our Founder

In creating Gotham Coffee Roasters, Chris Calkins brought more than just a profound understanding of coffee gained from a lifetime on the cutting edge of the coffee movement. He brought Gotham something else, something unique – lineage. Mentored by the legendary father of the Specialty Coffee movement, Alfred Peet (who originally roasted the coffee on which Starbucks built its name), Calkins was one of a select few whom Peet chose to teach his galaxy of knowledge about what makes a perfect cup of coffee-from sourcing the green beans to the technical knowledge of the final roast. Today Calkins is arguably one of only a small handful of coffee masters working, with this depth of experience.

Long before Calkins ever met Peet, (or would work for the original founders of Starbucks as he did later), one of Chris’s earliest childhood memories involves his father setting up blind taste tests—pouring out a line of different root beers and having his children sample them and decide which was best without looking.

That passion for chasing quality (along with watching his mother make cold brew and Chemex coffee using the tools of a third wave coffee movement that wouldn’t hit the mainstream for decades) has driven Calkins throughout his life.

But only a decade later, he was recruited by a fledgling Starbucks to launch their restaurant coffee division, after Calkins had convinced them to supply a restaurant he was managing in downtown Seattle—in what was only their second restaurant account. Working with the three original Starbucks owners both in the Pike’s Place Market flagship and helping them open their fourth and fifth stores, Calkins continued to make an impact on the coffee business in Seattle.

It was the height of the specialty coffee first wave, and after marketing the elite espresso machine La Marzocco, Chris co-founded Spinelli Coffee in San Francisco. It was early on at Spinelli that Alfred Peet wandered into the coffee roaster and started hanging around with the young founders, and began giving them his knowledge. “He didn’t have any kids, family,” remembers Chris, “and he didn’t want this knowledge to disappear.”

The creation of Spinelli Coffee tapped into Calkins’s lifelong skills as an entrepreneur, and the company grew into such an international success—including retail stores, a large wholesale division and licensed stores in Singapore-

After the sale of Spinelli, a non-compete clause in the sales contract led Calkins to follow his other passion, wine making. He founded Destino Wines, an award winning vintner in Napa Valley. Which he sold in 2017 before moving back to New York City,

But for Calkins, coffee has been, and always will be, where the alchemy lies. A few years before founding Gotham Coffee Roasters, he co-founded Prodigy Coffee, in Greenwich Village, where his coffee dreams had started.

Authenticity. Lineage. Excellence. And ultimately, for Calkins, community.

“It’s a global community,” Calkins says, “from the growers to the consumer. People coming together while experiencing the joy of drinking a good cup of coffee, going into a cafe, sharing their lives. Communicating. Wall Street was formed at a coffee house. Lloyds of London started in a coffee house. We’re part of something bigger than the beans. We’re part of a long history.”