our Founder

In creating Gotham Coffee Roasters, Chris Calkins brought more than just a profound understanding of coffee; he brought Gotham 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 what makes a perfect cup of coffee: from sourcing to the technicality of roasting. Today Calkins is arguably one of only a small handful of masters working with this depth of experience.

Long before Calkins ever met Peet or worked for the original founders of Starbucks, he was engaging with the culinary arts. From his childhood, the passion for chasing quality has driven Calkins throughout his life. One of Chris’s earliest memories is his father setting up blind taste tests—pouring out a line of different root beers and having his children decide which was best without looking. The connection to coffee as a craft has roots in the home as well. Decades before their rediscovery & popularity he would watch his mother make cold brew and Chemex coffee

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. Calkins continued to make an impact on the coffee business in Seattle, working with the three original Starbucks owners in the Pike’s Place Market flagship and helping them open their fourth and fifth stores,

It was the height of the specialty coffee second wave, and after a stint marketing the emerging brand La Marzocco, Chris co-founded Spinelli Coffee in San Francisco. It was early on at Spinelli that Alfred Peet entered the picture and started hanging around with the young founders. “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 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.”