Taste test: Design, Bitches create a coffee training centre for Counter Culture

The feted Counter Culture coffee company has brought its know-how, tastings and professional education program to the hip area of Silver Lake in Los Angeles. With plans to open in Seattle, Dallas and Miami next, the North Carolina-based roaster is offering both industry support and public-access coffee brewing classes.

Conceived by Catherine Johnson and Rebecca Rudolph, the duo behind Design, Bitches, the training center is a unique work and play space. ’We took a lot of inspiration from the 1940s streamlined art deco building and from the artistic neighbourhood – from a vibrant exterior colour to [an] interior finish that reflects a California-centric indoor/outdoor sensibility,’ they explain.

Organised in a plus formation with two relatively equal axes, the interior space is activated in multiple directions and allows for maximum flexibility and connection to the outdoor space. ’Multiple stations have been set up for espresso and pour-over brewing around the "ziggurat" – a central seating element which acts as room divider, seating for classes when in session and a casual, flexible work space,’ Johnson continues.

’Counter Culture’s Training Centres serve many purposes for the cities they operate in. First and foremost, they are a classroom where we are able to facilitate a curriculum of coffee education that we offer exclusively to our wholesale partners,’ says Jesse Kahn, Counter Culture’s national wholesale manager and head of training centre development. ’The spaces are the uniquest [sic] of offices, allowing our regional staff and our partners access to anything and everything they need to learn and engage about coffee.’