(Paul Evers | Photo by Ronni Wilde)
The word “riff” is defined as “a rapid energetic, often-improvised verbal outpouring; a succinct, usually witty comment; or a distinct variation.” A “riff” can be a spontaneous outburst of energy, and can build off something else, as with a musical riff.
This definition is apropos for Riff the company, a Bend-based maker of creative cold-brewed coffee beverages. Riff co-founder and CEO Paul Evers said, “We are about experimentation and introducing a new relationship with coffee. We’re constantly working on innovation; it’s in our DNA. We recognize that we don’t exist in a static world, it’s always changing.”
The idea for Riff was birthed in 2016, when Evers and his son, Bobby, began discussing the emerging trend of cold-brewed coffee. Paul — an entrepreneurial spirit at heart — had moved to Bend from Southern California in 1990 because he and his wife, Mary, wanted to raise their kids in a “true community, one that had accountability versus anonymity,” and to enjoy the untapped mountains and streams and the then-small population of Central Oregon. Evers started working for an ad agency in town, and after seven years, decided to go freelance and formed his own agency with two good friends. “It was good timing. Clients in the area were looking for new ways to advertise. We had a lot of fun doing amazing things; we worked with big clients like Mt. Bachelor and Sunriver Resort.”
In 2003, Evers said they were hired by Deschutes Brewery to launch a re-branding, which took place in 2004. That led to other craft breweries calling upon their services, including “Kombucha Mama,” which is now Humm Kombucha.
“Then we worked on co-founding Crux Fermentation Project, where I gained experience working on the production side,” explained Evers. “In 2016, I left day-to-day operations at Crux, and started exploring what my next venture would be. I started learning about what was trending, and cold-brewed coffee was one of those categories.” Evers and his son began to talk more seriously about forming a company around cold-brewed coffee, and brought in Steve Barham, former senior director at LinkedIn, and Kevin Smyth, who has deep experience in craft beer branding and operations. “We started developing a business plan; we defined our culture and values first, before we developed product concepts,” he said. Those values include building lasting relationships, being committed to transparency, aspiring to be a positive force in the community and the world, having fun and a focus on innovation as the cornerstone.
“We believe in a collaborative spirit. What we can build together is greater than anything we can do alone. We value building teams with diversity and inclusion, and we’re about having fun. We take our work very seriously, but not ourselves.” Rounding out the leadership team is Nate Armbrust, former head of product development and cold brew operations at Stumptown, and as the company continues to grow, new members are being brought on board. Riff recently announced the hiring of Colin McCall — who comes to the company following 12 years on the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers leadership team — as Riff’s vice president of business development. Bobby Evers continues to lead Riff’s marketing and brand development.
“We love celebrating the incredible range of flavors naturally inherent in coffee,” said the senior Evers. “There are more than 100 natural flavors available in coffee, more than in wine. The cold-brewing process is gentle. It doesn’t extract bitterness and acidity, which allows the natural flavors to shine.” In the cold-brewing process, the grounds are steeped in cold or ambient-temperature water for up to 16 hours, with no stirring or agitating. While this process makes for delicious beverages, Evers said it also presents challenges with distribution. “Our core line of cold-brewed coffees must be handled like dairy products to maintain the quality.” Maintaining the temperature at 45 degrees or lower during distribution and on the shelf is complicated, he explained, and the shelf life of these products is relatively short at 100 days.
Despite these challenges over the past two years, however, Riff has successfully launched four varieties of cold-brewed coffee in bottles, bag-in-a-boxes and kegs throughout Oregon, Arizona, Northern California and in parts of Washington, Alaska and Montana. On the heels of these successes, Riff has now expanded with its newest innovation, Alter Ego, a sparkling all-natural energy drink brewed from upcycled coffee fruit (cascara). “Alter Ego is pasteurized, so it can be shipped at ambient temperatures, and it has a six-month shelf life.”
While Alter Ego — which Evers said is Riff’s current big push — answers the distribution challenges, what is best about the beverage is its positive impact on the environment. Alter Ego is made from the fruit of the coffee plant, which is historically a wasted byproduct of the coffee harvest. “Nate, our co-founder and head of brewing, was familiar with cascara, so we started looking into it and learning more and more about the environmental impact that discarding it has. That really amplified for us the perspective on how big Alter Ego could be as a product for Riff,” said Evers.
Estimates are that as much as 100 billion pounds of coffee fruit will be left to waste this year alone, piling up in huge mounds in back corners of farmers’ fields and in landfills, which produces methane gas equivalent to 36 million metric tons of carbon dioxide as it decomposes. This equates to the same volume of harmful emissions as 14 million automobiles on an annual basis. Rotting coffee fruit also produces harmful mycotoxins that seep into soils and water tables, prohibiting future agricultural growth. Some of the wasted byproduct is also released into streams and rivers, where its naturally inherent sugars over-oxygenate the water, killing off fish and other aquatic life. “Being a positive force in the world is what gets us super excited about Alter Ego,” he said.
Riff has a production facility in Redmond, but small-batch experimentation is conducted in a two-barrel pilot brewing system located in their Taproom at the Box Factory in Bend. Evers said Alter Ego went through four or five iterations before the product was finalized, and that painstaking effort has not gone unnoticed: On October 18, Economic Development of Central Oregon (EDCO) announced Riff as the winner of its Impact Category of the Bend Venture Conference. The award was bestowed upon Riff for Alter Ego as “the most promising for-profit enterprise with an integrated social or environmental mission.” The prize for the award was an investment of $85,000.
“Riff broke through as the top competitor against companies from across the U.S. and even Canada,” said Brian Vierra, venture catalyst at EDCO. “They emerged with the most attractive impact proposition by targeting millions of tons of wasted coffee byproduct, and as the most attractive investment by going after the emerging all-natural energy drink category with a fantastic product and team.”
“We’re really proud of winning the Impact Category at the BVC,” said Evers, and our other awards as well. In 2018, Riff was named the early stage company of the year by the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network, and the company has won the “World’s Best Cold-Brewed Coffee” competition at the Cold Brew Fest in Vancouver, Washington, for the past two years in a row.
Alter Ego is unique to the energy drink category because of the coffee fruit component. Coffee fruit is naturally sweet and naturally caffeinated, with flavor notes of dried fruit and citrus. In addition to the reduction of waste, Evers said upcycling coffee fruit for export also provides a significant economic uplift to struggling coffee farmers in third-world countries, who are under pressure due to the lowest global prices for green coffee in more than a decade. By increasing demand for coffee fruit, farmers have the potential to double revenue streams and double employment by processing coffee ruit utilizing the same equipment they use to dry and process green coffee beans, requiring little to no investment in equipment or additional crops.
“We’re on a mission to help neutralize coffee’s contribution to global warming, as well as ensure coffee farmers are able to make a decent living,” said Evers. “Coffee’s future, along with that of our planet, relies on this in order to be sustainable. Winning at BVC gives us a huge shot in the arm as we continue working hard on building awareness of Alter Ego’s benefits for the environment, for farmers and ultimately for consumers as a delicious all-natural alternative to current synthetic offerings in the energy drink space.”
Alter Ego, and Riff’s other cold-brewed beverages,
are available at local grocery stores such as Market of Choice, Newport Market, Safeway and Albertsons, off Riff’s website and in the Taproom, a restaurant serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. The Taproom is a coffee house of sorts, but not in the traditional sense. With bright teal and apricot décor, the Taproom includes vegan and gluten-free offerings, as well as food items that are infused with cold-brewed coffee. “We have an incredible food menu and a wide range of beverages,” he said. “We have healthy food, cocktails, wine, eight craft beers, cider, kombucha and we make our own craft sodas. It’s an interesting, different concept. People have a conception of what a coffee place is like; this is completely different from that.”
