Caffeinate & Create.
Cole Walliser making Cafe Colione coffee out of his truck.
I didn’t have my first cup of coffee until 2016. I am not counting that time I was at a rave, and the fire alarm got pulled at 5am, and it was in the middle of winter in Vancouver, and the only thing they had to keep warm was a 5gal coffee dispenser. I had a cup then, but I started drinking coffee by my own volition in 2016. I never drank it until then, because I didn’t want to become obsessed. Well, so much for that, because four years later and here we are, I have a coffee brand.
My obsession led me to learn about everything that went into creating the best cup of coffee: how the beans are grown, harvested, and processed. I dove deep into the subject and learned as much as I could, as well as how to prepare the best cup of coffee, and that led me to buying a half decent espresso machine, then a year later upgrading to a pretty decent one.
Around this time I had just moved to the beach, so I would entice friends to come visit with good coffee. It became a thing. Friends would come over, we would share a cup of coffee over great conversation. We started calling my place “Café Colione”, after my name from my DJing and B-Boying days.
Well, now that I had a name, I had to have a logo. So I had a logo made based off of my 1991 2-door G-Wagon, and in a bold move of hilarity printed paper cups with the logo on it. Suddenly I was sort of official. I joked that I could probably sell coffee to my neighbors, and then the wheels in my mind started turning.
I kept doing research on what steps would be needed to start my own coffee company, I entertained roasting my own beans in a popcorn machine, to moving to Hawaii to start my own roaster there. Fundamentally, I kept settling on this idea of having a “creative café”, basically taking the essence of what my apartment is in Santa Monica and turning it into an open space: a place to write scripts, edit videos, have great conversations and of course, enjoy the best cup of coffee you’ve ever had.
That is, still the dream, but you gotta start somewhere. So I’m curating the best coffee I could find and a selection of products that make my life a little bit better. So please join me in in my coffee adventure in drinking some of the best coffee you can find, and together let’s Caffeinate & Create.
- Cole Walliser
