Coastal Roasters

Alright, so we're heading down to Taminoa Grand. I'm going to go down and meet Don at the Grand Shop. This is where we store all of the raw beans and keep them before we bring them to the shop for roasting. So let's enjoy the ride and we'll be down there in about 5-10 minutes. Alright here we are pulling into M&R grain right now. Alright so I'm here at M&R grain with Don and we're at the beanmobile. Don is unloading some stuff right now. And he's fixing his hair. I'm fixing my hair which is as important as anything. Good hair means good coffee. Good hair is good coffee, I Maybe we can make a new motto with that. Well this is kind of where it all starts. This is the Wilkie Finca. This is the Wilkie farm. They've been gracious enough to let us rent some of their warehouse space here. As you can see here. Batman had his Batmobile and I've got the Beanmobile. The Beanmobile, I This is kind of where it all starts. Well actually it all starts at the farm back in the growing country. There's international conventions that assure that coffee is growing organically and also according to fair trade standards. Those are monitored by international organizations. And it feeds down to us here on the roasting end. These different buckets are set up to ensure that there's no combi-mobile. With conventional coffees. And those guidelines are set up by the USDA. Their national organic program. And monitored here locally by Rhode Island DEM. Who's the certifying agency. Alright. So I'm here because I'm getting ready to roast a little bit. And I gotta get today's coffees. First I gotta bring in the empties. Alright let's go inside. So now how often do you take shipments? Well I order according to need. I've got two brokers. Royal Coffee New York. And Coffee Holding Company. We also work directly with some smaller farms. The Laminita Estate for some Costa Rican coffee. And I've got a couple other small individual farms I work with on an occasional basis. I typically order about three times a month. I get several pallets. They get delivered here. And the guys at the farm help bring the coffee in. So what you see here is a sampling of some of the coffees we have in stock. These are our organic coffees. Which have to be segregated from our conventional coffees. According to guidelines. We keep our regular separate from our decafs. I have to log in everything that comes in. Assign it a lot n Tag it. Record it. I'm responsible for making sure that all the coffee that comes in is accounted for as it goes out. According to the organic guidelines. That's about it. It's a lot of paperwork. But we take organic certifications seriously. Now how often do you have to go through the certification process? Is it annual thing? It's annual program. And actually we're under recertification this month. So in addition to my daily duties. I've got to compile a lot of paperwork. For the DEM inspector. He'll be down in April. He'll go through the physical layout. Make sure everything's coprocetic. And then he'll visit us at the cafe. Because then we've got further processing requirements that we have to meet there. Regarding how we roast the coffee. How we store the coffee. How we brew the coffee. How we bag the coffee. How the coffee gets labeled for retail. Alright. So out of all the products that you carry. What's the mix between organic and non-organic. And then I guess also fair trade. 70% of our coffee is organic fair trade. Not every country has organic certified. Or fair trade certified. Although most do. And until recently. Fair trade coffee didn't always guarantee. High quality coffee. That's improved a lot. A lot of roasters. Large and small. Working closely with the growing countries and the farmers. To ensure high quality coffee is coming out. On our end. I think we got about a 70-30% mix. Yeah. At the moment.