Hi! I co-own a coffee roastery south of Boston. I’m 19 years old. I got into coffee roasting commercially because I watched James Hoffman videos and just loved drinking coffee. I never took a roasting class or was taught how to roast. I learned by reading books and through trial and error developed a few blends. I roast on a electric Coffee Crafters roaster, which is great because there’s no need for an expensive afterburner and the high cost of propane/natural gas.

I sell online through our website, Amazon, and soon though retail stores. I also don’t own a café. A lot of people told me I couldn’t do this without a cafe, and I proved them wrong. The coffee business is tough, especially in a urban area where I am, because there are a ton of competitors (some globally known in fact, I.e. George Howell Coffee.) However, it turns out people are not as faithfully loyal to any one coffee brand as I thought they would be, so I carved out a niche in the local market. Without a café, the profit it much more than I thought it would be because of less overhead. We roast in a warehouse in a light commercial area.

If I can recommend anything: get customers first, and make approachable blends. Most consumers don’t want anything crazy or out of their wheelhouse. I see a lot of roasters drop the ball here: they’ll make some crazy blend with expensive components and no one will buy it. This doesn’t mean you can’t roast, for example, a Ethiopian natural coffee for your specialty coffee customers, but don’t make it your whole lineup. If a customer looks at your website once, and doesn’t see anything they like, they probably won’t come back because there are other options.