In Albuquerque, two coffee owners let the beans decide everything

Don’t tell Juan Mercado that coffee is bad for children.

The Albuquerque roaster and coffee shop owner grew up among fields of beans and was used to having a swirl of it in his morning beverage.

“I remember me and my brother, they give you a piece of bread and coffee in your water, and that is your food,” says Mercado, who was born in El Salvador and grew up in Costa Rica. 

Mercado and his wife, Carol Krause, own Odacrem Coffee — Odacrem is the reverse spelling of Mercado — and Madcrema. The former is a roasting company, and the latter is a popular neighborhood outlet near Downtown that sells the couple’s bagged products and serves coffee and food.

It’s Krause you’ll find behind the cafe counter, while Mercado is in charge of their 25-pound roaster. 

But it’s the coffee that controls everything.

The couple are meticulous about what they sell and how it is roasted. Mercado avoids buying future coffee under contract, because he says coffee is a farm product, and you can’t know in advance how good the crop will be. Instead, he buys on the spot when he finds samples that he likes and that he knows will sell.

Sometimes, he knows with just a sip and a sniff.

“I know the smell because I was born on a coffee farm,” says Mercado, who calls himself “a coffee crazy.” “Over there, it’s something that everybody does.” 

Also, coffee makes him happy. 

If you’re a friend (and he says he makes friends every day), he might take you to a back room and tell you, “If you sing, your coffee is free.”

“And I grab the guitar, and we sing. It’s fun.”

When you started out, did you envision this kind of success?

Mercado: Actually, when we got here, I was thinking mostly about real estate. I was thinking, I want to start paying a mortgage, so I’m creating value in the place… and not (have to) pay rent. I think that nobody can compete with my coffee prices or with my quality, because I can put the money in the quality. 

Krause: As wholesale roasters, we’ve seen so many startups have big plans about doing a cafe, and it takes a while to make a success out of it. There’s so many that just couldn’t wait that long, and they ran out of money. So, you know, not having that huge rent to pay has been a big advantage for us.

How do you drink your coffee?

Mercado: I drink only black coffee. To me, coffee with sugar tastes like cough syrup. 

Krause: I usually drink a latte. I’m guilty. Also, we do a lot of tasting (of different kinds.)

Why did you decide to branch out from roasting and open a cafe?

Krause: Partly to have a retail outlet for our coffee. You don’t make a huge amount on wholesale, and it makes a big difference, pricewise, to sell your own bags. People are able to try it and see what it can do. And people like to have breakfast and coffee at the same spot, so we started with simple little breakfast items. It’s kind of grown from there.

Was it difficult to start an additional business?

Krause: When we opened the cafe, it was seven days a week for like a year and a half. Both of us suck at being a salesman, at going out and trying to promote ourselves, so almost all of our growth has been organic growth, word of mouth.

Mercado: We have a bunch of regulars by now. I think that we are bad sellers, but we try to be quite authentic (and) maybe humble. 

How did you get started in the coffee business?

Mercado: My schooling was in computers. Just after getting out of high school in Costa Rica, I started working for the Neumann Kaffee Group over there. There were no computers at that time. They had 12,000 index cards for every customer, and that’s the way they were doing it. I started developing the software to control the coffee business, from purchasing to selling to export and everything. 

Krause: I got involved mainly because of him. I had worked up in Washington state in the milk bottling industry, until everything crashed in ‘08. They closed the plant I had been at for almost 15 years. So it took me a little bit, but I found a job at the cheese plant (in Clovis). While being down here, I met him. He taught me how to roast. 

What keeps you up at night?

Mercado: We are getting older. We need to have a replacement person, somebody who is willing to take over the business … or it’s going to be dismantled and disappear. So that is hard.

Krause: This is going to be our retirement, so we have to be careful with it. It needs to grow. We’ve grown it, like I said, organically. 

Which aspect of your work do you enjoy the most?

Mercado: The roasting, because you decide how you want that cup of coffee. That coffee, when you are roasting it, in seconds it changes flavor, acidity. It can develop bitterness. (Getting it) where you want it, that part is kind of tricky.

Krause: I kind of like it here (in the cafe), because you can make somebody’s day. If somebody comes in, tired, grumpy, whatever, between the conversation and good coffee they get, you get a smile on their face in just a few minutes. You can just change whatever mood they were in when they came.

Ellen Marks, a former Journal editor, writes One-on-One profiles and Scam Watch. You can reach her at emarks@abqjournal.com.