Community Spotlight · Black & White Coffee Roasters, Durham, NC
Lem Butler
Lem Butler is a father, husband, and consummate coffee professional who worked with Counter Culture Coffee in Durham, North Carolina for more than a decade. In 2017, with business partner Kyle Ramage, he opened Black & White Coffee Roasters, also based in Durham.
As a long-time customer of Pacific Foods Barista Series™, Butler has a lot of thoughts about plant-based beverages, and the pursuit of quality in everything from coffee to family. I can’t remember when I first heard about Pacific Foods Barista Series™—actually, I think it was in Barista Magazine when I first hear, and baristas were going crazy over this soy and I’m like, ‘I’ve gotta get a hold of it, I’ve gotta get a hold of it,’ and I couldn’t get it, but I worked with it at an SCA tradeshow—I think it was when I competed in Portland [in 2009] when I used it, and I was blown away.
I was actually able to do latte art—it performed like milk! That was a game-changer.
And it wasn’t just the soy! Lem and Kyle went on to add Barista Series™ Almond and Rice to their stable of offerings, to great success.