Creating a Seasonal Drink for Our Fundraiser in Honor of Juneteenth
Written By: Maxine Cook, Andytown Lead Coffee Educator
Last year, in honor of Juneteenth, our general managers came together and started a fundraiser to give reparations to Black-owned organizations. We wanted to continue this effort every summer moving forward, and this year, our GMs have chosen to support Urban Cowgirl Ranch, owned by Brianna Noble and located in Castro Valley. Heysel Diaz, the GM of our Lawton cafe, says that Urban Cowgirl Ranch has been on their radar since last year. “Shout out to [our barista] Jasmine Bell for having us revisit [it… the ranch] is a place for inner city youth to gain experience with horses and the agriculture around them—something that they wouldn’t normally get to do living in the city.”
For last year’s fundraiser, we brought back our cold brew sangria. But Heysel wanted to have something different this time around: a new, refreshing beverage that would excite our customers and would also help us fire up our fundraiser. They linked up with our Training Department several weeks before launch to fine tune a syrup that marries well with nearly every beverage: an orange lavender syrup.
Exactly how much work goes into the creation of a seasonal drink? Continue reading if you’d like to take a deep dive into our R&D process with Maxine Cook, our Lead Coffee Educator. Or, you can skip to the bottom to learn a little bit more about the fundraiser.
Maxine’s Take: Syrup Experimentation
When we are thinking of adding a new drink to the menu there are several things we must consider. The first is how easy it is to make in a cafe space, the second is how repeatable and consistent making the syrup is, and the third is how approachable the flavor profile of the drink is. Heysel suggested we create a special snowy plover, noting that our customers get really excited about seasonal snowies. So rather than complicate things for ourselves, we could jazz up a drink that people already know and love.
Now that we had an idea for the drink, we needed to think about the cost and sourcing of the ingredients, and the level of prep baristas needed in order to create the drink. My first thought was lavender. It’s a super popular syrup flavor, as it adds a clean florality to any espresso drink. It is also pretty potent, so you don’t need much of it to stand up to coffee. It’s really easy to over-extract florals, so we decided to make a lavender syrup separately and combine it with another flavored syrup. This would make it a lot easier to balance flavors.
Since this drink was going to be launched only for the month of June, I was researching seasonal summer fruits that pair well with lavender. The first thing I tried was strawberry. All of the recipes for strawberry simple syrup I found required the fruit to be boiled with sugar and water for a period of time–something that is too labor-intensive for our baristas and would require a larger prep space. I tried to hack this by slicing the strawberries very thinly and steeping them in hot water and sugar until the water cooled and then I strained the syrup. After trying this iteration with some lavender simple syrup we noticed the strawberry flavor was not coming through. Back to the drawing board! The next time I tried cutting the strawberries even smaller, muddled them, macerated them with sugar, and left them in the fridge for an hour. Then I added a touch more sugar and the hot water, let it steep until the water cooled, and then strained that. This led to the same result of the strawberry flavor being masked by the lavender and coffee.
Back to the drawing board again! I decided a strawberry simple syrup was not feasible. I went back to researching summer fruits that would pair with lavender–I WILL make the lavender work– and decided to try oranges since they’re in season throughout the summer. I researched some recipes and they all called for orange peels. I peeled an orange, added sugar and hot water, and let that cool before I strained it. Then I did it again but this time I added some juice I squeezed from one of the oranges. We ended up with two different orange syrups to try.
At this point, it was time for the meeting where we were trying everything so I brought the strawberry syrups (just in case!), the orange syrups, and the lavender syrup that I was determined to marry with one of the two. Everyone agreed the strawberry was a no-go (darn!) but the orange lavender was a crowd favorite. Everyone had a preference for the orange syrup sans orange juice. This, however, led to another issue. If we wanted to do an orange simple syrup using orange peels, what do we do with all these peeled oranges? Juggle them?
After conferring with our experienced baking department, and realizing they would have no use for a ton of prepped oranges, they suggested something else. The bakery actually had orange zest on hand and suggested we use that to see if it would replicate the same flavor. So, I made orange syrup using only the zest and did another taste test with the cafe trainers and GMs. Not only did we all agree it tasted similar to the original orange syrup, but it was so much easier to prepare. No peeling and no extra juicy orbs to fling into the air!
After finalizing the orange syrup, we did several more taste tests to fine tune the orange and lavender ratio and voila–the orange-lavender snowy plover was born. The last step of this R&D process was to try the syrup in a latte and cappuccino, since customers often asked if they could try a seasonal syrup in some hot drinks. In a snowy plover, the orange lavender syrup adds a beautiful, bright sweetness that when mixed in with the whipped cream was reminiscent of an orange creamsicle. The lavender really came through in the finish and left a clean, floral feeling in our mouths that made us keep wanting more. Kieran Eng, the trainer at our beachside Taraval cafe, noted that in milk drinks, the lavender is more noticeably present. We were pleasantly surprised at how well this syrup pairs with various hot and cold beverages, and also how the perceived intensity of the orange and lavender changed from drink to drink. After consulting with the GMs, we decided that any drink ordered with this syrup would benefit our fundraiser.
Over these 3 weeks of R&D, I had I don’t even know how many snowy plovers I tasted.. It’s not usually my go-to drink, but after trying it with the orange-lavender syrup, I was o b s e s s e d and couldn’t wait to share it with the world. Xavier Hernandez, who is the general manager of our cafe in the roastery, said this about their experience: “... it was very exciting to see this go from an idea to our finished product. Seeing the trainers come together to collaborate on different syrups, techniques, and flavor palettes was so fun! I really enjoyed how collaborative this process was, visiting different locations and having different people taste and gathering input/feedback on our syrups, and seeing the reactions was everything!”
Fundraiser Details
The orange-lavender syrup is only available for the month of June, so be sure to try it out while it’s still here! If orange or lavender isn’t your choice of flavor but you still want to support Urban Cowgirl Ranch, click on this link to make a direct donation, or scan the QR code available at all locations.
Although we’re in the process of fine-tuning our fundraising schedule, we’d love to hear from you if you’re a small business and would like to get involved with an Andytown drink fundraiser. Send us an email at info@andytownsf.com or stop by any of our shops and ask to speak to the General Manager. They’re all involved in our fundraiser efforts and are excited to collaborate with our community!
To stay up to date with Urban Cowgirl Ranch, you can follow them on social media: Urban Cowgirl Ranch on Facebook