Note: This is the second post in a semi-regular series where our posts will be curated interviews with people engaged in coffee across Milwaukee. Our goal is to highlight their stories and experiences, and share their love of coffee with you all. These interviews have been edited, but also run by those whose voice we are highlighting.
In many ways, Stone Creek Coffee is an institution in Milwaukee. It started in 1993 with a small roaster, it has evolved and grown in many ways. It also covers a broad swath of various neighborhoods in and around Milwaukee, from a fancier new location in Whitefish Bay (complete with an evening food menu) to out in Lake Country in Oconomowoc.
For us, the location by the Intermodal Station holds a special place in our experience of Milwaukee. As we are sure with many locals and visitors, its proximity to the train and bus station means that it is a great place to grab a coffee coming or going to say goodbye or help to Brick City. But moreover, it is also the central hub for Stone Creek, housing its giant roaster, warehouse, offices, and learning lab.
It was in the learning lab that Gabe sat down with Stone Creek’s Lead Educator, Makayla Drutowski. Over a latte (for Gabe) and cortado (for Makayla) they talked about her path to Stone Creek, work there, and future visions and dreams.
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Gabe: So maybe to start, what led you to your position here at Stone Creek?
Makayla: Yeah, so I started in coffee when I was like 16. I worked at a Starbucks. I just thought that it was really cool. This idea of being a barista and making drinks for people and this really social environment. And then from there, I'd worked at a few other coffee shops kind of just gaining some footing. I kept wanting to learn more and more and would kind of get to the end of what each place had to offer me and then was like, Cool, what am I going to do next, and landed at Stone Creek.
I didn't know that Stone Creek had any of this education side of coffee stuff. I came to an interview and learned about it. And then in my interview, after learning about it, I immediately was like, I want to do that. I want to teach people about coffee specifically. I love crafting beverages and just all the science that you can learn about it. I want to teach people about that. I always wanted to be a teacher growing up. So in some ways, I've kind of fulfilled this passion of wanting to be a teacher, but also in like a field that I really am passionate about as well. I've kind of brought the two things together.
I started in our Oconomowoc cafe and then worked at all nine locations for about six months as an on-call coverage person and then found the opening for this position. Everyone around me was like you need to apply, you need to apply. This is what you've been wanting to do for so long. I was like, I know it is. I always wanted to be an educator. I was a little bit nervous, applied and yeah, landed the position.
So as lead educator, my job entails just auditing and up keeping all of our education content. I trained most of our retail baristas. We have one other educator below me who I partner with and we kind of tackle again training baristas. We teach public classes on the weekends. We do wholesale training, certify baristas. So part of the job when you get hired here is training on register, getting comfortable with that portion of your work. Then once you're comfortable in that aspect of your work, you start kind of learning the barista stuff. You take classes in here with me and then I go to your cafe after you've taken your classes and you get certified. That certification just means that you're hitting all of our standards. You're within kind of temperature ranges that coffee beverages should be, you know how to steam milk, you know how to pull good espresso, you know how to communicate and kind of converse with customers, how to be respectful on the floor, like all kinds of the basic things that we just really want our baristas to be really confident doing.
Working across all my locations was a really good preparation for the position I'm in now because I learned how to work with people from a lot of different backgrounds. I also kind of learned the dynamic that each cafe has, which is kind of nice, because then when I go on for these certifications, I'm not shocked. I am not taken aback by maybe things being slightly different than what I'm used to. I think we get very comfortable in our little communities, right? When you're across all nine cafes working in multiple spaces, you really need to be able to adapt to different personalities and different workflows and things like that. So it's just a really great preparation for not feeling uncomfortable walking into these spaces and having to take up space.
Gabe: How do you feel about the coffee scene here in Milwaukee? Like what has been your experience?
Makayla: Yeah, I think it's inclusive. I think the Milwaukee coffee scene--especially from doing a good amount of traveling--is much larger than I realized. I guess I almost took it for granted a little bit until I traveled around and tried to find other coffee scenes and shops and realized that there's not as much of a community. There's a lot of like, public coffee events that I often will go to things like competitions and public cuppings. I've always followed every coffee shop in the area, looking for when they're doing public events where I can meet other people who like work in the same field as me. And it's really fun. Recently, I was in Chicago for the Specialty Coffee Association Conference, and was sent on behalf of Stone Creek. It was really funny, because right when I got there, I saw like five people who all work in Milwaukee, but all work at different coffee shops. So it's kind of fun to be in this community-driven space with people that I don't necessarily work with on a day to day, but to see how there's differences within our work and similarities and kind of talk about the things that we enjoy and share that little community space with them.
Gabe: As you have gotten more and more into this role, what have you learned yourself?
Makayla: I always thought that, you know, I love crafting beverages, and I love being on bar and making drinks and talking with people. But I always had this fascination of okay, like, how do we get what we have? Like, how do we get the product that we're serving right here? I'm very curious. I watch a lot of documentaries and want to learn the ins and outs of everything that I do. And so, there was a lot of just curiosity around how do we get this coffee, what happens to it? I used to work as a tour guide here before I did these classes and so I got to learn about some of the farm processing.
Currently part of my job that I haven't mentioned was I write the back of all of our coffee bags (see below for example). So I get to learn about all of our farms. That's probably the most fulfilling part for me--just knowing and tasting these coffees and then getting to read about the stories of these people who cultivated this. A lot of times it's this family ancestry of people who've been coffee farmers their whole life. It's just really interesting to learn all of those ins and outs and learn how--like I recently just wrote about third generation coffee farmers who are working on all these new fermentation techniques and things like that. It's just really fascinating to know that there's so much work in progress in this long family lineage of making a product. There's almost endless opportunities of things to be learning about. I don't think I will ever know everything about coffee ever. To some people there's too much to learn--it's overwhelming. For myself, it's like, cool, I won't get bored in my job, because I will always know that there's something more that I can be learning about.
Gabe: I imagine that must be true with the job of writing the back of the bags, because new coffees are almost always coming out, right? So, you're constantly developing. I'm curious more about that process.
Makayla: So we get some backing information. Usually, our director of roasting Jess--who's in our beautiful cupping lab behind us--is the one who works with most of our farmers picking the coffee and then deciding how we're going to roast most of it. So a lot of times they will offer to have me come in and cup coffees with them to kind of see what I think about them and kind of get a personal experience of drinking it. Jess is a whiz at assessing coffees and is like so good at putting tasting notes to everything. So, Jess has a little document where she'll type in farm names and the altitudes that the coffee was grown out and tasting notes that they identified from these coffees and some brief information on just the farm itself. Then from there, I'm given that information and I'll look up the farm further. I’ll see if they have some type of Instagram where they post pictures or a social media page somewhere online that I can read more about them. Otherwise, sometimes there's like linked information in there. I just try to take in as much of the information as I can and highlight the farm. My goal has been to try and highlight the farmers themselves as much as I can. Sometimes it's easier said than done because there's not always a lot of information online about their history of farming. But it’s basically trying to make it sound exciting and talk about it in a way that's kind of giving credit where it's due with the farmers.
Gabe: So moving a little bit more personally about you and coffee, what do you like about coffee? Like what's your favorite drink?
Makayla: Favorite drink is probably a cortado, which is just such a basic barista answer, but it's a perfect ratio of milk and espresso. You still get really great authentic tastes of the espresso. You don't have too much milk that's kind of covering it up or masking it. We have just enough to make it nice and creamy and kind of indulgent. Otherwise probably pour overs in general are the other thing that I do the most often. I've been playing around with that aeropress up there quite a bit recently. I do a good amount of traveling and so it's super convenient. It also just makes a really nice cup of coffee. Like you can do a lot of really small tweaks to it and kind of adjust your ratios really easily.
Gabe: Do you have a favorite story related to coffee or your experience with coffee?
Makayla: I guess I do remember my maybe not like my favorite story, but just kind of like a funny little coffee story that makes me realize how far I've come in coffee. When I had first taken over and started doing tours on the weekends, the training for it was kind of split up due to me doing some traveling and things like that. I didn't get consistent training on a weekly basis for it. I was training for a little bit and then I was gone for a couple of weeks. And then I came back and it was like my first tour that I was going to be doing. Except I didn't know that I was going to be running it. I thought that I was shadowing another tour. I got there and they were like, you're ready to go. And I was like, ready to go in what way? Am I running this? I remember being so, so nervous. I stupidly asked my fiance and his brother and his sister to come because I was like, yeah, I'm shadowing and you should come take a tour. I didn't know I was going to be running it. I was very much red faced the whole time stumbling over my words. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm never gonna do this again. I'm not good at talking in front of people and I get really nervous. I always really have to be in the right moment and really confident about what I'm talking about. So, it was really funny. I'm like, I am never gonna do this again. Then the very next week, I did a tour, and it was completely fine. From there, it was just way more comfortable. But it is kind of just a funny story. I was so uncomfortable to do this thing and talk to a group of 20 people--of course it was a full group of people. And I was like, Oh man, they're not gonna think they learned anything.
It's just really funny now seeing my position where I'm facing so many different groups of people. Wholesale, retail, and I'm talking to the general public coming and I can do that now much more effortlessly than the first time I did this. Even just like a year and a half's worth--like the growth that I've made in the comfort of my position is really nice to see.
Gabe: When you do a tour, what's your favorite thing to share about either coffee or Stone Creek?
Makayla: I always kind of like talking about farm processing. I feel like it really helps you understand maybe why we're teaching the things that we are. Like, in an espresso class we'll talk about the degassing of beans. The gasses coming off the beans and that all has to relate into the processing and getting it down to certain moisture content while it's on the farm. That way it can get put into our roaster and roast evenly and consistently. Often I'm just pulling in things about the farming process because that's something again that I'm just really passionate about knowing. My classes don't technically have that curriculum built into it. It's more like if you want to pull that information and if you know that information, you're welcome to kind of share it with people. I feel like that's the part that gets people the most excited and really asking a lot of questions. Often if I have a really quiet group it's not a two-way conversation. It's more me talking to them. Once we start talking about the farm at all, they start having all these questions spark, like, what does fermenting the coffee mean? And why do they have to dry it? And how long does it take for them to start producing like coffee cherries? And wait, it's a cherry I thought it was like a bean? There's just tons of questions from there. So it's probably my favorite part of it.
Gabe: So you talked about some of the people at your classes having dreams of opening their own coffee shop. I have to admit I'm one of those dreamers. I have this vision in my retirement of opening up a coffee shop near Marquette’s campus. So I teach as part of Marquette as a prison education program, and I would hire formerly incarcerated folks and student workers. Then I would weave in my own family history and sourcing from Colombia. My wife always rolls her eyes when I say it, but I do feel like the class was perfect for that.
Makayla: Yeah, it is. It’s rare. Even before I worked at Starbucks when I was 16, I remember telling friends, I want to own a coffee shop. It'd be really cool. You see these videos online of baristas making these cold drinks and it looks so cool doing their job. It looks fun and creative. I'm a pretty creative person. I'm not necessarily good at drawing and things like that. But I'm a creative individual. And so to find a job where I can kind of mix that creativity in with things that need a lot of skill and craft that go into it. And there is some science as well. There's so many avenues to learn.
But I've always had this dream of this coffee shop and then now to be teaching classes to people who want to do the same thing. It's like, oh, I really could do this at some point. I'll mention my coffee shop dreams to people and sometimes people leave the class being like, one day when you have your shop and it's doing great, you need to remember that you met me. And I'm like, oh, that's so sweet. It’s, I don't know, fun to hear people. I'm believing in them for this passion that they have. And also to have people leave and be like, yeah, if you ever opened it, you'll need to tell me where it's going to be and I want to come visit.
Gabe: So tell me a little more about the vision. What would it look like? What would you do?
Makayla: My family lives really close to Zion National Park and out west in Utah. There's not a lot of coffee shops right now and there's so many people moving into Utah that there could now be coffee shops. I think that there is a demand for it at this point in time. I would love to do something that's kind of craft focused. I would love to have all your standard beverages like lattes and cappuccinos. A very standard menu. I'd also love to have a little specialty menu that has just really funky drinks, experimental beverages. That's something that I've been fascinated with--experimental drink craft and using ingredients that you maybe wouldn't expect to be in a coffee beverage to make something that's super exciting. That’s kind of the dream and somewhere probably around Zion National Park or in like the St. George Utah area. That area is so beautiful. It's so pretty. The mountains in the background are beautiful red rock. I would love a very Western kind of theme. A very warm climate with all these mountains surrounding and this like a cozy coffee shop with these fun experimental beverages.
Gabe: I could see why people say let me know because you can sign me up. What are some fun ingredients that you're experimenting with?
Makayla: I really like playing around with fruit flavors and coffee, which I think sometimes can be a little unexpected and also a little bit challenging because fruit and especially warm milk specifically typically don't pair very well. They typically will curdle when you put them together. There are ways to make it so that they don't curdle. Things like using brown or raw sugar. And you use the rind of maybe a lime or an orange and you soak it overnight and it turns into like a paste. And that paste can be used in beverages pretty easily. That's something that I've briefly played around with, and I've seen a lot of people online play around with. I've also had drinks that have corn powder in them. A sweet corn latte is like a thing--a wild sounding thing. Or like using different teas paired with coffee. Tea and coffee are usually thought of as two separate beverages. But there's places that will mix them together and make it a unified beverage, which is really something fascinating as well.
Science has never been a strong suit of mine. However, the only kind of science that I somewhat understand is coffee. Science and math are like my fiancé’s thing. And I'm like English and history is usually what I succeed and thrive in. And so it's really fun, because I'll come home and be like, I was doing science today. It's coffee science. It's super relatively basic stuff, but it's still kind of fun to just do something that I wouldn't normally expect myself to be good at and find like all this passion around it.
Gabe: It's funny, like just being in your office here - the learning lab - it really does feel like you're in some kind of science club.
Makayla: Yes, I know. We've been working on renovating it a little bit and making it a little bit more lively in here. Make it as funky a science lab as you can. I want it to look like you're coming into a little science lab.
Gabe: That's so fun. It's super cool. Well, thank you so much.
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If you are interested in taking a class, please visit Stone Creek’s Factory location.