Heartbreak Coffee to Offer Downtown Long Beach Its First Third-Wave Coffeehouse

Photos by Brian Addison.

Heartbreak Coffee, the local, third-wave coffee roasting duo that is Gretchen Williams and Michelle Bandach, is not so named because of some attempt at branding irony. While the coffee is so good that it could break one’s heart should they visit a corporate chain coffee shop afterward, their tale is one of two souls desperately trying to make their product (and relationship) work during times of pain and struggle.

This perhaps makes their move out of their Eastside home—which currently serves as their operations headquarters—and into a brick-and-mortar location at 3rd and Long Beach Blvd. all the more sweet. Not to mention the team will be sharing 237 Long Beach Blvd. with Yellow 108 and the corner with Beachwood’s The Blendery as it becomes downtown’s first third-wave coffee-roasting joint.

Gretchen and Michelle [pictured right] were looking everywhere for empty warehouses—Signal Hill, Long Beach, Los Al, Lakewood—before they stumbled upon the interweaving-of-businesses that Yellow 108 owner Lauren Lilly had in mind.

“We just wanted to find a shitty little shack to put our roaster in so we could start roasting more efficiently,” Gretchen [pictured right] said. “But Lauren had another idea in mind.”

The original plan was for Heartbreak to take up a mere 400 sq. ft. of space to act as a production space only—no storefront, housing the pair’s Diedrich IR-3 roaster—while Yellow 108 housed the rest. However, due to permitting nightmares, the situation became, in the words of Gretchen, an “all or nothing” endeavor.

While Yellow 108 will occupy the back, Heartbreak opted to take the entire front space after discovering the exorbitant cost of just putting in the roaster alone.

“We’re in a position now where everything we’ve done—packaging, shipping, art, development—has been entirely out-of-pocket,” Michelle said. “We don’t have any investors or any loans… With our Kickstarter, we would prefer to go as far as the community will allow us to, rather than depend on outside resources. They have built this; all we’re doing is following the energy they’re giving us.”

The tie between community and coffee has always been an intimate relationship for Gretchen, since she fell in love—like all coffee lovers do—with the communal sense of the coffeeshop when she first began working as a barista in 2008. The Ole Miss graduate settled into Bogart’s in Seal Beach and, by the end of 2009, fell in love to such an extent that the owner was willing to offer Gretchen the name in exchange for a buy.

On top of it all, it was the place where she met the love of her life and future business partner, Michelle. Given this, it would make sense that Gretchen’s plans were grand: change the name, alter the roof into a beer bar at night, and serve the best coffee during all business hours. Unfortunately, the cost was far too much and, even worse, Gretchen had let her emotional and aspirational attachment to the idea of owning Bogart’s get ahead of her.

“She was fully invested,” Michelle said, “but everything—every single thing—fell through though.”

Marking the first of many heartbreaks, Gretchen returned home to Kansas in hopes of not just sorting through her dream of owning her own house of caffeination, but mending the rocky relationship she held with her parents, who vastly disapproved of her relationship with Michelle as well as the fact that she was an open lesbian.

Ever the dedicated fighter, Gretchen treaded through the extremely difficult process of going to family therapy in an attempt to bridge the divide between herself and her family. Whenever her parents visit California, they tend to mostly ignore Gretchen and entirely ignore Michelle, with her father flat out making sure Michelle knew her presence was unwelcome in his own. This is a man who compared Gretchen’s identity to “walking on thin ice” before she “fell through” after moving to California and meeting Michelle.

“I knew I had to do it because I had to make sure, for myself, that I did everything I could possibly do to make this work,” Gretchen [pictured right] said. “If you do or don’t want to be a part of my life, it’s up to you; the ball’s in your court and it’s not on me, y’know?”

The therapy did little in terms of mending Gretchen’s relationship with her parents, leaving Gretchen to flip a foreclosure on her own—“I just watched a bunch of YouTube videos”—and move on with her dreams of beans.

Enter next the heartbreak: the owners of Seal Beach’s Devynn’s Garden and Katin Surf Shop had a space that they had hoped to turn into a coffeeshop, prompting Gretchen to bounce back and forth between Kansas and Cali in hopes of making her vision more tangible. This, too, fell through.

Later, as she continued to hone her trade, Gretchen began apprenticing under local roasting masters, without pay, but with the promise of a future job—“Everything,” Michelle said, “was depending on this job”—only to have countless hours of free labor go to waste when the job fell through. Heartbreak once again, even as Gretchen purchased a small table-top roaster to teach herself the process of roasting beans.

Challenge after challenge, the compounding heartbreak proved to be as powerful internally as it was externally, as the strain began reaching into Michelle and Gretchen’s relationship. After staying together long distance for two years, they had to separate in order to remain amicable with one another. This final heartbreak, however, left Michelle with the only choice love provided her: light a fire under Gretchen’s ass—Gretchen felt that the Universe was telling her coffee wasn’t her calling—or somehow begin to say a very difficult, permanent goodbye.

“There was so much shit going on—and when Gretchen was told she scored the job and it didn’t happen… I sat down and designed, by hand, the Heartbreak Coffee logo,” Michelle said. “If this couldn’t do anything, I didn’t know what else would. Just do it for yourself.”

The hand-drawn logo by Michelle that changed it all.

Hosting a group of friends and not knowing how they would respond to the coffee—“It could taste like shit; ya never know,” Gretchen joked—and discovered that, across the board, all her different coffees ranked as favorite among her friends.

“No matter how I make my coffee, no matter how I roast my beans, everybody’s tastes are different,” Gretchen said. “I feel like third-wave coffeeshops aren’t about teaching about how to make coffee but how they make coffee.”

This find-what-the-people love ideology led them to push their product through Instagram (or what Michelle calls “The Savior”). Suddenly, Heartbreak’s IG had thousands of followers, with people from across the world—even Saudi Arabia—asking for their small but tasty batches of crafty caffeine. The pair were prompted to create an online store after receiving so many requests to do so through IG.

Their work was cut out for them: the week before Christmas, they had to make 60 pounds of roasted beans with their table-top roaster. That meant 15 minutes to roast a batch, 15 minutes to let the machine cool down, all the while Michelle creating each label by hand to create an entirely unique product for each individual customer.

Finding their groove, Heartbreak suddenly catapulted and, with the purchase of the aforementioned IR-3, they can now churn out product without working to exhaustion. With the leasing of their new space, it seems the sweet has finally come to balance out the bitter.

With their Kickstarter launched, they hope to raise at least $55K, which will realistically get their roastery and production facility up and running on a basic foundation. $75K will allow the coffee bar to go into full swing. $100K will furnish the shop entirely with equipment. And $110K will provide Long Beach with a full, bittersweet (but mostly sweet) Heartbreak experience.

“We work our asses off but it’s been the community who got our name out there,” Michelle said. “Everyone has been doing this job for us collectively. We want to keep pursuing that rather than find investors who tell us what we need to do. Depending upon what we raise will depend on what the shop will become. Ideally, we want the complete dream—not just a production facility but a full-on coffeeshop.”

Heartbreak Coffee hopes to be ready, at least for production, come September 1. To follow Heartbreak on IG, find them at @HeartbreakCoffee. Heartbreak Coffee’s Kickstarter runs until Thursday, July 3 at 12:00AM.

Read more:

• Yellow 108, Beachwood, and Other Long Beach Businesses to Transform Downtown Corner

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