save whatever caffeine-fueled
workdays he put in.
“I was originally a musician and then I went into
comedy,” Sinnott says. “I had
gotten married and decided I
needed some stability in my
life. That was a bad move—I
can imagine my in-laws
hearing that: ‘Oh, yeah, don’t
worry: I’m not going to be a
musician anymore, I’m going
in to comedy.”
In that time, a fellow comedian who also worked as a
writer introduced him to a
man who soon became a
writing client of Sinnott’s.
This introduction proved instrumental. One day that
same client, a tad irked at how
long Sinnott took to make
coffee for meetings, sarcastically remarked, “Maybe you
should write about coffee.”
That weekend, as a fun
gag, Sinnott worked with a
graphic designer friend to
craft a short newsletter in
which he reviewed coffeemakers and wrote a few feature
articles about his favorite
drink. On Monday, having followed through on the snarky
advice to write about coffee,
he handed a copy to his client.
CoffeeCon was launched in 2012 with a grant from
the City of Warrenville, IL. Pretty soon we had a
very, very high-end coffee show.
interview: kevin sinnot
CoffeeCon will be
held Saturday, March 7th,
in New York City at the
Broad Street Ballroom
The client was impressed.
“He slapped a post-it on it and
sent it to USA Today, and they
published a blurb on it, and
suddenly I had a mailbox full
of requests for this newsletter
that didn’t really exist,” Sinnott
says. He rushed to a printing
store, made copies, and mailed
them.
It lasted. Sinnott kept
writing about coffee, initially
focusing on reviewing coffeemakers, which he says he sees
as the hardware to coffee
beans’ software. He realized