Of coffee & apples: A roaster’s guide to Michigan 🇺🇸
Madcap Coffee Company has been a staple in specialty coffee since it began in 2008 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Casey Routledge, who oversees Madcap’s roastery, green coffee sourcing, and quality control. Casey’s Filter for Grand Rapids (and the fly fishing and trails surrounding it) is a F&B professional’s guide to the outdoors.
Casey Routledge is the roastery coffee operations manager at Madcap Coffee Company in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Photos courtesy of Madcap
Filter: What do you like to do for fun around Grand Rapids?
Having spent a decade in food and beverage, I cherish my quiet time away from the commotion of the daily grind when I'm not working. Whether I'm logging miles in the woods on the North Country Trail or wandering around greenhouses, it typically involves something outside and green.
Filter: If a good friend came to visit, where would you be sure to take them?
Especially if I'm hosting out of town visitors, I love driving out to Lake Michigan for the day. From city to shore it's a 40-minute drive, and there's no shortage of pristine beaches to choose from. Even though I usually end up at Rosy Mound Natural Area for the stunning boardwalk views, Saugatuck Dunes State Park and P.J. Hoffmaster State Park allow for a little more wandering and secluded hammocking. For guests who have never seen the Great Lakes before, it's a rather abrupt realization that they're massive and basically oceans without salt.
Filter: What do you like to do to escape the city?
While there are plenty of rivers and streams around the Grand Rapids metro area, the best fly fishing is north. Any excuse I can find to spend the day wading in the Pere Marquette River or Manistee River is time well spent. Fly fishing has taught me patience above anything else, and there is something cathartic about the flow of casting for hours on end even without catching any trout.
Filter: What touristy things in Grand Rapids are worth the hype?
For a city of its size, Grand Rapids packs a punch in the vein of entertainment. We have a beautifully quaint zoo, a stunning art museum, and a massive public library.
Filter: Where are your favorite quiet corners there?
If I'm sticking around the city but want to "escape" the noise, I love wandering Millenium Park and Huff Park to birdwatch and walk my dogs.
Filter: What's another coffee shop around there that you really admire, and what about them stands out to you?
If I'm not already overcaffeinated from running the gauntlet of multiple cupping tables at our roastery, I find myself grabbing a pour over from Lyon Street Cafe serving Little Wolf Coffee. I appreciate the coffee that Little Wolf chooses to source, and the interesting varieties from stellar producers they showcase offer consistent quality in the cup.
Filter: What makes Grand Rapids feel like home to you?
On some level, Grand Rapids feels like home to me because it represents a stage of discovery for me in my transition into adult life. I moved to West Michigan from the Detroit area to attend university at Grand Valley State, and it was initially a rocky transition relocating to a rural area from such a dense suburban metropolis. As I inched closer to graduation, I moved downtown and spent everyday learning new neighborhoods and covering as much ground on my bike as I could. Grand Rapids is a "small-big" city in the sense that I consistently see the same faces regardless of where I go, but there's always something new happening.
Filter: How did you end up in the Grand Rapids coffee scene?
While I came to Grand Rapids in 2011, my wife and I bounced around the country for 2 years shortly after graduation. The real estate market was (and still is to an even higher degree) white hot at the time, and though we wanted to buy a house desperately, we weren't in a position to do so. The next most logical step was to leave and see if we landed somewhere that would stick. Our lease was ending—we sold the majority of our belongings, and we hit the road for a 75-day road trip living out of the trunk of my car and our 2-person tent. Ultimately we covered about 13,000 miles around the Western half of the United States, and the hardest question we had to ask ourselves everyday was "How do we want to spend our time outdoors today?" Those months were typically filled with rock climbing, backcountry backpacking, and swimming in frigid rivers, and they're unequivocally the fondest memories of my life.
Once we needed a landing pad again, my wife began taking travel contracts for work, and that pulled us to central Maine for 6 months, Cleveland, Ohio for 3 months, and Tucson, Arizona for 4 months. Having spent so much time in Grand Rapids, I already had a major affinity for specialty coffee having been exposed to the lovely sourcing, roasting, and service practices of Madcap, so wherever we went I was looking for the best coffee at the best cafes with the most selfless, inspiring, and honest hospitality. I worked at a small roaster in Tucson where we ultimately thought we would stay for good. My wife was born in New Mexico, and we both love what the desert has to offer, so Arizona had incredible potential. In the end, Michigan called us home, and I immediately began working at Madcap upon our return as a barista.
Filter: Can you share about your role at Madcap?
While I started as a barista and eventually stepped into managing 2 of our cafes, I am now our roastery coffee operations manager meaning I oversee our daily roastery operations, our green coffee sourcing program, and our quality control protocols. I am inspired daily by the amazing producers with whom we have long standing, direct relationships for their commitment to excellence, transparency, innovation, and environmental stewardship. Roasting and brewing coffee is simply the finishing touch, but so much of the work happens at origin and farm level. Dozens of human hands interact with the green coffee before it reaches our warehouse doors, and it's critical to remember the tremendous amount of labor that goes into the supply chain, all of which starts with smallholding farmers and the laborers who pick and process coffee cherries. If folks ever ask what I'm most excited about, my response tends to delve into the genetic diversity of coffee that is at our fingertips but can be hard to trace if not intentionally marketed.
I equate coffee to apples, something Midwesterners can identify with very closely on an agricultural level. All apples are apples, but if you visit an orchard or supermarket, you might see gala, honeycrisp, cortland, jonagold, and mcintosh. While they are all distinctly apples, they also all showcase nuance in acidity, texture, and sweetness. Similarly in coffee, there is such an abundance of profiles represented by diverse varieties that are all best situated for certain terroirs, and it is exciting to see further research and cataloging being completed by various organizations.
Filter: If you could move to any place in the world just for the coffee scene, where would you move, and what shop would be the biggest reason?
Strictly from studying market trends and consumer habits, I think I'd be drawn to any number of places where from the outside looking in there appears to be a deeper understanding and appreciation for the art of specialty coffee as a truly amazing agricultural product rather than something that should be cheap because it has been historically. A few places that come to mind are South Korea, Denmark, Australia, Norway, and Japan. While my statement is absolutely a sweeping generalization that doesn't represent any one collective thought, I am impressed by the concentration of incredible roasters within each of those countries, and to some extent that has to represent the collective ethos of how people view coffee there, culturally speaking. When visiting Guatemala, I always make a point to stop at Artista de Cafe in Antigua. It's less common to find specialty shops in coffee producing countries because so much of the harvest gets exported, but Antigua has a burgeoning specialty scene, and it feels truly special to have the privilege to sip coffee from stunning producers who may only live a couple hours away.
I still remember sharing a Chemex of Malawi Gesha from Finca El Injerto that won first place in the Cup of Excellence that year.
Filter: What have I not asked that you'd love to tell about?
Whenever folks ask me for coffee advice, I tend to return to the same things. Seek transparency in your purchasing decisions, ask your local baristas what they're excited about, inquire how coffee companies approach their sourcing practices in an increasingly difficult market where the power dynamic favors larger entities over smallholder producers, and simply pay more for coffee. At the end of the day, remember everything begins with the producers.
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Madcap has 4 locations from Grand Rapids to Detroit.
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