Coffee Conversations: The Joy of Blends with Tony Konecny of Yes Plz

Tony Konecny is one of the O.G. third wave coffee people. Well, as someone who wasn’t there, he sure appears that way to me. He was head roaster at Victrola Coffee in Seattle in the early 2000s, helped launch Intelligentsia in Los Angeles in 2006, and founded the subscription service Tonx Coffee in 2011 before selling it to Blue Bottle three years later. He also self-describes as holding “the dubious distinction of being among the first coffee bloggers, for which he sincerely apologizes”. 

I first spoke to Konecny for an article on coffee’s purported fourth wave, and then later for my piece on venture capital and private equity in coffee last year. (It’s also worth noting that he is a paid subscriber to The Pourover.)

His latest venture is Yes Plz, another subscription service that bills itself as “a weekly pursuit of the perfect cup”. To this end, Yes Plz releases new variations on its blend The Mix every week.

Every week! That’s mind-blowing. I’ve helped create a few blends in my time (shout out to Glen Lyon Coffee’s Christmas blend, Figgy Pudding) but doing it on a weekly basis? I am in awe. Blends are, as a relative novice, incredibly tricky: you have to meld multiple, often very different coffees together, accentuating their best elements while trying not to let one overshadow the others. Too much of this could mute that; does this washed-processed coffee work with this other washed coffee and also maybe this natural coffee? It’s a minefield.

I wanted to learn more about how Yes Plz manages to create so many tasty coffees week after week. I spoke with Konecny a couple of weeks ago, and we ended up chatting for nearly three hours—about lots of other stuff, like Expo in Houston and Trump’s tariffs, but eventually we got around to discussing blends and blending coffee. To that end, this conversation has been edited for length and clarity.