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Business & Tech

Caffenergy Gives Suwanee A Unique Boost

Entrepreneur Ron Sciortino creates a business combining coffee industry experience and his passion for nutrition.

A traditional coffee shop it is not. You can still get a great cup of coffee there, and find a comfortable setting for a meet-up or Internet browsing. But Caffenergy offers much more than coffee and an experience. It is a new concept for liquid energy drinks that President and Owner Ron Sciortino believes will benefit people looking for healthy alternatives.

Sciortino created Caffenergy to sell espressos, juices and smoothies. The juices and smoothies are enhanced by a hydraulic pressing method to get the fruit juice. It’s a formula that encompasses all-natural organic products that are rich in nutrients to produce a high energy punch.

“We are changing people’s lives. It changes the way they feel,” Sciortino says. “This is a new name and a new concept. Caffenergy is more than a drink, more than a coffee, more than a place.”

Sciortino set up the shop with coffee as a leading product. He has over 20 years of experience in the coffee industry. But the pressed juices are the foundational difference between Caffenergy and other retail coffee shops. Sciortino says the pressed juices are a form of restorative nutrition. They offer 3-5 times more nutritional value than centrifugal juicers.

The storefront in Suwanee is located off Peachtree Industrial Blvd just south of the Suwanee Dam Road intersection. It’s set up like a small cafe with room for meet-ups or some leisurely lounging. Sciortino likes Suwanee because he says it has a great vision and community focus. He likes what Suwanee does for recreation and community events to bring people together.

Sciortino’s road to entrepreneurship first began when he was 16. He fell in love with coffee at a Cafe Intermezzo. Not long after, he was hooked into the business idea and wanted to sell espresso machines. This plan didn’t work out as he wanted with an existing business, so he started his own business as a roaster selling wholesale to retailers.  
Sciortino was creative with receivables and terms to help establish and operate the business in the early days. Then in 1992 he incorporated American Specialty Coffee & Culinary (ASCC). The company roasted and sold specialty and flavored coffee to retailers along with equipment.

The original office was on 14th street in downtown Atlanta. He built the business one client at a time and used the money from the first clients to grow the business rather than returning the profits back to himself. The client base in the early days was mainly small coffee shops and chains.

Sciortino sold the first super automatic coffee machine in the Atlanta area in 1993 to DePalma’s Italian Pizza. Through the years ASCC sold different types of automatic coffee machines and also started placing equipment with national accounts.  The national accounts changed his business because they had different needs than local shops.

“Technical excellence is something I’ve always been about,” Sciortino says. “There is a heavy service element to this business.” He spent time learning how to install and service machines in addition to running sales and marketing. This gave Sciortino a full command of the business which helped him earn the respect of his clients and employees.

In 1999 Sciortino established a relationship with illy coffee. This is a world known premium coffee that at the time sold direct, not through distributors. Soon after this Sciortino  became the first ever distributor in the U.S. for illy coffee.

Through the illy relationship, Sciortino learned about science behind coffee. He learned about what differentiates good coffee from bad coffee. illy taught him to remove the negative tasting elements from the source beans. “The customer should perceive a perfect coffee. It creates a more predictable experience” Sciortino says.

For more information:
Caffenergy Internet site

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