Page 47 - the NOISE September 2013

down to the Bean:
RogeR Pisacano & 18 yeaRs of coffee in flag
ABOvE: Mr. Pisacano & head barista, larry David figure out a new fangled gadget.
it’s early enough on a Friday morn- ing that only a few tables are taken at Flagstaff’s longtime favorite hang out, the Campus Coffee Bean. World music is playing at just the right volume; an ani- mated, old-fashioned face-to-face meet- ing is underway while a few other patrons are face-to-face with their laptops. Cam- pus Coffee Bean owner Roger Pisacano and staff glide through the place quietly, efficiently getting ready for more custom- ers to this special oasis of a café-grill in Flagstaff’s Greentree Plaza near the NAU campus. A family of travelers, maybe from France, is waking up to a breakfast and their day’s adventures as I sit with Mr. Pi- sacano for a chat.
Mr. Pisacano charts his unique, unusual journey from growing up and working in a family (and then in his own) businesses in the heart of New York City – to running his own coffee shop in Flagstaff for 18 of the past 20 years. “My grandfather came from Italy; my dad’s first generation Italian,” said Pisacano. “We all worked for Grandfather, it’s a family ... it was wholesale produce, fruits and vegetables.” Mr. Pisacano mar- ried late in life and made the almost un- thinkable bold move away from the family and New York, after starting and running a couple of his own businesses there. By choice, he made the transition from NYC and an “always-on” life in the Big Apple, ar- riving in Flagstaff following a friend who did the same.
“When you’re a New Yorker, you never think about moving,” he said. But now, “I go back there maybe every six or seven years ... As soon as I moved here, I said, ‘I can do anything I want to do’ – there’s so
much opportunity.”
While serving over 50 different types of
coffee from all over the world, the Campus Coffee Bean is primarily about community. It’s a community place to hang out and Mr. Pisacano has also led for these two decades, keeping it about community, by taking care of his customers and his employees. Campus Coffee Bean employees can only work four days a week and Pisacano keeps it that way; he actively encourages them go for hikes, go mountain biking, or take up a hobby. When regular customers come in to the Bean to order coffee or food – from painters to brick- layers to students and professionals – Mr. Pisacano and staff show an honest interest in them, there’s friendly banter about how those patrons are doing today.
Mr. Pisacano’s community philosophy for the Bean also stems from his early commu- nity service work in Flagstaff. “I was in Rotary Club before I set up this shop,” said Mr. Pi- sacano. “We did a lot of good work, all those guys, a nice bunch of guys there ... getting together every week and to look to see what the community needed. What does the school need? How are we going to raise it? It was businessmen that just weren’t think- ing about themselves as much as they were about the community.”
The Campus Coffee Bean serves our North- ern Arizona community as a refreshing, vital, comforting place to hang out – even in the most difficult times. Mr. Pisacano said there were Flagstaff Hotshot firefighters getting together in the Bean in the aftermath of the horrible tragedy of the Yarnell Hill Fire. Also, many people came to Campus Coffee Bean during 9/11. “Flagstaff hotshots came in – it’s all family ... they came here to talk about it,
comfort each other. It was a similar thing like 9/11, a total disbelief,” said Pisacano. “You do the right thing by people, they keep coming in. Our customer service – it’s not about the money.”
Mr. Pisacano takes a refreshing approach to the coffee he serves as well. “Flagstaff,” he says, “it’s got all different types of places to have coffee. But, ‘I gotta do what I gotta do;’ if it works, it works,” he said of how he approaches his coffee business with a deter- mination not to grow the business too big, not to franchise. Campus Coffee Bean fea- tures over 50 different types of coffees and Mr. Pisacano likes to introduce customers to lesser-known estate coffees, specialty cof- fees from all over the world. He doesn’t roast his own coffee, pointing out what a different place it would be to have 200-pound bags of green coffee all around.
“There’s different parts of the world [where] we have these types of coffee,” Mr. Pisacano said. “If you look at just Africa. We try to go beyond [the Ethiopian and Kenyan and get coffees] from these little states in Africa ... we can buy estate types of coffees.” These include Malawi Estate, Uganda Busishu, Bu- rundi and Congo. “Nobody’s got Congo cof- fee; it’s so cool, you know what I mean? My roaster goes to these sales and auctions and he’s able to buy just a bag — we’re on the same page,” Mr. Pisacano said.
Mr. Pisacano stays au courant with coffee and coffee shop culture while also meshing new ideas and offerings he discovers his cus- tomers want. Every year he attends Coffee Fest, an annual tradeshow for specialty cof- fee. “In October it’s up in Seattle, last year it was in Boise,” he said. “It’s all over the country
– every year I try to make one of those.”
Over the years and recently Mr. Pisaca- no and Campus Coffee Bean have added new improvements: functional and stylish awnings for the outdoor patio, a special corner of the menu featuring Greek food, including gyros, and when I visited, staff were just trying out a new online Tapingo ordering and payment system that al- lows customers to order and pay from an iPhone, Android and the Web.
“We just got this new gadget,” said Mr. Pisacano. “We’re the first store in Flagstaff to get it,” as he explained that Campus Coffee Bean is the first off campus place to join a network of NAU food establish- ments with Tapingo. “You order from your smart phone app. When it comes up, you pay for it, send it to this machine, to me ... It just came in yesterday. Campus Coffee Bean is now part of that campus network.”
Mr. Pisacano has good memories over the years, like when there was a movie the- ater next door and he’d see lots of families with kids in his café. He also recalls with pleasure the Bean’s standing-room only open mic nights, poetry readings and live music every night of the week, sometimes hosting different musicians twice a day.
These days, some two decades on, Cam- pus Coffee Bean is a comfortable place to hang out and Mr. Pisacano’s customers feel comfortable, at home here. “We’re not pushy or suggestive,” he said, “I hire people who are friendly.”
Mr. Pisacano and staff invite their cus- tomers to think then act on this: “Let’s go down to the Bean!”
| Steele Wotkyns is an aspiring writer. steelewot3@gmail.com
thenoise.us • the NOISE arts & news • september 2013 • 47