Flavoring coffee

[topher]

Javahill...what size roaster are you using....are you the roaster for you company? You guys sure are pushing out some numbers...I thought you where just in a resort...but to be selling 54,000 lbs of coffee a day...damn son I am only doing about 4,000 to 6,500 lbs a day...I just find it hard to believe that a resort is doing those numbers...I roasted for the Beau Rivage casino and resort...they only went through 15,000 lbs....and that was a month. :roll:

 

[javahill]

The resort is a nickname for where we live. JaVa is really because my name is James and my wife is Valerie. Ja-Va. We live on a steep hill - the driveway is about 3/4 mile long and has in places and 18 percent grade. That's the Hill part. We get snow 5 months a year so a friend of ours who came to visit to go skiing. That is the "touring center" part. We're fortunate enough to have a hot tub, pool and tennis court. That is how it all comes together.

As far as where I work, we have 2 bowl roasters each with an 800 lb capacity and 4 Probat drum roasters each able to handle 200 lb batches. Then in the coffee lab we have 4 sample roasters and a smaller Diedrich. We've got capacity to go to 50 million pounds. Among other statistics, we're the single largest seller of double certified Fair trade-organic coffee in the US. And it all started 23 years ago in a single little coffee shop.

I didn't really jump into the forums to talk about work - it was more of a stress relief from work.

 

[topher]

Wow...that is pretty impressive...I live in a nice and shiny air-stream that butts up to a nice above ground pool that we raise frogs in for those nice summer cookouts my dirt driveway exits into a quickie mart so I aint gots far to run for my booze...don't even make me brag about how close the nudie bar is....And to think it all started 33 years ago in the back of a Pinto.....Glad to see that fair-trade coffee is helping someone sustain their lifestyle :wink:

 

[javahill]

We're not making our money on Fair Trade coffee. I'm a heretic here - I think it is a niche product. The money is in regular and flavored coffees.

As far as sustaining lifestyles, it ain't the coffee as much as it is scale.

A friend was in a negotiation about his company with Bill Gates and my friend thought Bill was the biggest... rectum. The reason was that he kept pushing a single point for the whole hour they were together. "Why would 100 million people be interested in the product?" It was a high end video conferencing system that had a niche market of Global 500 execs. That was 6 years ago and it still is a stand alone company. Not worth Bill's time or money.

At home, I'm a die hard Mac user, so I won't concede that Windows is a superior product - it is an appliance, the toaster of operating systems. But Microsoft does have a bigger market share. And Bill is richer than Steve Jobs by a long, long shot. Starbucks is close to 18 times our size for much the same reason. They figured something out we haven't.

So why would 100 million people be interested in your product? If money is what you care about - for whatever reason - that's the question to ask.

If happiness is what you care about, then there is a different question. (If you find the question or the answer, please let me know.)

If the perfect espresso is what you care about, then...

 

[Coffee Guy]

I'm hearing ya JH...My flavored market is very small compared to yours. Although a lot of our business is espresso, we equally do a huge market in single origin coffees. Most of my flavored markets come from Asia and some here in the U.S. But I'm not complaining. Any business is good business as long as both you and the customer are happy