koffi rancho mirage

Blending in

Koffi in Rancho Mirage is the desert’s only specialty coffee retailer with its own roasting facility.

Judd Spicer Current Digital, Restaurants

koffi rancho mirage
Store manager Jackie Summers poses next to her state-of-the-art roaster at Koffi in Rancho Mirage.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ETHAN KAMINSKY

Rancho Mirage starts the day from the grounds up. Having opened in 2013 to accommodate the coffee bean needs of its sister locations in Palm Springs, the Roasting Room and Café at Koffi in Rancho Mirage is now caffeinating a path from its Highway 111 perch to cups across the country.

The desert’s only specialty coffee retailer with its own roasting facility, Koffi’s locale in Rancho Mirage has proven popular for both city residents and cross-valley commuters. Indoor seating coupled with ample patio space sates for all seasons, with blends hot and cold combined with a menu of fresh pastries, sandwiches, and specialty items for breakfast and lunch.

The Roasting Room creates more than 25 different coffees, including specialty roast and signature blends for area restaurants and boutique hotels. With more than 40 wholesale accounts, coupled with a booming online shop, the Koffi brand is both bustling across the valley and shipping around the nation.

“In the off-season, we’ll now roast anywhere from 1,000-1,500 pounds per week, and, during the peak months, we’ll roast up to 3,000 pounds a week,” says Jackie Summers, store manager at Koffi in Rancho Mirage. “So, we roast a lot of coffee.”

Koffi’s state-of-the-art Diedrich roaster features clean-burning, infrared technology and provides control over roasting profiles; to ensure freshness and promote fair trade, Koffi roasts in small batches and sources the world’s best green, organic coffees.

With four Koffi locations in the desert, the growing list of blends is finding feature presentation with white label specialty coffees, including a host of Rancho Mirage-centric roasts.

Bernie’s Rancho Mirage has its own Koffi blend on the menu, and Wally’s Desert Turtle features a signature Koffi custom blend with coffees from Peru, Honduras, and Ethiopia.

Historic Thunderbird Country Club, the desert’s first 18-hole course, also sports its own white label Koffi blend, with a profile coalescing the bold flavors of Latin American coffee with the savory taste of beans from Kenya.

Annually, the Rancho Mirage Writer’s Festival has a highlighted coffee chapter with its own Koffi signature white-label blend; the popularity of the roast has turned the bean’s page beyond the yearly gathering.

“It’s our Literary Blend, and it was created specifically for the Writer’s Festival,” Summers says of the blend of Peruvian and Ethiopian beans. “Jamie Kabler (Festival founder, president, and chair) was instrumental in establishing a blend that earmarked the event annually. And now, the city’s library and the City of Rancho Mirage also have this coffee in their facilities for all staff members.”

This story originally appeared in R/M, the Magazine of Rancho Mirage, 2020 edition. To read the current digital edition, click HERE.