Upper Midwest Gourmet

Just a heads up that we are closed Monday, May 27th for Memorial Day. We will back open on regular local delivery schedule the following Tuesday. Please feel free to leave a message on voice mail on our new phone system with any orders you may have.

Speaking of our new phone system, we are still figuring it out and doing the necessary upgrades to our internet line here to offer the best call quality available. We apologize to any customers that we’ve had a hard time hearing/understanding and those we been disconnected from and had to call back. We assure you that these problems are short-term and will be fixed soon.

Thanks again for the business and have a great holiday weekend with your friends and family!

Whether you are trying to think up summer drink ideas, or you are just wondering what to do with your extra Mountain Spiced Cider concentrate, fear not, we’ve got a list for that:

Summer Cider Drinks

Sparkling Cider
1 oz. Cider concentrate
7 oz. Sparkling water

Cider Float
1 oz. Cider concentrate
7 oz. Ginger ale
Scoop of vanilla ice cream

Apple Raspberry Cooler
1 oz. Cider concentrate
1 oz. Raspberry syrup
6 oz. Sparkling water

Apple Pie A la Mode Milkshake
1 oz. Cider concentrate
1 oz. Caramel syrup
4 oz. milk
1 scoop vanilla ice cream
1 piece of graham cracker
Blend until smooth

Read the rest of this entry »

Here comes warmer temperatures and hopefully a lot of snow melting!

We are really proud of our new training cafe, UP, along with many other improvements we have made to Upper Midwest Gourmet and Flamenco Organic Coffee Company in the past few months!

Please check out our newest Brewsletter – Volume 49 – Spring 2013

Also, please go to the Brewsletters Page on our website to download and read previous Brewsletters. They contain lots of useful information!

Enjoy and thanks again from all of us at UMG!

It is very, very, very important to have a well-trained staff running your cafe. The staff of your cafe are the people that your customers interact with most and are also responsible for the production of everything you offer. The quality and consistency of your drinks and food rely on having a group of individuals that know exactly what they are doing and more importantly why and how they are doing it. Another huge factor is that they are all making your products the same way to ensure that every customer has the same great experience every time they come back.

We feel that employee training is a necessary for any cafe or business for that matter. For example, we take part in the Specialty Coffee Association America classes all the time to learn about new industry standards in the area’s of Barista education, coffee brewing, coffee roasting, and a whole lot more.

There is always something that can be learned and implemented to improve your business and we want to help you gain that knowledge!

Our training cafe, UP Cafe, is now open and ready to schedule training sessions with your staff. If you use our Flamenco Organic Coffee we are more than happy to offer free training and recipe support. We can train in areas of espresso extracting, milk frothing, pour-over coffee brewing, Gold Cup drip coffee brewing, blender drink creation, gelato and sorbetto production, baking and pastry, and a whole lot more. The goal is to improve your business and have you producing the best available drinks in your area. We want to help you reach that goal!

Please Contact Us about setting up a time for training and would love to have you visit!

Here comes cooler temperatures and increased hot drink sales!

We have been really busy making some serious improvements around here with a focus to better serve you, and want to let you all know again how much we appreciate your business!

Please check out our newest Brewsletter – Volume 48 – Fall/Winter 2012

Also, please go to the Brewsletters Page on our website to download and read previous Brewsletters. They contain lots of useful information!

Enjoy and thanks again from all of us at UMG!

Fabbri North America‘s own Tom Trieschmann will be in the Twin Cites on Wednesday, August 29th for a fun and relaxed gelato/pastry training and demo at UMG.

Upper Midwest Gourmet

1901 Traffic St. NE Minneapolis, MN 55413

Office: (612)728-7208

The demo/training will begin at 10am.

Please RSVP to FabbriDemo@umgcoffee.com with what business you are with and how many people will be attending for lunch ordering purposes.

We would also like to focus the event on what you guys would like to learn about, so please let us know any ideas you have in your RSVP.

Looking forward to seeing you on August 29th, 2012!

(For additional event or Fabbri information, please Contact Us. Thank you.)

Looking for some great Gelato while you’re in the cities?

Check out the newest gelato review of Wilde Roast, Click Here.

We’re sure you’re gonna love it!

(For pricing or additional product information about how your business can make gelato, please Contact Us. Thank you.)

What a hot spring and summer we have had this year and we haven’t hit the really hot months yet! Let’s hope business continues to improve for everyone with these beautiful days!

The weather will be turning even warmer, though, which means cold drinks like iced espresso drinks, cold press coffee, smoothies, frappes, iced tea, and lemonade are going to continue to pick up. It also means that those of you that are making gelato will continue to see some serious sales increases.

We have been really busy making some serious improvements around here with a focus to better serve you, and want to let you all know again how much we appreciate your business!

Please check out our newest Brewsletter – Volume 47 – Spring/Summer 2012

Also, please go to the Brewsletters Page on our website to download and read previous Brewsletters. They contain lots of useful information!

Enjoy and thanks again from all of us at UMG!

Yogurt Lab on Excelsior near Lake Calhoun is now serving Fabbri’s signature amarena cherries as one of their many yogurt toppings. If you have not experienced this amazing summer treat yet, go visit them after a walk around the lake. They have three other locations coming soon too! Learn more about this great company here.

These new LED signs are perfect for many types of businesses like cafes, coffee shops, gelatorias, and all types of restaurants.

A great way to let customers know that you are “Open”, serve “Gelato” or “Ice Cream”, serve “Coffee” or “Espresso”, or that you make and offer “Bubble Tea” and “Pho”!

Here are some of the options (just click on the sign to see it animate!):

· Multiple Animation Modes (Solid State, Chasing, Flashing)
· Viewing Distance Up to 100 Feet
· Genuine Shiny Acrylic Casing
· 8 Watt Power Consumption (Low Energy Cost)
· Operating Voltage: 110 VAC or 210 VAC
· 1 Year Warranty
· Lightweight And Easy To Install
· Safe To Touch And Operate
· For Indoor Use Only
· Accessories Included: 5 Foot UL Certified Power Cord, Hanging Chain

(For pricing or additional product information, please Contact Us. Thank you.)

We had a great time at Coffee Fest in Chicago this year! We had four booths in a row which finally gave us enough space to truly showcase our wide array of offerings. From gelato made with authentic Italian ingredients from Fabbri to our huge selection of cafe products to our own Flamenco coffee to one of our favorite customers, The Growling Rabbit, chatting in our booths and bringing some of their amazing baked offerings, also made with Fabbri, it was a total success!

We had a blast showcasing our Flamenco Organic Coffees on our new Chemex and Hario pour-over gear and were giddy to be able to pull our Matador espresso on a beautiful Synesso espresso machine.

Here are some pictures to enjoy:

Thanks again to everyone that made it to the show and visited us while attending. It was our pleasure to meet you!

(For pricing, Coffee Fest questions, or additional product information, please Contact Us. Thank you.)

Only a week or so to go until Coffee Fest!

That is why we are reminding everyone that we are in booths 100/102/104/106 at Chicago Coffee Fest next weekend. We will be making gelato on a Carpigiani Coldelite batch freezer and displaying in one of the new Ciam Pozzetti display cases. We will definitely be serving our award-winning Flamenco Organic Coffee along with a ton of other great products for you to check out and sample. Also, be sure to stop by and check out our Synesso espresso machine pulling our very own Matador espresso shots!

Here are the basics:

When – June 8th-10th 2012

Where – Navy Pier, 600 East Grand Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611

Registration Information

$30 per person.

Onsite Registration Hours: Trade Show and educational Classes
Friday & Saturday: 7:00am to 4:30pm
Sunday: 7:30am to 3:30pm

Show Hours:
Exhibition Hours:
Friday & Saturday: 12:00pm to 5:00pm
Sunday: 12pm to 4:00pm

Educational Training
Friday & Saturday: 8:00am to 6:00pm
Sunday: 8:00am to 4:00pm

If you have any questions about the trade show, please Contact Us.

We pride ourselves on being ahead of the curve when it comes to industry innovations and the new Elmeco Quickream soft serve ice machine is no exception!

This 110 volt, counter-top machine has a small footprint and an awesome price point. This is a great way to offer soft serve ice cream or even soft gelato using the Fabbri ingredients from Italy. We believe this will be great for smaller-sized cafes and restaurants that want to offer homemade ice cream/gelato on site without needing the space or money for a traditional gelato set-up (batch freezer, display case, etc…).

We will have this machine in our new training cafe, UP, and really think it will be a easy addition for any business looking to add ice cream to their offerings!

It works great with our new Dairy or Non-Dairy soft serve ice cream base from Pacific Natural Foods flavored with Fabbri delipastes from Italy and will be an exceptional machine for using the Fabbri Simple products (fully balanced mix of base powder, sugars, and all-natural flavors).

(For pricing or additional product information, please Contact Us. Thank you.)

There’s nothing quite like the nutty, syrupy sweetness of a good porter.  There’s nothing quite like the soft sweetness of  hand-crafted gelato. So, imagine if you will combining this two fantastic flavor sensations into one delightful frozen treat.

Lo and behold, Moka Porter Gelato made with Town Hall Brewery’s Porter and an assortment of Fabbri delipastes.

A match made in heaven.

For more information on this gelato experimentation at Fat Lorenzo’s see my full blog post.

As many of you know, things always seem to take a little longer than expected to get up and running when opening a cafe.

UP will be an open to the public cafe serving Flamenco Organic coffee and espresso roasted on site, Italian gelato made fresh on site, and tasty baked goods and panini’s all made from local ingredients.

The best part for all of you is that this cafe will be our brand new fully operational training cafe and state-of-the-art showroom. We will be able to have you come in with your staff to get full company trainings. In areas like espresso, coffee, and gelato preparation, this can be very beneficial to everyone!

If you have any questions about the UP, please Contact Us.