Getting to know Jaroslav Tucek, - Co-founder of doubleshot
How did the journey of doubleshot start?
We founded doubleshot in 2010 after having traveled to and worked on coffee farms in Panama and El Salvador. Part of the team were also working and learning from one of the leading Canadian roasters - 49th Parallel Coffee Roasters in Vancouver.
Being close to the best gave us the much needed experience and a different perspective on what specialty coffee means and what it could provide. With this experience we set up doubleshot almost in mid-air, on the flight back home to the Czech Republic.
Can you share more about your local coffee scene in Prague and what
doubleshot's approach to sourcing and serving coffee there?
The coffee scene in Prague is huge and interesting. It is really easy to get a great cup of coffee at many places around the city. In the past 10 years, it has progressed so much so that Prague can compete easily with other European capitals. Though usually small and local, specialty coffee roasters are plentiful and very good.
We in doubleshot run three of our own coffee shops - Můj šálek kávy, Místo, and an espresso bar at Alza.cz. We consider them our showrooms where we serve coffee exactly as we want to and as best as we can. Apart from these three, we provide coffee (wholesale) to hundreds of coffee shops, restaurants as well as to offices and company coffee shops around Central and Eastern Europe.
What was the inspiration for doubleshot to decide to put coffees into the
convenient capsule format?
Our mission from the beginning is to make specialty coffee approachable, make it a common thing and not a luxury. Ease of preparation is an important factor when you want to appeal to a large group of customers, who are time-stressed or who take coffee as necessity.
For a long time, we were not satisfied with the quality of coffee capsules and aluminium capsules were too much of an ecological burden for us to even consider adding to our offering. But soon came the evolution of compostable capsules which gave us a positive step towards our goal which is to make specialty coffee a common standard.
To be frank, part of our inspiration of developing on our own capsule line was the introduction of the Morning capsule Machine. We had tried a few coffees from Colonna Coffee brewed on the Morning and were instantly blown away by the cup quality.
Coffee is fuel to get us moving throughout the day, especially in the morning. What is your daily morning ritual like?
My days are really varied, so it is difficult to generalize. But I usually start my day with a cup of great tea. While commuting to work, I usually go through necessary phone calls and I have my first cup of coffee at the roastery.
Caffeine is not an energy booster for me so I usually drink coffee just because I like it or whenever we have a cupping session. It always has to be an amazing coffee, I can't drink anything mediocre just because of the caffeine.
What are you most excited about right now and for the future of doubleshot as a company?
Tough question. We survived covid, then the economic crisis is on our shoulders and prices of coffee are hitting record highs. I think I am more nervous than excited. I hope all these factors will not stop the amazing change which is going on for more than a decade now in the Czech Republic coffee scene and that doubleshot will still play an important role in making more people hooked on specialty coffee.
On the other hand, we have several big things in the pipeline right now so there is not much time to relax. We are opening a fourth cafe in a premium downtown location; a new, much bigger roaster is on the way and hopefully we will start working on our new roastery, which will be awesome. In a way, I am nervous but still very much excited too.
