Urgent roaster help please

[Brewsbroscafe]

This is my first post here and I wanted to say hello first. So, HELLO!!!

I am the co-owner of Brews Brother's Café located in South Plainfield, NJ. This is our first location and first business for that matter. We are expecting to be open by the Fall of 2014. The reason I am posting is that we were just DENIED the use of our intended coffee roaster, which was the 2 LB Sonofresco. The reason for the refusal was since our location is a kiosk style café in the lobby of an office building we CANNOT use natural gas or propane; propane was our contingency plan. It would've been nice to learn of that information sooner but what can you do, right. We just want to open up as we've been researching and planning this business for nearly 4 years.

We are now forced to search for a good quality Electric 2 LB Roaster (If we must, we can go with a 1 LB, but it needs to be commercial quality). We learned how to roast on a Behmor 1600 electric coffee roaster, which is nice but we found it to be inconsistent.

Requirements are as follows: Somewhat Quiet (Not silent but then again not roaring loud), Consistent quality roasting ability, Controllable Chafe collection, Venting access to outdoors to remove heat, exhaust gasses, and the minimal amount of smoke created during roasting, MOST importantly it needs to be able to fit on a counter top, as we are a Kiosk and space is always limited.

CAN YOU PLEASE OFFER SOME WISDOM ON THIS TOPIC, we greatly appreciate any advice.

 

[jmcqueen]

Gene Cafe comes to mind for a small-ish electric roaster which seems to produce excellent results. Also in the running, and with the look of a "real roaster" would be the Quest M3. Both have small footprints, but the Quest will probably give you more consistent results. The Gene Cafe is $700 and the Quest is approx. $1,000. You can check vids out on both of these roasters on Youtube. Hope this helps.

 

[peterjschmidt]

Gene Cafe comes to mind for a small-ish electric roaster which seems to produce excellent results. Also in the running, and with the look of a "real roaster" would be the Quest M3. Both have small footprints, but the Quest will probably give you more consistent results. The Gene Cafe is $700 and the Quest is approx. $1,000. You can check vids out on both of these roasters on Youtube. Hope this helps.

Neither will match the OP's capacity needs.

Member wwcove has something for sale that would work.

 

[Brewsbroscafe]

Thank you I will check them out

 

[Brewsbroscafe]

What does OP Capacity mean? Sorry for the dumb question

 

[Brewsbroscafe]

Unfortunately both the Gene and the Quest M3 isn't what were looking for to replace the advanced Sonofresco, that we were set to work with. The Gene was a little on the noisy side as we are operating out of an office lobby. The Quest M3 was a tad bit on the 'Manual" side, meaning of course that there are no set electronic aids or cooling cycles. With our business, we are just a 2 man team until we can afford more help so we really need to be able to turn our back on the roaster from time to time to assist customers, and having set roasting cycles really aids in that.

 

[JumpinJakJava]

Not to confuse the issue or throw a wrench in your works. But would it be possible to roast off site, use the Sonofresco or similar gas roaster to provide
fresh roasted coffee for the cafe. Do not know if this is possible, might help in your fall start up time. Easy to vent in a garage or outdoor
shed. You may end up with more official rules and regulations(headaches), roasting in the cafe at the lobby office setting.

 

[peterjschmidt]

OP = Original Poster

 

[Redswing]

My first thought is that for what you are doing, roasting on site during hours doesn't quite fit. Why don't you get the Sonofresco and roast off site, off hours, and just tell people that you roasted the beans yourself? It would simplify things.

 

[Brewsbroscafe]

Not to confuse the issue or throw a wrench in your works. But would it be possible to roast off site, use the Sonofresco or similar gas roaster to provide
fresh roasted coffee for the cafe. Do not know if this is possible, might help in your fall start up time. Easy to vent in a garage or outdoor
shed. You may end up with more official rules and regulations(headaches), roasting in the cafe at the lobby office setting.

Yeah we thought of that already, actually went as far as finding a rentable space for the roasting but we are on a very tight budget for opening. We are approved by the health Dept and building management to roast onsite. The problem with roasting in the garage or basement is that we would have a tough time with the health dept. legally speaking of course. We want to be a legit as possible with this. But thank you for the suggestion.

 

[JumpinJakJava]

Makes perfect sense. All for legit!

 

[Redswing]

perhaps you could roast under a cottage food law from home?

 

[slurp]

There are lots of quality roasting companies around. Why not skip the roasting your self and purchasing beans? When buying from a roaster you will get a much more constant product and it will more than likely be less money as roasters buy beans in large quantities. Also you will not have to worry about running out of green bean and have to rush around and roast. Additionally roasting coffe is not just buying a roaster and tossing some bean in the drum for 10 minutes. There is a learning process for roasting that does not happen over night. If you open and your coffee is not right from the beginning it will be hard to win back unsatisfied customers.

Having a in store roaster is a great addition to any retail locate but is not always practical. The most profit in coffee is selling the brewed coffee not the roasting. This information hopefully will help you look at your operation and deter mend what is best since every situation is different.

 

[Brewsbroscafe]

perhaps you could roast under a cottage food law from home?

As of 2014 New Jersey has no Cottage Food Law, a bill is in the works of being passed though. Thanks anyways, I never thought of that.

 

[HillofBeans]

I think off site. Call the Health Dept about using home or rented space.