, because it was really busy. It was intense, that was where I learned to be superfast, always thinking five steps ahead: doing dishes, cash, bussing, and making all the espresso, serving treats and things like that. Having a good time! It was great because it taught me how to perform a little bit, how to be onstage and enjoy it, because I’m a pretty shy person. It really brought me out of my shell. It was a lot of fun because I got to flirt with everybody and make friends… I was there for two years. [Pauses] I quit when I stopped drinking the coffee. I was really excited about coffee. I would be researching and bringing in coffees from different places and trying different espressos and the owner wasn’t really interested… I was working at three coffee bars at the time.

Wow, three?!?
Yeah, I squeezed it all in! [Laughs] I worked at Mercury Organic and Dark Horse Espresso, which is where I just left when I moved here [to New York]. I like that because it’s good for customers to see the same person at a bunch of different coffee bars because then they know it’s not competition, it’s not like different sports teams duking it out. It’s that we’re trying to raise the quality and the standard across the city and bring a different experience to the city that it’s never had. It’s interesting on a personal level to work in different bar situations, to keep learning.

You were an environmental-studies major. Is your passion for coffee rooted in that?
It seemed like a natural progression to go from environmental studies to the social justice and environmental aspects of coffee. I started writing lots of papers on shade-grown coffee, organic certifications, Fair Trade coffee, bird-friendly… I became interested in being more critical in the Fair Trade certification as it stands. I was also interested in international and community-development theory and practice, and gender studies has always been something that I’ve tilted toward. It all came together; coffee just makes sense. I’m so lucky that it wraps up all my interests. It seems like it’s the same story as most other people who get into coffee: “I started at a little bar…”

Yeah, but I think that’s kind of interesting in and of itself. I wonder how many other industries are like that, have that same kind of similar story.
Yeah, I don’t know—like wine or cheese?

I guess it’s different because it’s not like you often meet someone who’s really into cheese who started by “working in a little cheese shop.” There just aren’t that many of them around. I think it’s interesting that so many people view a barista job as kind of akin to working at McDonald’s—a counter job, right? But how many McDonald’s employees get, like, really into cheeseburgers?
Yeah! [Laughs] You can gain a deeper appreciation for coffee as a barista, but it’s true, you do hit a glass ceiling. It’s a little hard to move out of being a barista into something else, if you’re really interested.

I agree. I think that often the problem is that it can be so easy for a barista to become so singularly focused on the product they’re working with that they don’t get a chance to learn about other coffees, which can be stifling.
I was always interested in tasting other coffees. I like to be nonpartisan! I liked working at a bunch of different shops and maintaining a little bit of a perspective on things. For me what it was was starting to travel into the States, coming to trade shows and start going to a lot of different cities. I’ve traveled a lot in the last year and seen a lot of cafés and tasted a ton of coffees from different roasters. That has really opened my eyes. And the first time I came to New York and had espresso at a bunch of different bars, I was just blown away.

Have you been to the Pacific Northwest?
Yeah! I just spent a month and a half on the coast.

How have you found coffee to be different or similar at home, in the Toronto area, in Seattle and Portland, here…?
The first time I came to New York… the triple-ristretto phenomenon? [Laughs] I’m still a little… It depends on the coffee. But it’s sometimes… man. It’s just… gritty. It’s hard. It gives me heartburn. I don’t know, I’d love to go to Australia and taste their version of ristretto. But that was one major thing I noticed coming to New York. In Toronto, nobody was pulling triple ristretto. In Toronto, everything is doubles. We experimented with triple, but I just find it too heavy. The body and the syrupy texture take over. Not always, but with most.

[A waiter comes by and offers me more coffee. Yes, I was drinking diner coffee. “Sometimes you have to have a diner coffee,” Amber graciously offers. I decline the waiter’s offer.]

I’d love to go to Italy and taste those shots. I don’t think that coffee here is really roasted for that. I can never quite get that sweetness out of it.

What made you move to New York—the land of the triple ristretto?
I started coming down here when Liz [Clayton] moved here. I ended up being down here a lot to visit and meeting everybody here. The coffee community here is really stellar. There are so many awesome people, and there’s no ego, which is really nice. It just seemed like the community was really strong and everybody across different shops is hanging out with each other, supporting each other; there’s dialogue between shops. It was really dynamic. Different roasters come in and leave, accounts change all the time, lots of new shops opening. It was [Gimme! Coffee manager] Jenni Bryant, actually, one of the times I was visiting—we were hanging out and she goes, “You should move here.” And I was like, “You’re right. I should move here! What’s stopping me?” [Laughs]

How has it been so far?
It’s been a little… [Cautiously] I’ve only been here for three and a half weeks. I’m still adjusting to the city but… I’m… not in love with New York. I love the coffee scene here, but the city itself…

You’re going to hate this, but they say it takes five years.
[Pained expression] Yeah?

Yeah. When I first moved here I hated it more than anything in the world. And every time anybody said, “Just give it five years,” I got so mad. But it really was almost literally five years, I woke up one day and looked at the city and went, “Where have you been all my life?”
Ugh, really? I mean, I come here with a lot of friends already here, I know a lot of people, I walked into a fantastic job… I’m really happy at Grumpy. It’s great. And it’s been a really easy transition. [Café Grumpy barista] Phil said something to me one night when we were closing: “It’s like you’ve been here two years already.” Which is quite a compliment! [Laughs] It’s easy to integrate when you’ve worked at so many different shops.

No kidding! But you’re still not sold?
I… I don’t know how long I’m going to stay in New York, honestly. I don’t know how much I should be telling you! [Laughs] I think it’s just that after graduating and traveling on the West Coast before coming here… I’d never been to Portland, and the environmental geek in me was really interested in seeing it. Last minute before moving here, I bought a one-way ticket out there. I went and had so much fun with Ed [Kaufmann]. There was the Meet the Producers: Panama event, that was really interesting; there was a cupping at Stumptown; we drank a lot of coffee; I rode a scooter around Portland; had a lot of fun; drank a lot of Pabst Blue Ribbon… I had a very American experience! [Laughs] Then I went to Seattle and did basically the same thing. I really fell in love with that city this time. It was so nice to be able to walk into shops anonymously and just have a coffee. Then I went up to Vancouver and judged the Canadian regionals. Then went over to Victoria, did some touristy things on the island. Then went back down to Seattle for a couple days, and then I went to San Francisco for Slow Food Nation. I am so glad I went. San Francisco is beautiful. I completely and utterly fell in love with that city. After a trip like that, falling in love with the West Coast so completely to coming to the East Coast, where it’s so the opposite… [Laughs] I definitely have the West Coast on my mind.

Well, at least stay here for the fall Barista Fling!
Oh, for sure! That’s the thing: People here are so down-to-earth, it’s so great. It’s how it should be. We’re not in it for it to be a personality cult; we’re in it to let the coffees speak for themselves. We’re only a conduit for the coffees. That’s what I loved about Slow Food Nation. I was a taste captain, so I just walked people through tasting three different coffees. It was fantastic: I didn’t talk about the roaster at all, it wasn’t important. We talked about who grew it—by name—the region, the terroir, and then the tasting notes of the coffee and how it was processed, and what that process did to the flavors in the cup. To be able to show that to people and explain it and see their eyes light up? Thousands of people a day? It was so nice to give the general public an experience they weren’t expecting. It was so nice to not have to say, “I’m from such-and-such café and here is my T-shirt and I am branded,” but to be able to convey that this is an artisanal product that comes from a producer not in this country, but from around the world. This is their lifeblood, this is their passion, this is what they do. We’re just representing that. I feel so much pressure as a barista to represent the coffees properly. It’s like “Oh my G-d, all the hard work that went into this for nine months, and then the processing, the shipping, the roasting…”

I know that you have an interest in the role of gender in coffee production, and I wonder if you’d talk a little about that.
I really, if I could write my dream job, that’s what it would be: working specifically with women in community development projects in coffee communities. I did a degree in environmental studies, which is a little different than environmental science in that it’s more of a social science, understanding why we think about the environment the way that we do and how to change the cultures that exist around the environment. So I became really fascinated with postcolonial theory and international issues and gender issues—which are, for me, embroiled in the way that I think about everything. So I was writing these papers, and I had an opportunity to write a thesis, and I started thinking about the things that I was interested in, and I sort of said, “Why doesn’t anybody talk about gender in coffee?”

That’s something of a huge question.
Well, that was the broad question. I started with that and began to realize that what we take for granted in terms of basic feminist questions about the division of labor haven’t really been asked in relation to commodities. I had heard about Café Femenino, which is a women’s coffee cooperative in Peru, and I narrowed my question down to “How do Fair Trade initiatives address gender issues in coffee communities?” Like the high incidence of domestic abuse due to poverty, and who is actually doing the labor on these farms. You kind of hear that women actually do the majority of the labor in coffee, but it’s not really reported. In this case, the cooperative is Fair Trade certified, so I wanted to take a specific look at how Fair Trade addresses gender issues, because that’s part of their mandate, part of what they do in their community development projects. It’s a difficult issue to address, I’m not knocking them for it. In general I think that’s why it’s not talked about, because it’s uncomfortable. It’s multifaceted. It’s not like you just put in a well and all of a sudden you have clean water. Now here we are in the present-day, and if roasters like Intelli and Counter Culture and Stumptown, the ones who are interested in paying for quality coffee but not necessarily going through Fair Trade conduits, how do roasters like that address community development issues, and then how do they address gender-community development for education, health care, anything like that? There’s a postcolonial, well, neocolonial flavor about what we’re doing. We’re starting to be a bit more self-reflective in this industry. And that’s great.

What do you see as an example of neocolonialism?
It’s this idea that you’re the one with the power, the white person with power, and you’re going in and “saving” the poor farmer. It’s the same thing as in the past. That’s lesson number one in international development right now is to empower the people there to do their own development, basically. It’s a very hands-off approach in a lot of ways. This is one of my criticisms of Fair Trade: Coffee is produced in a huge geographic area of the globe—you can’t apply the same price or the same certification requirements to such a large area. You can’t broadstroke something like that. You can’t even use the same parameters in one community in Mexico as you would in the one 100km away from it. It might not work. The social conditions are different, the capital that exists is different, the history is different. We should be very, very careful before we start applying these things to all of our coffee problems. We have a lot of momentum right now, and that big stone is rolling downhill, but it’s going to flatten us all if we’re not careful.

How do you feel about specifically marketing women-grown coffee as such?
It’s a double-edged sword, but I think it works… Well, that branding of it and the premium that’s charged for it is really such a small part of the project. What happens when you’re separating out the women, rather than them being criticized for being separatist feminist or that women’s labor is being recommodified by using that branding, because I don’t think it’s that at all… I know that what I saw is that it functions as a way to empower women in that machismo culture. What I saw was women that were actually being asked for the first time what their experiences are and what their opinions are and how things can change. For women to speak up in a group like that is unheard of, really. It’s astounding, the impact that it has.

Does your family “get” the coffee thing?
Eh, not really. [Laughs] My Grandpa is the one who’s still… you know. Every time I see him he says, “So. You’re going to work in coffee.” I have business cards for my consulting business, so I gave him one of those: “You know, it’s a real job!” It’s a hard thing to explain to people, because it’s weird! If you take a step back from it, it’s just coffee to the average person. I bought my mom a French press and I showed her how to use it, and then the next time I went to her house she said, “Can you show me how to use this again? I forget.” [Laughs]

What is one of the most unexpected or surprising things you’ve learned about coffee so far?
Oh dear. I feel like it should be something poetic! It’s hard to sometimes think back to the first year I was in coffee, when everything was like, “Oh! Oh wow! Oh my G-d!” And… well, I’m not sure if it’s the most unexpected thing, but meeting the people at the farms, knowing that this is what they do and this is what they love. When someone that actually grows the coffee gives you a cup, with that expectant look on their face. The experience around drinking coffee, the social aspect and enjoying a cup for what it is, we forget that. We forget to just enjoy the experience—not every coffee has to be an Esmeralda. You can enjoy a diner coffee for what it is. You can sit on the porch or enjoy a French press when you’re camping. Enjoy the coffee for who you’re with and the people who are growing it for you and serving it to you, not just so you can pick it apart or write cupping notes on it or, “Oh, we should have updosed this time” or whatever. Just enjoy drinking a cup of coffee. Stop being a hater, just enjoy it! [Laughs]

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