Les Beans Coffee Gurls at Lilish!

The Les Beans Coffee crew headed to Orlando on October 14th to caffeinate the girls at Lilish. Nearly 20 bands and musicians performed throughout the day. We hope many of these talented and beautiful women will stand on our stage in Les Beans Coffeehouse next year. Our favorites were Melissa Crispo, JD Danner, Julie Schurr, Stacy Sharp and Vanessa Brown. Rock on Ladies!

Hangin' With the GIRLs at Pearls

Wow! What a weekend we had at Pearls Rainbow Inn in Key West! We teamed up with Denise and Donna from the Lesbian Lounge on G.I.R.L. radio (Pictured here with Desiree, Denise left, Donna right) and hosted a morning poolside "Nurse Your Hangover"event for the last weekend of Women's Week right at Pearl's Rainbow Inn.

Our "Nurses" distributed Espresso shots to all in need, while Denise and Donna gave everyone a dose of the best medicine: laughter. DJ Elaine Roberts, out of St. Pete, provided the music therapy. Club Diva Lori Michaels and local rock artist Melissa Crispo stopped by to apply the "heat". We're looking forward to working with all of them again, real soon!

We'd like to thank all the girls at Pearls, GIRL radio, GirL Magazine, DJ Elaine, our crew Joni and Robin, and Ruthie (who's single, and looking), Lori Michaels and Melissa Crispo for making it a special weekend for the women who came out for Women's Week at Pearls and for us! We love you guys!


Desiree,Joni, Robin, Ruthie and Patti

Lori Michaels and dancer

DJ Elaine Roberts

Patti with Little Levi and Levi's Mommy

Chillin' in Jacksonville, Sewing some Wild Oats, and Dreaming in Melissa...

To be honest, neither Desiree or I had ever been to Jacksonville...we'd been through it. It's one of those places we drive through on 95 heading south after the holidays with family. So, references have been limited to, "Jacksonville! Four more hours and we'll be home!"

First Pride in Jacksonville (August 6) happens on the beach. Sounds like a cool idea but it was hot as hell. Our hats off to the Pride organizers! They had us hooked up with full power for our frozen cappuccino machine by 9:00. Our frozen cappuccino drinks, Mocha Mary and Java Jane, were big hits under the 92 degree sun. So was our iced Ethiopia Sophie. Check out our web site for iced coffee tips!

We headed to Tampa the following weekend for a vendor fair at Wild Oats Market. Les Beans Coffee is being considered for that store, thanks to the hard work and persistence of some of our fans who work there. That would be HUGE for us and great for the community. So far though, we haven't heard from corporate.

We got a call from Susan and Elaine, two local organizers of NCLR (one of our charities) who happened to have a couple of extra tickets to see Melissa Etheridge at the Mizner Amphitheater. We had not been able to get tickets because we've been on the road so much, so we were thrilled! That woman still rocks! She did a wonderful rendition of The Weakness in Me by Joan Armatrading (remember her???). I had no idea Melissa could play the piano like that. She also auctioned off every piece of music equipment they used that night for the Susan B. Koman Foundation for Breast Cancer Awareness. You go, girl!

On the way home, Desiree and I constructed a fantasy together ...Melissa decides to have our coffee available at all her concerts...we travel around with her in the bus, set up our little coffee stand and sell iced and hot coffee all night to the tunes of Come to My Window and I Wanna Come Over, then pack up at the end of the night, get back on the bus with Melissa, talk shop, philosophy, politics and convince her to change the lyrics of Somebody Bring Me Some Water to Somebody Bring Me Some Coffee....we smiled and sang all the way home...

Les Beans Coffee at Pearls Rainbow Inn, Key West!

Gotta love those girls at Pearls! Pearls Rainbow Inn is one of the last gay owned businesses in a rapidly changing Key West. A while ago, Desiree and I sent Chef Lisa, their new and fabulous chef, some samples of our coffees and now, we are happy to report, the girls at Pearls have decided to brew it for their guests. Pearls has gone through extensive remodeling over the past couple of years and is quite a beautiful and romantic setting.

We'll be serving up some espresso shots at Pearls Patio during Women's Week. If you happen to be in the Keys on the weekend of September 9, 10, come see Desiree and I at Pearls! The theme of the Saturday and Sunday morning events at Pearls will be "Nurse Your Hangover with the Girls at Pearls". We'll be wearing pink scrubs and serving "shots" of espresso and other medicinally caffeinated elixers. In preparation, we'll be working on our bedside manner.

Introducing Les Beans Coffeehouse

Welcome to Les Beans Coffeehouse. Ok. So we don't have a coffeehouse. But that's the point. This is the incredibly true story of two girls (ok, we're a little older than that) who want to open their very own coffeehouse and finally quit their 9 to 5 (we wish!) jobs as teacher (Patti) and nuclear medicine technologist (Desiree). We launched our web site store Les Beans Coffee on June 1,2006. Before that, we had done a lot of homework, researching coffee trends, coffee production, Fair Trade and Organic cooperatives, and the roasting process. Desiree has been most fascinated with the chemestry and engineering of coffee roasting. She has a degree in Nuclear Engineering and when she eventually leaves the medical field for the coffee world, a shiney Diedrich IR-7 coffee roaster is going to be the closest she'll get to tinkering on something like a nuclear reactor or PET/CT machine. And me? I'm the creative one. I use the other side of the brain. So my focus has been on creative endeavors, the stories for all our "Beans", Label designs, colors and ...this blog.

Les Beans Coffee offers 100% Organic, Fair Trade, shade grown coffee with personality! Each of our 20 coffees is named after a quirky and sexy female character whose story is printed on the label. We have single origins, blends and flavored coffees. We found a roaster (can't give names, cuz it's a trade secret) who not only could show proof of organic and Fair Trade certification - there are a lot of scammers in the industry - but also maintained a commitment to slow roasting in small batches. Now, you may think "slow, fast, small, large, what difference could it make?" We promise, there really is a difference! Most large coffee companies (who will go nameless for now) roast in large batches (100 pounds and more) and take the roast through more quickly and at higher temperatures so they can bring up their volume and their profits. But this is hard on the beans and often leaves them over roasted and bitter. You'll really taste this in the fuller bodied coffees. Unfortunately, many Americans have become accustomed to the bitterness and associate it with "good strong coffee". The fact is, the more you roast a bean, the less caffiene it contains.

If you like strong, full bodied coffees without the bitterness, try our Ethiopia Sophie or Brokeback Bette or our French Roast, Mon Ami Zoe`. We're sure you'll like the coffee as much as you like the names and their stories

SO, we've been traveling around to Pride Festivals in Florida, introducing our concept and company. So far, it's been pretty incredible. Let me catch you up.

We did our first Pride festival with Les Beans Coffee on March 25, 2006 at the Palm Beach Pride Festival. Wow! We love those earthy crunchy Lake Worth girls and they love us! They "got" the concept right away and loved the quirky stories on the labels. Lake Worth has a large women's community and has a strong independent, anti-corporate attitude. Though we hadn't planned it this way, it was the perfest place to "launch" Les Beans Coffee. Almost all the people we spoke to said Lake Worth would be a great location for our coffeehouse, even though Starbucks was opening downtown.

We went up the coast next to Port St. Lucie. It was their second Pride Festival and it was held in a small field with about 1000 people. The folks there didn't pay much attention to the quirky stories but our frozen cappuccinos, Mocha Mary and Java Jane, were big hits in the intense heat.

Our next stop was Sarasota. Great community, but we were disappointed in the organizers. Ok, I thought they were unorganized, tweaked out, drama queens. Get over yourselves, boys, for just one day of the year, it's really not about you. Sarasota has a large community of gay retirees. Many who stopped by our booth said Sarasota would be a great location for a coffeehouse. "Maybe", Desiree mused on the drive back to the east coast, "when we retire..."

Next, on to Stonewall, Fort Lauderdale, June 18th! That was one big frolicking party! The Ft. Lauderdale crowd is definately a younger party crowd. The boys bought a lot of beans and the girls...well...the hot item for them was our tank tops which say "Les Beans Coffee Hot Beans. Great Coffee. ...and just below, "Goes Down Easy." Women were stripping in front of our booth so that they could get a free Les Beans Coffee t-shirt. Ok, it was our idea. (I would personally like to thank the voluptuous Italian woman in the leopard Victoria Secret bra.) We sold a lot of t-shirts and our frozen cappuccinos, Mocha Mary and Java Jane. We also offered Ethiopia Sophie on ice to cool down the hard core coffee drinkers who "don't want that sugary, frozen, fake coffee crap". If you make iced coffee at home, we highly recommend Ethiopia Sophie. Desiree says, "Don't chill your coffee in the frig because it changes the chemistry and the coffee becomes acidic and bitter. Let the coffee cool to room temperature then ice to serve." (Yes, honey) Most of the men and women we met said Wilton Mannors (the "gay" town of Ft. Lauderdale and site of the gay pride festival) is the perfect place for our coffeehouse. The question for us, is whether or not we want to open in a gay community or in a gay friendly community. We know there are sisters out there who identify our coffee as "Dyke coffee" and, though that's funny, it's not true. When we open a coffeehouse, it's not going to be a lesbian coffeehouse. It's going to be a coffeehouse for everyone.

A free lance writer, Sherri Olfam, came by our booth and interviewed us for a feature article, which later appeared in Express Gay News and Southern Voice. On another note, Desiree, who never drinks, got overheated by the end of the day, drank 2 Coronas - fast - and got dizzy. We had planned to meet Carol,the owner of the women's bar, New Moon, after the festival, but decided to wait until Desiree was feeling better.

The very next weekend, June 24th, we were off to St. Petersburg! This town was so delightful, we are actually considering moving there. Close to 50,000 people came out to their Pride festival!! And they were really nice people! A lot of "nesters" in St. Pete's. We met some wonderful people there..no one stripped for the t-shirts but they did buy them! The only disappointment was the handful of Bible Banging protesters who walked up and down Central Avenue shouting scripture into a bull horn. I'm not sure, but I think a lot of folks must have mistaken the man with the bull horn for a hot dog because he was sure covered in a wide assortment of condiments by the end of the day! We're hoping they won't "sneak in" again next year. There was a lot of interest in a Les Beans Coffeehouse in St. Petersburg. It does seem like the kind of community that would support a coffeehouse....but what about those Bible bangers?

We're off to Jacksonville on August 6th for their "First Pride Celebration". So, Until we have our Coffeehouse, you'll have to get our coffee from our on line store and our dish from this blog.