Laura Visconti is a Coffee Person.
Season 14, Episode 10 • The Free Coffee Tour 2025.
Editor’s note: Prefer the audio only or want to watch the podcast on Spotify? Click here! Or on Apple Podcasts.
The Coffee People Podcast took off in early June on our first-ever* Free Coffee Tour. We visited coffee shops and roasters along a meandering route from San Diego to Portland, OR, as we traveled to Coffeefest. At each stop, we recorded an episode of Coffee People and (tried) to buy people a cup of coffee. Thank you for watching and enjoying good coffee. Don't forget to tip your baristas!
Guest: Laura Lawson Visconti, Drink Coffee Do Stuff
Role: CoFounder & Art Director
Based: Lake Tahoe and Truckee, CA + Reno, NV
Online: www.drinkcoffeedostuff.com • @drinkcoffee_dostuff • lauralawsonvisconti.com
What they drink: A light roast cortado…until they get jittery.
The interview with Nick Visconti:
Nick Viscontin
I’ve been trying to get Laura onto the podcast for almost two years! I’m glad it worked out that we got to do our chat in person. The cafe where I was sitting was a great reflection of the vision that Laura and her partners at Drink Coffee Do Stuff are putting forth—growing communities. It is a challenge for any business to grow and remain true to its original vision, but DCDS is trying to do just that by committing to taking on opportunities that align with its ethos, not just those that are readily available.
NOTES FROM THE SHOW
By her admission, Laura started as a "Starbucks Matcha girl…" Many specialty coffee drinkers, roasters, cafe owners, and appreciators got their start down the rabbit hole at a Starbucks. Whatever your thoughts are on the current iteration of the company as they try to reclaim their specialty bonafides, the specialty coffee community wouldn't exist without them kicking the world off the instant coffee cliff.
Laura was one of the first influencers before that became a real thing, much less a real career goal for the youths. She got her coffee start because she was ordering aesthetically beautiful drinks in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2010. Instagram launched in 2010, which makes me feel old. Do the kids still Instagram? Either way, she’s a photographer. View her work online here and here.
©@lauralawsonvisconti on Instagram Laura has a degenerative eye disease called Retinitis Pigmentosa, or RP for short. It involves a reduction of the peripheral vision that progresses over time. The vision slowly dissipates into a point, potentially leading to full blindness. It was a major life turning point that started in a dark place and was leading—literally—to a dark place, but so much good has come from addressing the diagnosis. It forced her to think way outside the box about her career and the life she leads with her family.
I love a good A-frame sign. Street signage creates a real functional impact and value at a very low cost.
For non-action sports stars (or semi-stars), the term "stoked" means excited or thrilled with an emphasis on the passionate enthusiasm.
Boundaries! Setting them, keeping them, and being on the same page is challenging in any long-term relationship. Being in a business together creates even more navigable backwaters to get slogged down on. According to Laura, some of the ways they've managed is to focus on what they do best for the business and let their partners do the same, and to create separate work and personal life carveouts in their time.
BTW: I don't always show up to a show unshowered, but I came right from camp. If you can camp in the Lake Tahoe region, you should, but beware of bears, for real. There was a bear, let's call her Cinnamon,* in our neighbor's campsite at Fallen Leaf Lake Campground just a few weeks ago.
She claims not to be a coffee person, but without creativity and marketing, no one would know that coffee is an important part of our community. Laura is a Coffee person
*You're not supposed to name the bears, or you might forget they are bears and get attached.
COFFEE OUTSIDE
I’ve been drinking a lot of coffee outside this summer. Stay tuned to our socials for updates. Find the Coffee People Podcast & Roast! West Coast on:
Bluesky • Instagram • Facebook • Youtube
DRINK COFFEE DO STUFF is a specialty coffee company built with the belief that extraordinary coffee leads to an extraordinary life. The mantra began in the Swiss Alps in 2012 during founder Nick Visconti’s pro snowboard days and continues today at our Lake Tahoe headquarters. As specialty coffees grow at elevations similar to that of our roastery, all our coffees are sourced from the mountains and roasted in the mountains. The hallmark of our coffee roasting style is maximizing sweetness and revealing origin characteristic. High altitude roasting at 6,000ft in Lake Tahoe provides us unique advantages to achieve this consistently making all our coffees more sweet, less bitter.
• www.drinkcoffeedostuff.com
OTHER BRANDS WE USE & HAVE PARTNERED WITH*
Please use these links. You’ll be getting a great gear AND supporting Roast! West Coast. Some links below enable us to generate some affiliate revenue. As always, we don’t partner with brands we don’t use, coffee we don’t drink, or strongly recommend.
Shout out to our Presenting Sponsor Roastar, Inc.
Ryan Woldt
Ryan Woldt
COLLABORATION COFFEES!
We meet cool people. We collab on great coffees. FYI: we’re not generally allowed to touch the roasting machines. The experts do that! Current Collabs:
• Coffee Cycle Roasting (Pacific Beach/Ocean Beach, San Diego, CA) NEW!
• Relative Coffee Co. (Minneapolis, MN)
• Marea Coffee (Solana Beach, CA)* NEW!
Our new daily driver. Brew up a cup for your next dawn patrol. Works swell in the mountains or at the coast!
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