Q&A: What makes the perfect cup of coffee?

For most of their adult lives, Matt Baker and Vance Bjorn fit within a classic Silicon Valley mold. Baker was a product manager at multiple tech companies, while Bjorn was the founder of a leading biometrics firm. But shortly after meeting in 2015, the two decided to start a company of their own — and though they now concentrate on coffee, Baker and Bjorn didn’t leave too much of the tech world behind.

Late last month, they opened The Coffee Lab, a Menlo Park space for people to gather, taste and learn about coffee. Importantly, Baker and Bjorn say, the business is not a coffee shop. It’s a mix between “a science lab, a home economics room, and a startup company,” and a place where people can take classes to experiment with coffee and learn what they like best. They’ll be doing so alongside machinery that turns coffee-making into a science, allowing people to measure the strength of their brew with a handheld meter, or the acidity in their cup on a mathematical grid.

Baker and Bjorn — who are both business and life partners — see The Coffee Lab like a wine club, with exotic blends delivered to their members’ doors, classes for learning the basics of coffee growing, brewing and drinking, and tastings for people to try out their favorite combinations.

We talked to them about their venture and love of coffee. Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: Have you always been interested in coffee?

A: My mom owned a gourmet coffee store in Minnesota, so I grew up in and around coffee. During the Christmas season, I would have stacks of coffee beans in my bedroom — the overflow inventory. Honestly, I lived among coffee for so long that when I went to college, I actually went cold turkey for a while. But later on, I started to realize that coffee was beyond just hot drinks, and I started to develop a love for cold coffee that has stayed with me.
— Vance Bjorn

I was born into it, too. My mom’s Italian, and I was raised in a household where espresso was what we gathered around. Coffee was just the norm, especially having an espresso with Italian cookies. Even if I wasn’t drinking it, the smell and the culture of coffee was all around me.
— Matt Baker

Q: How did you go from decades in the tech sector to starting The Coffee Lab?

A: Vance and I met in 2015. Vance had just sold his company, and I was getting a little burned out in tech. By that time, we were looking for something that the two of us could do together, and we found a coffee roastery for sale. We thought that was interesting, so we bought it.

Originally, we wanted to roast fresh coffee, turn it into cold brew, and deliver it to offices. By 2019, we had a good sense of roasting, and good ways of finding great beans. By March of 2020, we were ready to go with that business model — and of course, that was the worst timing possible. We decided to keep the roastery going and wait it out. In the meantime, we just kept trying to learn more about coffee.
— Matt Baker

We even put an offer to buy a coffee farm in Hawaii during that span, and we’re very fortunate that didn’t work out. That was a pandemic fever dream.
— Vance Bjorn

The more we learned, the more we realized it was a very complex process. Eventually, we kind of had a brainstorm: we’d learned so much about coffee. How could we pass that onto our customers?
— Matt Baker

Q: How will it work, exactly?

A: This will never be a walk-in cafe. It’ll always be an experimental center: a tasting room, an experiential area. We’ll provide a Coffee 101 class, which includes where coffee comes from, how it’s grown, processed, roasted and stored. We’ll go into why altitude matters, and how the flavors change depending on the country of origin.

We’ll probably also have Lab 101, which will be a place for people to use all the different equipment in here. As we’ve been building this place out, our colleagues in the business world have also been asking us: can we have our team building event here? So that’s part of what we’re looking at, having spaces where companies can come together, hold a meeting, and learn about coffee at the same time.
— Matt Baker 

Q: Why the focus on science and technology?

A: We want to introduce people to the fact that coffee is so much more than meets the eye. There are so many different variables to play with, and the number of things you can test and try out are endless. I’d argue coffee actually has more variables than wine, because you’ve got the whole concept of brewing, temperatures, and other sorts of sweeteners and mix-ins and creams. That’s all something that individuals can control — and that lends itself to the scientific method. You can hold everything else constant, and then add and change one variable. How does the grind size make a difference? How does the water make a difference? How about the brew time? It’s an endless list. And once you start getting into that, people can create their own flavors and adapt it to their own taste.
— Vance Bjorn

Q: What advice do you have for all the coffee drinkers out there?

I try to encourage everyone: please grind your coffee at home! Right before you drink it, and not the night before. Pre-grinding your coffee makes the beans oxidize quickly, and can make the coffee lose all the aromas and chemicals that make it so wonderful.

Another thing is that you shouldn’t really be looking for a best buy date. Instead, look for a roasted-on date, and use your coffee within a month of that. On average, by the fourth or fifth day that the coffee is out of the roaster, it’s at its prime. But that goes away over time.

Coffee is food, at the end of the day. It’s the equivalent of a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie versus Chips Ahoy. They’re both cookies, but they provide a very different experience.
— Matt Baker

Also: water in general is one of the most critical parts to brewing coffee. If the temperature is boiling, it’s going to be much more disruptive. Boiling water will scald the more sensitive compounds in the coffee, so aiming just 10 degrees below will actually make a big difference.
— Vance Bjorn

Matt Baker and Vance Bjorn

Ages: Matt is 43, Vance is 50.
Job titles: Matt is the Chief Roaster, Vance is the Chief Scientist.
Residence: Atherton
Hometowns: Matt grew up in North Andover, Massachusetts. Vance is from Golden Valley, Minnesota.

Five fun facts about Matt Baker and Vance Bjorn

1. Baker is an “avid burner” — he’s been going to Burning Man for over 10 years.
2. Bjorn was a competitive figure skater as a child. In college, he tried to leverage his skills on skates to ice hockey, a transition which was, according to him, unsuccessful.
3. Baker was the chair of the Parks and Recreation Committee in Atherton for a year.
4. Bjorn’s love of math was born at age 12, when he’d help his dad calculate the best bets to make on horses. Every time he’d win, he’d get to pocket the money as allowance.
5. Baker and Bjorn have two dogs, a golden retriever cocker spaniel mix, and a Coton de Tulear, a fluffy white dog whose breed hails from Madagascar.