Bassline Coffee is Roasting the Underground's Favorite Coffee
Bassline Coffee is Roasting the Underground’s Favorite Coffee
March 23, 2021
Brennan Ko
As venues closed in 2020, two DJs found opportunity crafting a morning staple
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Or, in the case of Bradley Katz and Bassline Coffee - coffee beans. Before the pandemic, Katz was busy running his company Waveworks - renting, building, tuning, and installing sophisticated sound systems for bars, nightclubs, and restaurants. Originally from New York, Katz got his start in the audio industry when he moved to the Bay Area in ‘96 and started working for a local sound company. Eventually, Katz took what he learned and started Waveworks, quickly becoming the go to person for high quality sound. A steady stream of clients and installations - such as the hi-fidelity system at Phonobar SF - meant business was good, but that ground to a halt when nightlife was shutdown in 2020. When there’s a deadly virus that restricts gatherings and your business serves a nightlife centric industry...well you get the picture.
Bradley Katz in front of his two labors of love - bass and coffee
With Waveworks floundering, Katz had to pivot. Parties weren’t happening, bars weren’t open to customers, and nobody needed a sound system. An entrepreneur at heart he began searching for something else to put his energies into and this is where life handed him some lemons. “I was already roasting coffee beans at home, so it seemed like something I could do,” Katz tells me via video chat. “I started giving beans away to friends and the feedback encouraged me to just try it. Then I started thinking about whether this could scale.” What started as an outlet for pandemic stress and boredom eventually developed into Bassline Coffee - a small specialized roasting operation based in Oakland. But there were growing pains. Katz knew how to run a business, but that was only half the puzzle. He needed to find someone with coffee expertise. Luckily he already knew the perfect person.
Greg Pescheret has had a cafe job since he was 15 years old, bouncing from mom & pop coffee joints, Blue Bottle, and most recently Special Xtra Coffee - the cafe with the best soundtrack in San Francisco. In between shifts at his cafe jobs, Pescheret - who DJs as Birch Koolman - was a San Francisco nightlife regular who produced a show at the STUD SF and worked for Honey Soundsystem as a production manager. As fate would have it, Pescheret and Katz would meet at a Honey Soundsystem event where Katz was doing the sound. “We probably crossed paths hundreds of times before we actually met,” laughs Katz as he explains their meeting. “We just hit it off right away.”
Before teaming up with Katz, Greg Pescheret aka Birch Koolman was working as a DJ and party promoter in between shifts at a cafe.
It was this fated meeting that eventually led to Pescheret working for Katz at Waveworks. At the time, leaving the cafe industry behind held a lot of benefits for Pescheret. “I was working crazy hours,” Pescheret tells me. “I would sometimes go from working an all night party and then straight to work at the cafe. It took a toll”. Working with Katz at Waveworks offered Pescheret the stability to work in nightlife full-time - an opportunity he dove into head first never knowing that his coffee days were not yet behind him.
With Katz’s business acumen and Pescheret’s cafe experience the dream turned into reality and Bassline Coffee was finally in the mix. After the initial trial and error period they started ramping up production, roasting every week at CoRo Coffee in Oakland tinkering and refining their flavors while every Wednesday the pair would drink up to 20 different coffees. Since starting in May of 2020, Bassline’s unique specialty roasts have begun to catch people’s attention and, as of now, production from this tiny team has nearly doubled.
Pescheret (left), Katz (right)
Roasted fresh every Wednesday
Bassline’s website now offers subscriptions for die hard coffee fans and sample packs for the more discerning drinker. With a bevy of roasts ranging from light to dark there is something for everyone, but Katz is particularly proud of the dark roast made from beans sourced from Bella Vista Women’s Group in Chiapas, Mexico. A DJ at heart, Katz explained to me that coffee has turned out to be just as fulfilling as music, “Looking for these unique beans gives me the same feelings as hunting down rare records.”
At the end of our conversation I ask Katz about Waveworks. He tells me that Waveworks will continue to operate and hopefully business will return when a vaccine is distributed. As for Bassline Coffee, “I think we’re here to stay.” When I ask Pescheret whether he will return to DJing or continue roasting coffee, he laughs and responds exactly as you would expect for a DJ, “It’s all turning knobs.”
Win a coffee sample pack!
To support our friends, Fault Radio is teaming up with Bassline Coffee to offer an exclusive sample pack of musical themed roasts. Purchases will directly support Fault Radio’s non-profit mission and Bassline Coffee. Check it out here!
But that’s not the only sample pack we have available. Join our sample pack challenge and you can win a free aeropress and fresh whole beans from Bassline Coffee. All you have to do is create a song with this coffee inspired sample pack! To enter to win, all you have to do is download the sample pack, make a song, and share it with us at media@faultradio.com.
Brennan Ko is the Editor for Fault Radio and member of the Oakland photo collective &TheOthers. You can find him collecting records, being on the dancefloor, reading and writing about art and its sub-cultures, and being more nerdy than you.