David Schomer

David C. Schomer (born 1956) is an American café owner, roaster and espresso technician in Seattle, Washington.¹ He co-founded Espresso Vivace in 1988 and is best known for two things that changed how espresso is made in the United States: he attacked the problem of brew water temperature drifting by fitting electronic controllers to his machines, and he is credited with developing and popularising latte art in the US.¹²

Both contributions come from the same instinct. Before Vivace, espresso in America was largely a ritual copied from Italy and repeated by feel. Schomer treated it as something to be measured, written down and taught — which is why his name turns up in equipment history, in barista training and in the origin story of the pattern in your cappuccino.

Key facts

Attribute	Detail
Born	1956, American, based in Seattle, Washington
Before coffee	US Air Force electronics technician, then metrologist at Boeing (a metrologist is a measurement specialist — the person who calibrates instruments)
Company	Espresso Vivace, founded 1988, Seattle
Co-founder	Geneva Sullivan, then a Digital Equipment Corporation mainframe technician
Roasting style	Northern Italian style, in-house since 1992
Signature technical work	PID controllers retrofitted to espresso machines for constant brew water temperature
Latte art	credited with developing and popularising latte art in the US; heart established at Vivace by 1989, rosetta in 1992
Book	Espresso Coffee: Professional Techniques — revised 2004 and 2013 (first publication year disputed, see below)
Also produced	Caffè Latte Art and other barista-training DVDs

Temperature: the problem he made his own

The thing Schomer is technically known for is unglamorous and decisive. On an espresso machine, the water that hits the coffee is not a fixed temperature — it drifts as the boiler cycles, as shots are pulled back to back, as the machine sits idle. A few degrees either way is the difference between a shot that tastes burnt and one that tastes sour, and for years baristas simply lived with it.

Schomer customised espresso machines with PID controllers to hold the water temperature constant.¹ A PID controller is an electronic thermostat that does not just switch a heater on and off, but continuously predicts and corrects — so the temperature sits inside a narrow band instead of swinging around a target. This is now standard equipment: the machines in most specialty cafés ship with it, and La Marzocco built it into production models.

His background explains the fixation. A former Air Force electronics technician and Boeing metrologist — someone whose job was calibrating instruments — he came at the espresso bar as a measurement problem.¹

To verify — the "first PID shot," and the February 2001 demonstration

The research behind this note repeated a widely-told trade story that could not be confirmed at source here. It holds that in February 2001, at Espresso Vivace with coffee-industry veterans watching, Schomer pulled what specialty trade press has called “the first shot ever pulled on a temperature-stabilised, PID-controlled espresso machine,” after 16 years working on the problem (so from about 1985), and that he described the result as flowing “smooth and thick as honey.”³⁴ Three problems:

• The trade-press article carrying the “first shot ever” wording returned HTTP 403 when fetched from this machine and could not be read.³
• The Bloomberg profile carrying the February 2001 scene, the 16-year figure and the quotes is paywalled and was not read directly.⁴
• “First” here is a journalistic narrative, not a patent chronology. No registry of earlier PID experiments on espresso machines was consulted, and none exists in the sources behind this note.

What is confirmed is the underlying fact: Schomer fitted PID controllers to his machines to stabilise brew temperature.¹ Treat the date, the “first ever” framing and the quotes as unverified.

Latte art

Schomer and Espresso Vivace are credited with developing and popularising latte art in the United States — the craft of pouring steamed milk into espresso so a pattern appears on the surface.² What he actually contributed was less the pictures than the method: he studied how microfoam behaves (milk steamed until it holds a mass of very fine, uniform bubbles) and turned pouring into something repeatable that could be taught to a new barista rather than absorbed over years.⁵

Two dates are attached to his hand specifically: the heart was established as a Vivace signature by 1989, and the rosetta — the leaf or fern shape — was developed by Schomer in 1992.⁵ Those patterns are now the basic vocabulary of a free pour and the foundation of the World Latte Art Championship.

This wiki’s Latte art note covers the craft itself in detail, including the milk steaming that makes it possible.

Writing, teaching and reputation

Schomer wrote the book that the trade treated as its espresso manual, Espresso Coffee: Professional Techniques, and kept revising it — his own company lists revisions in 2004 and 2013.⁶ He also produced instructional DVDs, including Caffè Latte Art, described by Vivace as the product of twenty-five years of hands-on research.⁶ Before the book he wrote columns for Café Ole magazine through the 1990s.¹

His standing in the trade is unusual for someone running two cafés. The author Mark Pendergrast called him the “world’s most passionate espresso engineer” after the death of Ernesto Illy in 2008, and the Seattle Times has argued that Schomer — not Starbucks — is the person who made coffee huge in Seattle, comparing his influence in specialty coffee to Howard Schultz’s in the mainstream industry.¹⁷

To verify — three different years for the same book

Sources give three publication dates for Espresso Coffee: Professional Techniques, and they are not reconcilable from what was read here:

• 1994 — an encyclopedic record describing a self-published espresso techniques book that year.¹
• 1995 — Espresso Vivace’s own site: “first published in 1995.”⁶
• 1996 — the same encyclopedic record, for the Professional Techniques title.¹

The likeliest reading is a self-published edition followed by a trade edition, but no ISBN or publisher record was consulted to confirm that. This conflict is also flagged on Latte art, which records a further claim of 1995 from a social-media post. Do not quote a single first-publication year as settled.

To verify — job titles, "first standards," and reach

• What he did at Boeing. The biographical record says metrologist;¹ the encyclopedic entry for his company, and a Bloomberg profile, both say “former Boeing engineer.”²⁴ These sit at different levels of specificity and are not obviously the same job. “Metrologist” is the more specific and better-placed claim, so this note uses it.
• “The first to promulgate standards for espresso making.” A journalistic characterisation of his articles, book and videos, not a finding by any standards body such as the Specialty Coffee Association.⁴ Other traditions may have documented practice earlier without being catalogued.
• Book distribution — that it sells internationally and is available in four languages, and that Schomer spoke in London at the Specialty Coffee Association of Europe around 2010, both come from a single city-magazine profile with no event record or publisher listing behind them.⁸

What isn’t here

No competition record exists for Schomer in the sources behind this note — no World Barista Championship, no US Barista Championship, no roasting or latte art title, and no SCA, CQI or ACE placement.¹² Nor is there any lot-level detail: no cupping scores, auction prices, farm names, altitudes or processing methods are recorded for the coffees Vivace buys. His reputation rests on technique and teaching, not on a scoreboard — but the absence of green-coffee detail is a genuine gap in the research, not proof that none exists.

Related

• Espresso Vivace — the Seattle company he co-founded in 1988 and still runs
• Latte art — the craft he is credited with codifying in the US
• Espresso · Espresso machine — the drink, and the hardware his temperature work changed
• La Marzocco — the machine maker that built PID temperature control into production models
• Barista — the job his book and DVDs set out to standardise
• World Latte Art Championship — the competition built on the patterns he popularised
• Third wave coffee — the movement that made measured, tunable espresso the norm
• Starbucks · Howard Schultz — the Seattle comparison his reputation is usually framed against
• Illy — the family firm whose Ernesto Illy he was named successor to in reputation
• George Howell · James Hoffmann · Scott Rao — contemporaries who likewise turned coffee practice into written method

Official links

• Official site — Espresso Vivace (David Schomer’s company)

Footnotes

1. Wikipedia — David Schomer — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the 1956 birth year, the Air Force and Boeing metrologist careers, the PID retrofit, the Café Ole columns, the 1994/1996 book dates, and the Pendergrast and Seattle Times characterisations ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹

2. Wikipedia — Espresso Vivace — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the 1988 founding, Geneva Sullivan and her DEC background, the “former Boeing engineer” wording, and the US latte art credit ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

3. Daily Coffee News — On Espresso Vivace’s 30th Anniversary, David Schomer Talks Roast, Grind and Brew — returned HTTP 403 from this machine; cited via the research report only ↩ ↩²

4. Bloomberg — Higher Grounds — paywalled; cited via the research report only ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

5. Wikipedia — Latte art — source of the heart at Espresso Vivace by 1989, the rosetta in 1992, and the microfoam method credit ↩ ↩²

6. Espresso Vivace — Our Story (official) — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the 1988 partnership, Northern Italian roasting since 1992, the 1995 first publication with 2004 and 2013 revisions, and the Caffè Latte Art DVD ↩ ↩² ↩³

7. The Seattle Times — Vivace’s David Schomer — not Starbucks — ‘made coffee huge in Seattle’ — returned an empty body (paywall) when fetched from this machine ↩

8. Seattle Met — Taste of the Town: David Schomer ↩