What's in a Name?

Muhammed Ali was Cassius Clay.  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was Lew Alcindor.  Pearl Jam was Mookie Blalock.  Inflection Point Coffee was (almost) Gr8 Scott Roasters. (Yeah...we're all on the same level...)

Gr8 Scott Roasters was the name I had been playing with for a couple years...on the off chance that I ever decided to start my own roasting company.  My last name is Scott.  I imagined people exclaiming "Great Scott!" as they tasted my beans. "Gr8" was a nod to the idea that I would offer 8 coffees - 3 single origin coffees, each roasted to a lighter and darker roast, as well as 2 blends.  It was perfect.  And then I visited Rohit, my brother-in-law's brother-in-law...or as I think of him, my brother. 

I brought my new roaster to LA, hoping to rely on Rohit's expertise to shoot an unboxing video.  (You may have seen Rohit in an episode of Brooklyn-99, American Housewife, or in a revealing Mint Mobile commercial, among other things.)  Upon seeing the box, he excitedly declared "This is an inflection point in your life...it's real now!" I had gone from just talking about starting a coffee roastery to actually making the first significant purchase to get me there. We never did make that unboxing video (I'm incredibly camera-shy), but that statement stuck with me.   After I got back to San Diego a couple of days later, I made it official and texted Rohit to let him know that I was leaning toward going with Inflection Point Coffee for the business name.  This was in September, 2020.  

There's also an inflection point in coffee roasting, but we refer to it as the "turning point."  It's where the beans and roasting drum reach temperature equilibrium, before both rising.  That brings me to my logo.  

My logo is the simplified curve of a batch of roasting coffee.  The light blue line represents the roasting drum's temperature.  The drum has to be preheated, or "charged", before you add the beans, so it starts off really hot.  When you add the beans (the dotted brown line), the addition of room temperature beans to the drum brings down the drum's temp while the beans' temperature starts increasing right away.  The dot over the "i" in "inflection" marks the "turning point" or "inflection point" of the roast. 

The brown and blue lines in the logo are a callback to Tufts University, where I helped start a campus coffeehouse roughly 25 years ago.  (RIP Brown and Brew.) Finally, the colors I used for the company's name mirror the coffee roasting process:  the beans start off green, go through a drying phase to yellow, before finishing a delicious deep brown.    Like me.   : )