This edition of Coffee Brand Breakdown is presented by our partner, noissue.
Medici Coffee Roasters has been a fixture of the coffee community in Austin, Texas since 2006. Over nearly two decades, owners Michael and Allison Vaclav have opened nine locations (and closed three of them), built a roasting program that supplies cafes around the state, and cultivated a brand identity built on being a space where people from all walks of life can converse.
The Medici story is the first feature in a new video series, Coffee Brand Breakdown, where we reverse-engineer how successful coffee companies build brands that turn customers into loyal followers.
In this episode, presented by noissue, we sat down with Michael Vaclav at Medici’s flagship location in the Springdale neighborhood to talk about the family that inspired the name, why he designs the cafes to confuse patrons, and what happens when you stop trying to control everything about your brand.
Watch the full episode below or check out a transcript of our favorite moments from the interview below.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Tell me about the Medici brand. What’s the core essence?
My wife and I didn’t want the Coffee Java kind of aesthetic. We were looking for a bigger idea. I was a history and philosophy major in college—a complete dork—and I studied the Medici family. They’ve been known as patrons of the arts, so that kind of has this big umbrella of looking at your community and asking, how can we support it?
I also really love extreme examples. The Medici did a lot of really great things and a lot of really horrible things. Money, influence, and power are not good or bad—it’s what you do with them. They did everything from protect Galileo to producing two popes. Pretty much anybody in the Renaissance had something to do with the Medici.
It was really important for Medici Coffee to be a very neutral space. We never really get involved politically, socially, or religiously, because we’re the place where the conversation happens. I want a Democrat or a Republican feeling comfortable to come into our shop and have that discussion, or a Muslim and a Christian, or whatever it might be. We try not to put our own viewpoints in, but to keep it as much of an open space for that conversation to happen.
What are the non-negotiable pillars you’ve built the company on?
It really comes down to: can you just be nice to people? As far as hiring, we can teach you coffee. But our highest value is just: can you be nice to people?
[With customers coming into the shop] you get five minutes of somebody’s day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. You really get to know them. I love it whenever a barista sees that moment where they realize the impact they can have.
There was one lady—she came in and said, “This is the only bright spot in my day. I hate my work, but when I come in here before work, you guys make my day.” I just happened to be sitting at the bar at [our Westlake location] when she was telling the baristas that. And you saw it on her face.
You just don’t know the impact you have on people by just being nice. Saying hello. “Hey, nice shirt.” Something as dumb as that. That’s the magic I really love about coffee shops, and that’s my non-negotiable. Can we at least just accomplish that?
When you get to three, four, more locations, you have to think differently about maintaining culture. What did that look like for you?
That’s really hard. I mostly relied on my staff to do that. Part of being a business owner is learning to step back and allow other people to take important roles. There’s a drawback: as you step back, that helps the cultural aspect, but you become less engaged. So you can either set systems to ensure people are following them, or you can allow your management to set that tone. But that means you have to step back, because if they’re looking for you to make all the decisions, their personality doesn’t come out in how they infuse that into the stores.
At first it was Allison and my coffee shop, but as we kept growing, it became less and less ours. It actually became our customers’ as well as our staff and management. You have this sort of organism that’s changing all the time, both good and bad parts. I was more trying to manage that: how do you keep that chaotic organism healthy?
When customers walk into a Medici location, the layout is a little unusual. Is that intentional?
One thing I really love about all of our stores is that when you walk in, there’s a confusing moment. It’s one of the things we’ve built in purposefully. Usually you walk into a store and you go straight to the register. But I wanted that moment when you walk into Medici to confuse you a little bit. All of a sudden the outside world just goes away, and now you’re present.
Every one of our stores, you’ll always meet the espresso machine first. And then the ordering is away from all the seating, so it takes you all the way into the store. The register and every transactional aspect is away from the customer seating area so it’s not on top of you when you’re sitting down.
So you walk in and it’s like, ‘Where do I go?’ That’s an opportunity for the barista to say, “Hey, we’ll get you over here.” It’s an intentional interaction. The barista is supposed to be working with their head up and see if someone’s got that look on their face. Now there’s a human element, a relational element right at the beginning. You’re not just meeting a register.
It means we fail sometimes, and sometimes we get it right. But I’d rather have that opportunity there than it not to be there at all.
Tell me about the packaging for roasted coffee. What’s going on there and some of the decisions you’ve made.
Everyone has had a piece of designing pretty much anything we’ve done. People like noissue—[they make] our bags and cups and stuff. They’re really easy to work with, and they take [design work] off of my plate.
Ever since noissue came on, it’s just, “What do you guys need? We can do that.” And I don’t have to think about it. I absolutely love Josh over there. He does such a great job. I don’t have to think about it, and I think that’s probably one of the best things. It’s good quality stuff. It comes back to the customer service side of things. Their whole crew is easy to work with.
How do you think about staying relevant as a brand long-term?
We’re more of a classic brand, more timeless. If you have a brand that’s not timeless, that’s more trendy, you can have issues with how you push that brand into the future after that trendiness has gone past. Maybe that’s fun for you, always remaking yourself every three to five years. How do you stay relevant? I’ve just made the decision to go with that long-term classic look.
