Jonathan Ferrer founded Brew in Brooklyn, New York, in 2015. Before starting the brand Ferrer had spent his design career at Nike as a footwear designer. A serious coffee enthusiast in his personal life, Ferrer noticed parallels between the aesthetic of professional espresso machines (large pressure gauges, brushed-chrome panels, boldly-indexed temperature and pressure indicators) and the visual vocabulary of mid-20th-century chronograph wristwatches. Brew was founded to bring that parallel into product form.
The brand's debut reference, the Retromatic (2017), was a three-hand automatic with dial typography and sub-dial proportions directly referencing specific professional espresso-machine control panels. The follow-up Metric (2019) was a chronograph with large pressure-gauge-style sub-dials at 3 and 9 o'clock, massive rectangular chronograph pushers, and dial colour options drawn directly from Italian coffee-culture palettes (crema, espresso brown, caffé latte cream).
Movements are Swiss and Japanese base movements (meca-quartz and Miyota automatic) with Brew modifications. Case work is produced in Asia to Ferrer's specifications, with design and final quality control in Brooklyn. The brand has been commercially successful; the Metric in particular found an enthusiastic audience spanning both the coffee-culture and watch-enthusiast communities, with some Metric references becoming hard to find at retail within weeks of release.
Brew is distributed direct-to-consumer through the brand's website and a small number of specialty coffee retailers worldwide, a distribution model unusual for a watch brand. Collection today includes the Retromatic, Metric, HP-1 (Heat-Pressure, named for espresso terminology), and Scout (more conventional three-hand field variant). Retail runs from approximately USD 350 (Retromatic) to USD 750 (HP-1 mechanical chronograph) and USD 1,500+ for specific limited editions. Ferrer remains sole owner and operator.
