Memories from our First Cafe

On December 10, 1993, Stone Creek Coffee Roasters sold its first cup of coffee. We opened our doors at 601 E. Silver Spring Drive in Whitefish Bay at 6:30 AM. That first day, sales totaled $231.82. Just two weeks later, with the holiday rush in full swing, our busiest day of the month brought in $694.87.

The cafe almost didn't open in time for the holidays. Contractors kept asking questions about how to hook up the espresso bar and brewer. We had no idea. So we gave what would become a classic early Stone Creek response: “We have never done this before, but I am sure you will figure it out. Good luck with that!”

That mix of curiosity, optimism, and figuring it out as we went defined the early days of Stone Creek.

The original cafe on Silver Spring Drive is gone now, though our current Whitefish Bay Cafe & Kitchen sits just across the street, a daily reminder of where the journey began.

What follows is a memoir from Dino Corvino, one of Stone Creek's earliest hires. His recollections capture a moment when specialty coffee was still new, ideas were forming, and a handful of people were learning as they went. It's a story about coffee, certainly, but it's also a story about beginnings.

Cream in your Coffee, Coffee

Let me preface all of this by saying that I am writing from memory, and in a 55-year-old male, said memory might be sketchy and self-serving at best. There will be at least 4, possibly 5, other people in this story, and they might recall things very differently. I would probably trust their memory more than I would trust mine.

That being said....

I was 23, a couple of years into my time as a UWM Panther, studying poetry, had a girlfriend named Jackie, drove a 1990 Nissan Sentra 2-door to punk rock shows around town, and lived on Linnwood behind the temple with Kirk and Kirs and Bob. I needed a job, and for some reason, I did not want to be a bartender. I got fired from a job as a telemarketer for NARAL because I went off script way too much.

I mention being a bartender, or not being a bartender, because I grew up as a bartender. My parents were tavern owners in north-central Wisconsin, and, like a lot of traditional Italian families, the oldest son was automatically an employee. I was 16 years old when I started working in the summers as a bartender at the 19th Hole tavern. What I will say next will be canceled by what I say immediately after. The Hole, as it was called, was the tavern across the street from the Wausau Country Club. And here is the cancel: the Hole was absolutely a shot-and-a-beer bar for working people, not golfers. It was what cool people would call a Dive Bar today. For me, it was a bar that opened at 6 am when the 3rd shift guys got off the clock at the local paper mill, and we were busy enough to need 2 bartenders between 6 am and noon.

But it was there that I learned customer service, and how to interact with strangers, and all that. I also realized super quickly that I was never going to drink, and spending all my time in a room with drunk adult men, and no drunk women or women at all, was not my jam. So, the last thing my poetic soul wanted to do was work at BBC or whatever other bars were on Brady Street at the time.

Obviously, being an English major, I learned that all the art I loved was coming out of coffee house culture on the East and West Coasts. The Beats out in San Fran, and Hendrix in NYC. I had no idea what you did at a coffee house, but I figured if Ginsberg and Corso were hanging out in one, I should find out.

Then, I had a job at Stone Creek. I have no idea how I got the job. I do not even know how I knew to apply. But I am sure I met briefly with Eric and with a woman I remember as Sura. Then, I had a job. It would be me, Daniel, Christian, and Sura. And Eric, of course, and unofficially Eric's dad. The first thing we did was spend time helping Eric and his pop in building the cafe. I remember discussions about why someone chose cherry wood and how we found the bakery to partner with. But, soon enough, professionals needed to do things like plumbing and electrical, and it was time for coffee school.

Coffee school, as I recall, was Eric teaching us how to make the drinks we would sell. It is important to note that I had no idea what a latte or cappuccino was. I just did not. I would hang out at Perkins with the other skateboard kids and drink black coffee, or coffee with the little creamer thing and sugar packet. I had no interest in coffee other than that it got me buzzy.

Eric, on the other hand, had completed some Starbucks training programs and came out the other side passionate about his coffee ideas. So, we learned the drinks. We learned the roasts, and we learned the machinery. We established a baseline of what our drinks would be. It is fun to look back at that time with all the shows about restaurant culture, and all of that, and I think we were doing all of that before we knew what all of that was.

Sura was tough. I mean, tough. It was her and a bunch of boys, in a new business, so she was tough. She was the whip that cracked, and Eric was the big idea guy. Sura taught us how to clean the place, how to process the bakery, the milk, and the syrup when it arrived.

Eric was the guy who talked to us for like 30 minutes about why we did not flavor our beans. Because, he said, when you flavor a bean in the roaster, it alters the roaster itself and every batch after it. Eric was up in some secret lair in Grafton roasting beans, and it took like a year before we got to go there.

Eric was also the guy who taught us the language of coffee. I specifically remember the Sumatra line, “It is a good cream in your coffee, coffee,” which we would tell people when they asked about it. Coffee was new at the time, and Whitefish Bay was learning the language of coffee from Eric.

We got to wear the clothes we wanted, within reason. No band or skateboard company shirts, and black shoes. And we got to choose the music played. But it had to be jazz. I, being a punk rock and hip hop child, had no idea what that was. And literally spent time at the Mainstream Mega Store talking to jazz nerds. I settled on a lot of Chet Baker because his voice made my heart swell. Christian and Daniel knew more about jazz.

Christian and Daniel were not UWM guys. They were from the art school downtown. They felt just a little older than me and were strangely good influences. We would show up each morning for our shift, and each of us would pull 4 to 6 shots of espresso. Then we would rip them all together, like we were doing pulls of whiskey. And that would power our day.

That and bagels. We were connected to a bagel joint. The place was super busy, and it fed us rush customers all the time. And the corporate boss over there let us eat bagels and toppings or whatever, all the time. We tried not to exploit it, and only had one sandwich on our shift, but we would hoard bagels to take home. I was studying poetry in the 90s, and I needed food at home.

It was a wonderful place to work. Looking back on it, I wish I had stayed. I eventually grew tired of Sura, and what seemed like a rigid set of rules, I was so wrong, and moved on to working at Gils Bongo and Espresso Lounge on Downer across the way from the movie theatre. I did not last as long there, as it felt like a mistake. I had learned from Eric, and I had only that set of ideas to work off of. The other ideas seemed less developed and more superficial. Eric had taught us everything like a professor. And it was the genesis point for my ideas of coffee, and it would drive so many things later.

I quit working in coffee soon after Gils. I wanted to coach swimming, and got a gig at Grafton High School and the Shorewood swim club. But, years later, I flew to San Francisco to interview and be offered a roaster gig at Spinelli Coffee. When I got home, someone asked me about my vision, and I confessed to being color blind, and they rescinded the offer. I am glad they did, as the money would have been terrible in the most expensive place in the world at the time.

You should end a memoir with takeaways. So, let's take some things away from this...

• I strangely still think of Eric often. There were years in the middle when the internet wasn't a thing, so it was just in my head. But I think of him fondly and often. I can hear his voice. And his dad's voice. Years later, Eric got married and had kids, and I strangely felt a massive swell of pride.
• I am Stone Creek loyal. Once the company got mail order, I only get my coffee from Stone Creek. No matter where I was living, I got whole bean coffee from Milwaukee.
• I am a French press guy. Just because it intersects with the purity idea of water and beans, and because I am lazy and not likely to pay for an appropriate coffee maker to be equal to the beans. I make a pot of French press each morning, with local heavy cream and local honey. I drink it by the mug. In a mug I got from my friends at Big Water Coffee up north. The remainder goes into an old-school Stanley thermos for refills all day.
• I am a jazz guy. And not a bagel guy.

I could not have been more grateful to have been with the crew at the beginning of a business, and with a young guy boss like Eric at the beginning of his journey. Working at Stone Creek taught me that there is a reason for stuff, a thinking behind it. I did not understand it as a young guy listening to Black Flag and studying Beat poetry, but as an old man writing for a living, I am glad the first lesson in intentionality came through a cup of coffee.

Thanks, Eric. Thanks, Sura. Thanks, Daniel. And thanks, Christian.