health + inspiration
(does it get better than those two things?!)
I love supporting local, and I love supporting local even more when there is an inspirational story involved. I’m taking you to one of my favorites, Peixoto Coffee in the great town of Chandler, Arizona. But I’m also taking you to Brazil too…just wait.
let’s start with the
inspiration first!
“Starting a business and pursuing your passion – – it’s not thinking about what could be and not thinking about what bad things could happen, but to focus on what you want to achieve and go for it. There’s no guarantee of success there, but I think when you adopt that approach and just look forward, and you don’t look to the side to see what other people are doing, and don’t look back to see what you’ve done before, and just focus on where you want to go… it tends to just unfold and be successful. It’s a big leap of faith and not everybody has success, but I think pursue your passion, look forward to what you want to do and give it the best you can.” -Jeff Peters, Co-Owner of Peixoto Coffee
crop to cup story
Peixoto is owned and operated by a husband and wife team, Jeff Peters and Julia Peixoto Peters. Julia’s dad owns a family farm in Brazil where the coffee is grown so there is no middle man. The coffee beans come straight from Julia’s dad directly to Julia and her husband in Chandler, Arizona. They aren’t certain how far the family coffee legacy goes, they say it goes back into the late 1800s and might go back further than that, but they know it dates back to at least 1920. Julia’s great grandfather was born on the coffee plantation. Julia is the 4th generation in the Peixoto Family coffee legacy and their children are the 5th.
“julia’s all vision and she’s fearless which is great. To her there’s no such thing as failure.”
We both love the farm and it’s this magical place that we both love to go to. We never really thought about it but about five years ago Julia’s grandfather passed away and her father assumed the rest of the farm. He’s 72 and not getting any younger so we started to think what’s going to happen to this if no one picks it up? She’s the youngest of three daughters and her other two sisters don’t really have any interest in the coffee, they’re both medical professionals, so we thought well, we think this is going to fall on us. So that’s where we started. We had a lot of ways we thought we could continue farming but it kind of morphed into the full supply chain: growing the coffee, bring it in green, roasting it, distributing it, serving it – – and that’s what we do today. We are continuing the legacy. – Jeff
what advice would you give someone who wants to follow their dreams?
Julia and I approach our dreams a little different. We approach how we run a business a little different. She’s all vision and she’s fearless which is great. To her there’s no such thing as failure. And I come from a background that’s the opposite. I was in aerospace engineering so you’re always looking at what can fail and trying to design against that. In terms of our dream and our vision here, you gotta go for it! I would never go back. Sometimes people ask me, ‘would you go back to your old job?’ which was a job I really loved. I think about it for a minute and then I think about how much cooler this is than that job. The people that come in here, the diversity, the stories, everyone comes in a coffee shop happy. – Jeff
your Coffee roasting machine has custom hardware that you built. you used some of the same basic algorithms, and brought the engineering thought process from your previous career to your new path. So maybe someone’s daydream will correlate to qualities they use in their current job now?
Exactly. Three years ago if anyone would have told me, ‘you’re going to open up a coffee shop and get in the coffee business,’ I would have said that wasn’t for me. And if you would have further told me, ‘you’re going to get to apply a bunch of different things you’ve learned and practiced in your career and apply those to your business’ I would have said now you’re really being crazy! It’s amazing sometimes the things you won’t think will transfer and how you will use them. – Jeff
ok, now the health aspect. do you know how much caffeine you are putting in your body?
we talked to Peixoto’s roaster, and here’s an idea:
An espresso menu basically starts with a full espresso shot with nothing in it… 90-100 mg of caffeine
As you go up the menu, they just add more and more milk to dilute the caffeine.
Macchiato: adds an ounce of milk to dilute
Cortado: adds two and a half ounces of milk to dilute
Cappuccino: adds three ounces of milk to dilute
In a 8 oz latte and 16 oz latte the caffeine the same. That goes for the entire espresso menu, it’s just the concentration of the coffee flavors that will be changing.
Did you know espresso menus actually can have some of the lowest amounts of caffeine on the menu?
When you move into black coffee, drip, or pour-overs: about an 8 oz cup of coffee is going to be 240-260 mg of caffeine.
When you move into cold brew it gets up to about 280-300 mg of caffeine. Respectively, as you go up to 12 and 16 ounces, it gets even higher.
