Sips and a store
Ryan Hoban’s mission is simple. He’s all about sourcing and roasting good coffee, and he wants to connect with customers by providing the best service possible.
It’s been an interesting year to figure out how to do just that.
After moving back to Milwaukee several years ago, Hoban founded Pilcrow Coffee with some high school friends. Then in 2018 he opened a small coffee shop, Interval, at 1600 N Jackson St.
As the service industry changed over the past year, there were different ideas for Pilcrow and Interval, and the two split. Hoban now owns and operates Interval and has no role at Pilcrow.
Persevering during a pandemic taught Hoban how much he enjoys day-to-day interactions with people. Interval’s small space and intimate approach provide that. Being a hands-on coffee roaster involved from bean to cup also gives him satisfaction, and it isn’t something he wants to hand over to anyone else again anytime soon.
In November he added the Corner Store inside Interval. Now in addition to coffee, breads, breakfast sandwiches and pastry done in house, Interval offers bottles of wine and other beverages plus goods that might be served with them. Alex Kanastab handles the wine selections. Interval also hosts Saturday burger and wine pop-ups, with Hoban cooking burgers.
Interval is currently open 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday and 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Pop-ups are every Saturday from 5 to 9 p.m. For online ordering, go to intervaltogo.com.
The Oconomowoc native and married father of three tells us how he came to be a coffee roaster and his plans.
Starbucks to self-employed
Coffee’s a sexy dream business, then you get into it and you realize it is food service, maybe even harder with the margins. While living in Chicago I worked at Starbucks. I’d run the corporate ladder as far as I thought I would be able to, running a high-volume cafe. I was 26. My friend owned a window cleaning company, convinced me to quit to join his business while my wife was pregnant with our second child. …
One of our first accounts was the local coffee shop in our neighborhood. I used it like many people do. I would steal the Wi-Fi, got to know the owner while using it as my office. They roasted the coffee in the shop. All the romantic notions of a coffee shop were there for me as a customer — the specialty and craftsmanship and how they sourced coffee and the global supply chain. I got excited to learn more. He’d lead a tasting every Friday. I was just the one guy who was always there . ...
Fast forward a few months, he was going on a sourcing trip to Rwanda and asked if I wanted to go with him. I was just his window cleaner/customer. Let’s do it. I saw how big the supply chain was, and fell in love with the bigger notion of what coffee is as an industry. This makes more sense with who I am rather than cleaning windows every day. I took a job with the cafe Ipsento. I spent a year there learning the business.
Behind the brew
I moved back to town, started Pilcrow with some friends from high school. I was the owner/operator and majority stakeholder. In Chicago at Ipsento I’d started the first nitro cold brew program in the city. I saw how much success that was, and (at the time) Milwaukee didn’t have anything like that. We started focusing on cold brew …
I looked at the craft brew world, how limited runs generated a lot of excitement. It was doing things a little differently than your typical retail coffee model. That translated to Interval, a separate entity from Pilcrow. When the old Pleasant Kafe space became available I
The burger and wine pop-ups at Interval have been popular.
thought it would be a win-win. We can serve the coffee, but also showcase a relationship-driven business model. … Pilcrow wanted to get into retail, different ideologies. We just decided to go our separate ways.
In November we launched the Corner Store, a small curated bottled shop (inside Interval), where you get our whole bean coffee, about 40 to 60 natural wines, all low intervention. We also have loaves of sourdough bread we make in house, some conserva, tinned fish, ready-todrink options like Rishi tea botanicals, Wisco pop and cured meats.
Right now everything is all to-go. We have the patio and people can live outside with their drink or food.
The whole food and pastries program, the sourdough, is all done in house. Weekends we have a more expansive menu.
Burger and wine pop-ups
We started in December, putting out fire pits, cooking burgers and pouring wine outside. People come in, order and we’ll uncork the bottle there if they want a bottle.
Ryan Hoban says the small size of Interval gives him a chance to interact with customers.
We’ll make the food, and Alex will be pouring different wines. It is a simple menu, a vegan burger made with a chickpea patty and a mushroom glaze, then a couple different meat burgers.