interested in partnering with us?
WHO WE ARE
Narrative Coffee is a hospitality driven, quality forward coffee bar located in downtown Everett & Bellingham, WA. We believe in our community, specialty coffee, and the power of sharing stories. We are normal folks who work hard to serve our guests in the best possible way we can. We also really love coffee. We are an ingredient forward establishment, meaning that to our estimation the most important factor in the end product is what goes into it. Coffee is the most crucial element to this equation as it’s what we are building our business on.
OUR COFFEE PROGRAM
At Narrative Coffee, we hope to share the amazing range of flavors coffee can have with our guests. Instead of striving for consistency of flavor in our products – we simply strive for consistency in execution of quality. To us, the most fun thing about coffee is how crazy different it can be and many amazing flavors there are to explore. Every cup is a journey!
We love coffees that remind us of coffee’s origin as a tropical fruit. Coffees that are lively, complex, vibrant, fruity, floral, herbal, sweet, deep, and ultimately fun make us happy. We tend to not like coffees that are savory dominant, herbaceous, green tasting, musty, roasty, or earthy.
Because of our focus on exploration and understanding of specialty coffee, we are *only serving single origin coffees* at this time.
We carry three roasters at a time – Velton’s Coffee is our mainstay roaster and the other two slots rotate on a bi-monthly basis and are selected via an anonymized cupping protocol (more info below!).
CUPPING
We believe in the power of data, feedback, and communication to help transform our industry. Getting a source of genuine, substantive feedback can be quite a challenge as a roaster, so we sought to help offer some of that as a thank you for sending us samples!
When you send us coffee, we process it and assign you a number called your Roaster ID. That number changes every cupping and the only people who know your number are the people involved in the cupping (only after the fact) and you. We grade all of the coffees we get sent to us on our own cupping form, then average the scores of those coffees (we drop the lowest score if you send 4 or 5 coffees) and that averaged number becomes your Roaster Score. The roasters with the two highest Roaster Scores are who we select to work with for the following two-month period.
Our cupping form only grades coffees that qualify as “specialty coffee” - 80 points or higher on a standard cupping form, so for us our form starts with a 0 being non-specialty coffee. For us, a 5 is an “average” specialty coffee grade - think an 84/85 point coffee on a standard form. So a 50 point coffee for us is in that 84/85 point range. The higher range of coffees end up in the 7’s are usually 88 point coffees, with the higher numbers being analogous to 90-92 point coffees. The goal was to create an entirely separate form that helps us look for coffees that will fit our menu and what we’re looking for out of coffees we want to serve to our guests. If you send a coffee that cups well, but has herbaceous flavors, that will score lower than a coffee of the same quality, but a flavor profile more suited to our goals stated above. Ultimately, this scoresheet is not intended to be an objective tool to grade your coffee as a whole, but to grade your coffee in how it fits with the types of coffee we’re looking to serve.
This will take you to our cupping form, which includes all of the months we’ve ever cupped. Peruse through the notes sections as well to get a sense for what we notice about coffees.
*Please note that we are not accepting co-fermented coffees at this time on our table (specifically coffees fermented with fruits/spices - think coconut, vanilla, cinnamon, etc. - or those that were fermented with yeast that has been inoculated with such). Coffees like this are not something that we are against in principal, it is neat to see how the industry is finding new ways to innovate, and at the end of the day if it tastes delicious we’re into that. However, we do not think that it is a fair fight to place a coffee that has been co-fermented with pineapple for example, receiving a clear and direct flavor impartation, next to a coffee that has not had effectively anything other than itself influencing its flavor profile on an anonymous cupping table like ours. We understand there is gray area in what could be considered this sort of fermentation or processing style, and this does not preclude coffees that sit within that zone from being scored/considered on our table, simply those that have a clear flavor impartation that results in a specific flavor being added as mentioned above.*
If you have any questions before submitting, please feel free to reach out!
HOW TO GET YOUR COFFEE TO US
- Send us 3-5 single origin coffees
- 80g – 100g samples are ideal
- Ship to 2927 Wetmore Ave, Everett, WA 98201
- Since everything is decided anonymously, please don’t send marketing or promotional materials. They just end up in the recycling bin.
- Send decaf too plz (we’ll exclude it from the main cupping unless you ask us to include it, then cup the winner’s decafs separately to decide). There have been decafs good enough to raise roasters’ scores in the past!
- Thank you so much! Any coffee left over will go to our staff and a local homeless shelter
CUPPING SCHEDULE
- January 24th, 2024
- March 20th, 2024
- May 22nd, 2024
- July 24th, 2024
- September 18th, 2024
- NO CUPPING NOVEMBER – STAFF DECIDE THIS SLOT VIA VOTE!
- January 22nd, 2025