How did your career in the world of coffee begin?
Coffee was never just a beverage in my household; it was a social ritual. Growing up in a Persian family, hot drinks were the gravitational center of every gathering. Some of my earliest memories are of my family’s coffee orders, each so unique and personal to them; it felt like extensions of who they were.
Over the years, I accumulated every gadget imaginable: a bean-to-cup machine, a drip machine, a Moka pot, a siphon setup, even a Turkish coffee vessel that’s been in my family for generations (Notice one category is missing here… we see you pod machines 👀).
My deeper relationship with coffee and product design converged when I was living in Berlin, working in electric vehicle engineering at unu motors GmbH. I was surrounded by world-class designers and engineers, and that environment sharpened how I thought about objects and reinvigorated my love of design, a big part of my upbringing, since both my parents were architects. I never worked as a barista, but I spent a lot of time talking with roasters and the people behind some of Berlin’s best cafés (shoutout Five Elephant and Bonanza Coffee) getting deep into the craft and learning what made great coffee actually great. That combination of design thinking and coffee obsession pointed me in one direction: I became fixated on designing a simpler, more elegant solution to bring quality coffee + espresso home.
Tell us about your NYC-based coffee and espresso machine brand, Terra Kaffe!
Terra Kaffe was born from a very specific frustration: looking for a machine that could deliver quality without demanding a time investment I didn’t have. What I found was a market that hadn’t evolved in decades, outdated designs, zero innovation, and a false choice between convenience and quality. Nobody had built the third option.
The brand is rooted in Bauhaus principles, the belief that design and function are inseparable, that something sitting on your countertop every day should earn its place both visually and practically. Coffee is personal. It says something about who you are, and I wanted to build something that reflected that.
We built the brand in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and that community shaped us. We weren’t just a company in a building; we were woven into the neighborhood, throwing events with local businesses, staying close to the people around us. Terra Kaffe has always been a bridge between Berlin and Brooklyn: born in one, raised in the other.
What’s your favorite part about the New York coffee community?
The collaboration. There’s an energy here that’s genuinely rare, people building something from nothing and doing it with conviction.
I used to walk past Rhythm Zero’s first Greenpoint location every night on the way home, and I’d see them at 11pm, midnight, still tweaking the design of the space even after they had opened. That kind of obsessive commitment to getting it right, that’s the New York coffee community.
Also, watching AJ from Parlor pound pavement across the city, relationship by relationship, building something through pure hustle, I’ve never been more energized watching someone operate. And then there are the legacy cafes that jumpstarted new wave coffee in NYC: Cafe Grumpy, Variety Coffee, the ones who laid the foundation for everything that came after. I still go back to those spots to support the early movers who brought quality coffee to New York.
What was the inspiration behind the first Terra Kaffe product?
It was personal frustration that turned into market research. I was shopping for a machine for my own home, and I couldn’t believe what I found: Sega Genesis-era designs with none of the vintage charm, and an industry with no apparent interest in evolving. The options were either wasteful pod machines or overly complex manual setups. The machines that did automate the process looked, visually, like they were engineered thirty years ago.
I had the engineering & business background, I had the love of the category, and I was surrounded by people who could help design and build something genuinely different. So I built two prototypes and went to work, literally knocking on doors in SoHo, serving coffee to weekend shoppers and people leaving early morning Equinox classes. The response was immediate and orders of magnitude bigger than I anticipated. That’s when I knew.
We love that Terra’s machines have great design inside and out. How did you work to develop the physical design and look of the products?
It started with an incredible early team. Mladen Hoyss, Nenad Dickov, and Lenni Makosch were the people who helped bring my vision to life in the beginning, they had a way of expressing visually what I could only articulate in words. I genuinely wouldn’t be here without them.
Once we were off the ground, we partnered with Ammunition Group, the design studio behind products for Apple and Polaroid, and one of the best industrial design firms in the country. That partnership has been one of the defining elements of what Terra Kaffe is.
Early on, their co-founder Matt told me there are two types of clients: those who are too rigid with their own ideas, and those who are too amenable to other’s ideas. After a few years working together, I asked him which one I was. He said, “I would describe you as reasonably unreasonable”. Maybe my favorite line and also very accurate. I have a very high personal bar for what deserves and earns my signoff, and I certainly have a strong sense of what I want our products to look and function like. That said, I also know I would not be here today without the guidance and expertise of those around me.
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