We are a local coffee roaster and cafe located in Seattle's historic Pioneer Square. Entrance on Main Street, just east of Pizzeria Gabbiano.
At Elm our focus is on buying the highest quality green coffee, roasting it to preserve the coffees innate characteristics, preparing it with expertise, and serving it in a super fun, friendly, and relaxed, but elegant cafe.
Well, I worked in coffee for about 10 years before I started this, and I had no roasting experience. It was all farmhouse management, training, all that kind of stuff. Honestly, it was just the flexibility in choosing what we want to serve. Ethical sourcing is a huge part of it. I've been paying good prices as a huge part of it. But yeah, I worked in the coffee since I was about 15, 14, in Seattle, and in Santa Fe, and then New York. And no roast experience decided to open up a roastery. That's great. I went to have to philosophy more of a practical approach, which is work with the porters that I know will pay good prices, not just to the producer, but to the producers and stuff And I was only a few, I would say, and asking for the information about what prices they pay at, not to the exporter, but to the producer. I'm not sure I agree with you, but some will. Sure. And then I'll give it to you at a price that doesn't really make sense, like baseless per carga-like vol So being able to ask them to make that make sense for you. But after we started roasting coffee and three, if anything, for a logistic simplicity, we've narrowed our focus to basically Col Simply because if there's a little more transparency in some of those places, the price to quality ratio is a lot higher than elsewhere. That's the one thing I learned versus 99. 8% of copies you can cut out of me because there'some something wrong with it, And then after that, something that is a little more fruit forward, And then we roast it to highlight the first balance. So we're pretty light, but I wouldn't say we're like on the super light side of the spectr We try to have the best acidity of the balance, more sweetness. We can't copy that's like, You're at first in the hardest part. I think started, So I wrote a business plan and I showed it to a friend who's an entrepreneur and he tore it up. It's terrible. So I had to read another 60 page one, learn how to make projections, projections, all that kind of stuff. I had to ask 15 different institutions for financing. It just took a long time, took two years to open. And then on the roasting side, learning to cut very well. It took a while, especially sample roasts, that kind of thing. I thought I had a pretty good palate when I was doing barista training and moving out and stuff. But it mines not even a great life. My brother, our roaster John, who does some roasting, is a great palate. Again, it's just something that I call something. And people management is the last part of it. It's a difficult thing to learn. While distinguishing yourself, there's a lot of roasters these days. That's the hard part. Roasting well, light roasting, light roasting, coffee well is very hard. The window is extremely small, too light, it'sour, it's vegetable. We don't particularly So we can't go to that side. If anything will edge a little bit more developed, roast-y, we can't really find the sweet spot. If it takes us a little bit of time. But light roasting coffee well is hard. Distinguishing yourself from other roasters is hard. Finding inventory control of green coffee is very hard. Since we buy seasonally, we can't buy too much, we can't buy too little. If we buy too little, the prices go up. If we buy too much, it gets agey. Since we're a risk-contagent, we can tell you. Feco. Yeah. A well-mean feco that's well-extracted. That's the best, I think. That or I had to pick two, I would say. Kepchino. Kepchino, man. The PPO, work of secarro, is probably the nicest PPO we've ever bought in a long time. It's extremely good. Yeah, it's very good. It's really floral and fruity, but not too great. Big body, it's really good. Great. What would be your biggest piece of advice for somebody interested in taking amateur roasting into the question? Making a business. Know your market, be good, who you selling to. Don't roast too light, don't under build the coffee. Sure. Have fun. It's going to be really hard, but have fun. It's going to be harder than you think it's going to be. They have about times a thousand, but still have fun. And try to remember why you did it in the first place. That's easy to forget about. Yeah.
