- Each coffee bag is screen printed by hand and topped with a hand wax stamp at Branywine Coffee Roasters new headquarters in Newport
- His work day starts at 4 a.m. with coffee and a pencil in his Penny Hill garage, which has been converted into an art studio.
- His newest coffee illustrations focus on Delaware urban legends, such as the Selbyville Swamp Monster and Cape Henlopen Corpse Light.
If you’ve purchased a bag of coffee from Brew HaHa!, you’ve probably gazed groggily at the bag, drawn in by its fanciful artwork that has included wizards, aliens, animals and local Delaware landmarks.
When the founder of the Brew HaHa! empire Alissa Morkides opened a spin-off coffee roastery to supply her coffee shops, she turned to head creative Todd Purse.
With Purse’s wild imagination helping fuel Brandywine Coffee Roasters, some of his new duties included coming up with the names for special blends, along with their colorful screen-printed artwork.
The result is instantly-recognizable artwork that can be found in kitchens across the state, a unique way for the Salesianum School and Delaware College of Art and Design to get his unique artistic visions out into the world.
With an official title listed as “Art/Creative Wizard” on the roastery’s website, Purse works out of the small garage attached to his Penny Hill home, which he shares with wife Ally and two children, Teddy, 5, and June, 19 months.
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That’s where his art comes alive starting at 4 a.m. each morning when his pencil flies across his sketchbook ― after making his coffee, of course.
“When Alissa started the company, she wanted to bring love of art, coffee and the Brandywine Valley together,” said Brew HaHa! president Jillian Bruce-Willis. “And we’ve given Todd the space to create in a fun way and it’s nice to see little pops of art out there on the bags.”
Each bag is screen printed by hand and topped with a hand wax stamp at the roastery’s new Newport headquarters, recently moving after outgrowing their Trolley Square area location in Wilmington.
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These days, only about 35 percent of Brandywine Coffee Rosters output actually ends up being sold at Brew HaHa! The rest is sold at about 200 other cafes across the country, along with bags of the strong stuff sold online and in stores. They average about two new coffees each week and produce between 4,000 and 7,000 pounds of coffee per week, depending on the season, Purse said.
When he’s not working for Brandywine Coffee Roasters, he’s the longtime drummer of Newark-born punk act The Headies, host of his daily short-form podcast, “Create Magic” and creator of the Personal Folklore zine.
He sees his coffee bag art as a sort of mini concert poster for each flavor, tying a couple of his worlds together.
We recently caught up with Purse, 37, to chat about how he ended up with the job, what inspires him and the new coffee-themed podcast that he’s launched with the roastery called “Weird Coffee” with its first episodes dedicated to spooky Delaware urban legends.
Question: Were you working for Brew HaHa! when Brandywine Coffee Rosters was launched in 2015 or did you kind of cannonball right in as they were launching?
Answer: Yeah, the second one more or less. I was doing full time freelance work and a lot of screen printing with my buddy, who had a pretty much a steady gig doing tour posters for bands. My partner, now wife, Ally, had worked with Alissa at Brew HaHa! for years. So once I heard they’re starting coffee roastery, I pitched to them the idea of letting me do the branding and screen-printed bags. If you look at the coffee world, there’s not a lot individualistic bags ― most of it is all one generic bag with a different label. When I started getting into coffee through Ally, I realized how every coffee is so special and different and it kind of deserved it’s own bag. I thought about it as giving each coffee its own little gig poster.
Your artwork on the bags has a definitive aesthetic. You know what it is right when you see it. And it’s kind of interesting to think of where art ends up. There are so many places where people can create or express themselves through art and you’re probably on hundreds of kitchen counters across the state and country. People know your work, but have no idea who you are. Do you ever think about the way you know your art is entering people’s homes and is such a big part of an intimate process like brewing your own morning coffee?
I have to stop thinking about that in a lot of ways, to be honest. I feel like I’ll get anxious to trip myself up. But it’s something I don’t take lightly, either. My main goal is to insert a little whimsy into people’s lives. So that’s one of the reasons that I keep with the themes and the out-there stuff because if they can look at that coffee bag while they’re brewing and smile at it or if it makes them think about something a little differently or more positively, that’s kind of my whole goal. I’d say my goal in general as an artist is to reimbue the world with some kind of wonder, like put a little bit more magic back out there.
So when you started out, I assume you weren’t working out of your garage? When did that shift happen? Did that happen during the pandemic or was that kind of set up before that?
I always have worked from home and actually through the pandemic, I ended up doing a lot more production work and helping out in person just because we were we were one of those lucky companies that were supported very well throughout the pandemic. So we saw some pretty big growth. Until that, I was still I had a real studio if the upstairs of our house and would work there doing the creative stuff. And then I’d do a couple days in the roastery helping out with things and tasting coffees. Once the pandemic hit, it was much more work from home, but really it was having our second kid June that kicked me out of my office. We have a smaller house and I just moved it down to the garage and kind of semi-finished it enough to where it can be warm and comfortable. I’ve always preferred to work off site for creative reasons just because I get so distracted by people and I want to be part of whatever’s going on.
Do they tell you what beans they used for each blend and then it’s up to you to name it and come up with the art? What’s the process?
I’m still pretty heavily involved with the coffee. I meet with Vic Scutari, our head of coffee, on a monthly basis. And when he’s profiling new coffees, I’m working with him and tasting the coffees as they come out. As far as naming and everything like that, for the single origin coffees we usually just use the farm name and use that on the bag. For seasonal blends, I luckily get to have a whole bunch of fun with those. I pretty much get to come up with whatever I’m feeling at the time.
So tell me about the fun of when you get to name it and where do the ideas come from for the “gig poster” artwork?
They usually revolve around whatever I’m currently into, which, really, since having kids, has been a lot more weirdness. I’d say I’ve been going down rabbit holes of spooky stuff and supernatural things, along with magic and esoteric things in general. We’ve really kind of imbued that into the branding. We use the phrase “coffee magic” a lot and things along those lines because when you’re roasting coffee, it’s just a very great example of how intention and attention work in things outside of just the art world. The amount of work it takes to make a coffee taste the best it can is not just about science and math, but there’s an artistry and magic to it all. So we really lean into that. Right now it’s our biggest season and we get to do things like our “Spooky Coffee Club” and this year’s theme is Delaware urban legends. You get four shipments of urban legend coffees for the Selbyville Swamp Monster, Cape Henlopen Corpse Light, Long Cemetery’s Catman and Crybaby Bridge. I recorded a podcast with my friend Aaron for each one, so you scan a QR code on the coffee bag and listen to us tell the story of the urban legend, along with some brewing tips.
Brew HaHa! has a refined look and its own vibe that’s pretty different than a lot of your artwork on those bags. Were you ever worried that you were going too far out there? Does Alissa ever put any guardrails on you?
Luckily, she is one of those people that really respects artists and creativity. I definitely don’t really have any restrictions or anything like that. Brew HaHa! does get a slightly different coffee line-up than what we put on our website, so like they’re not getting every super-weird bag that we put out there or anything.
Have a story idea? Contact Ryan Cormier of The News Journal at rcormier@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier) and Twitter (@ryancormier).
