We started the new year by unleashing our first “Special Selection” with Half & Half in Clayton. This project grew out of my close ties and former position as GM of Half & Half. Since the first day I told Mike & Liz Randolph about my plans to start Blueprint, they have been 100% supportive of our company and our coffee philosophy.

Over the last few months, we’ve quickly learned that Half & Half can brew an incredible amount of coffee in a short time. Their appetite for a variety of good, single-origin coffee quickly outpaced Blueprint’s schedule of new offerings. So, what we pitched as a solution was to have Half & Half select coffees that we could specifically source and roast just for them. This is how the “Special Selection” was born.

These coffees are great single-origin coffees that meet our green coffee buying criteria, but that we aren’t needing for greater retail or wholesale distribution. After we have selected a handful of coffees that meet our quality expectations, we share the samples with Mike and his interested staff at Half & Half, and they let us know which coffees they’d like to see on their menus.

The first Special Selection is Finca La Bolsa, Guatemala. This is a great, round, and sweet coffee with pleasant cherry acidity. It would have likely been one of our main offerings had Blueprint opened a couple months earlier, but we didn’t have room with the coffees we already had booked.

We’re very excited to be working in a new way with a coffeebar as forward-thinking as Half & Half. Instead of choosing a generic “House” blend, they’ve chosen to keep selecting coffees based on terroir, quality, and variety. Bravo.