Inside the new Sputnik Coffee roastery and cafe in South SIde Chicago’s Brighton Park neighborhood. All images courtesy of Sputnik Coffee Company.
Chicago-based Sputnik Coffee Company opened a spacious second cafe earlier this month with views into an enormous new color-coordinated roasting facility.
Less than half a mile from Sputnik’s original roastery cafe location on Chicago’s South Side, the new 2,000-square-foot cafe boasts red Mazzer grinders and a white La Marzocco espresso machine mirroring the bright red color of a 60-kilo-capacity IMF roaster and six white silos visible through a 25-foot glass wall.
A pneumatic system for loading green coffees from the silos into the roaster assists co-owner Greesha Kagan in roasting the one and only blend that Sputnik offers. Roasted coffees are blended post-roast in a 500-pound blender installed behind the silos.
“It’s an impressive setup, because we’ve been so busy that Greesha has actually been roasting at night on his own. He was roasting seven days a week on our 15-kilo, and he can [now] do all of that roasting within a couple hours,” Sputnik Coffee Co-Owner Vova Kagan told Daily Coffee News. “That gives us time to figure out new products, improve and open cafes.”
One new product Sputnik has been focusing is canned pre-ground coffee using a refurbished 1950s-era CanCo vacuum canning machine.
“We have a line that allows us to package ground and whole bean coffee, tea, matcha, you name it, under a full vacuum, and have our delicious medium roast in ground form for customers and grocery stores but maintain a freshness that, in our opinion and experience, lasts longer than nitrogen flushing or anything like that,” said Vova Kagan. “The can is fully recyclable, and cans are still the most recycled product in terms of the percentage of material that gets back into the product.”
The company’s core blend, profiled to a crowd-pleasing medium roast, is now available through Sputnik’s two cafes, its web store and more than 400 grocery stores.
Founded by brothers Vova and Greesha Kagan in the Back of the Yards neighborhood in 2017, Sputnik Coffee has consistently defied the standard model of offering a range of single-origin coffees and/or blends in favor of a single namesake blend.
“Everyone told us we were wrong, and I’m not saying we’re right. We’ve only been in this game for seven years,” Vova Kagan said. “But we’ve been able to maintain our sanity and work together and give people a really great product.”
In the cafe, a generous seating area with single and communal tables accommodates as many as 60 customers. A traditional waffle maker imported from Belgium turns out fresh waffles from inside an approximately 500-square-foot kitchen. Customers order over a glossy glass-mosaic-tile and concrete bar.
“When you look at [the bar] from any angle, you don’t see the supports; it looks like it’s just floating,” Kagan said of the bar held aloft by an unseen I-beam. “It lightens the space up a little bit, and we wanted to stay away from the franchise coffee look where everything is hidden behind taller counters. Everything’s open, customers can see everything that’s going on, how their drinks are made. Everything is on one level, which also encourages us to keep everything tidy, beautiful and clean.”
Situated in an industrial corridor in Brighton Park, across the street from the Chicago Park District headquarters, the community landmark building was actually destined for the wrecking ball before Sputnik took possession.
Renovating the aging building took nearly three years, and included new masonry and roofing. A $1.2 million grant from the city covered about a third of the cost of the work, Kagan said.
Of the building’s approximately 28,000 total square feet, Sputnik’s operations have reactivated a little more than half. The company’s next plan is to bring its bottled cold brew operation to the site, while expanding the production line.
“The buildout’s been a lot more expensive than we anticipated,” said Kagan. “We don’t regret anything. We have the space we need now to not trip over ourselves and to really grow. You need to put in the investment, you need to put in the work to make your dream a reality, and that’s what we did.”
Sputnik Coffee Roasters is located at 4755 S. Talman Ave. in Chicago. Tell DCN’s editors about your new coffee shop or roastery here.
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Howard Bryman
Howard Bryman is the associate editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine. He is based in Portland, Oregon.
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