At Redding Roasters, Clients Get A Lesson To Go With A Great Cup Of Coffee

By John Voket

In his previous career Bill O’Keefe was a prepress specialist and a four-color stripper who worked balancing temperamental film, light, and chemicals to create a perfect printed image. But when he realized how digital and computerized prepress processing was quickly eliminating the need for individuals of his expertise, Mr O’Keefe decided to use his knowledge of balancing formulas to help create what becomes the basis for a potentially perfect cup of coffee.

Now Mr O’Keefe understands that nine out of ten consumers may value the 99-cent cup of Joe they can find at convenience stores and mini-marts, “but for 99-cents, they could be drinking what somebody swept off the floor. They don’t care because it’s 99-cents.”

Redding Roasters customers, whether individuals who regularly visit to pick up a pound or one of his select wholesale clients who may pour through 50–100 pounds a week, set the bar quite a bit higher.

“This isn’t gas station coffee, it’s the best of the best,” Mr O’Keefe said.

This also explains why you will find plenty of Redding Roasters coffee brewing the kitchens and offices throughout the area, but not in too many restaurants. Because he puts so much thought into delivering the foundation material for what might be among the best cups of coffee ever, Mr O’Keefe said he only sells his products wholesale if he can be assured those customers “won’t mess it up or water it down in the brewing process.”

“If it’s my name on the coffee, I can’t afford to have the person brewing it up badly because then his customers will think it’s my fault,” he added.

This point gets to the heart of Mr O’Keefe’s passion for coffee — a passion he is glad to share with customers and visitors to his sparse office near Bethel center.

“If they have the time, I typically spend between an hour and 90 minutes with each new customer,” he said. “I think they not only appreciate it more, but when they brew my coffee for their family and friends, they can talk about it. This is how I get new customers.”

When a newbie comes through the door, Mr O’Keefe said he has a system for helping that customer fine tune his or her likes and dislikes. And often after a few weeks or months he may be creating a one-of-a-kind blend or flavored variety for that customer depending on the outcome of what he says is a lengthy process of taste testing.

“Some just come through the door, they pick one kind and stick with it,” he explained. “But for others I have them try a Sumatra or a Brazilian and ask them to note what they like and dislike about it. Next we’ll go to an Indonesian or Guatemalan. Eventually we get into different kinds of roasts — French, Turkish, or Italian. Then maybe we do some blending. It’s like a free-for-all.”

In any given week, if he doesn’t have what a customer needs, Mr O’Keefe will get it. And if a customer has specific desires and calls ahead, he will roast it and have it ready when the client arrives.

“It’s fun, and not that much more expensive to learn about coffees of the world buying them here than at a grocery store,” he said. “Truthfully, I don’t mind if a client spends the entire day here. Without my local customers my business is done.”

Mr O’Keefe began his transition from printing work to roasting coffee back in 2000, when he originally bought into another roasting company, which purveyed a much smaller offering, but in huge wholesale quantities.

“That’s where I learned the art and science of roasting, and learned what the operation was doing right and what it was doing wrong. When clients began asking for more exotic coffees, his partner at the time was unwilling to do it, which inspired Mr O’Keefe to strike out on his own.

As he watches the wholesale price of raw beans trending rapidly upward, the local roaster is not discouraged because high quality, great tasting coffee is still an affordable luxury most of his single clients are willing to indulge.

“Today the same money buys only about 60 to 65 percent of what I could get a year ago,” Mr O’Keefe said. “There are two ways to deal with that; lower my standards to keep retail cost down or maintain top standards and nudge the prices up with the market.”

With that in mind, Mr O’Keefe still wants to keep a wide selection of coffees on hand, and typically aims to turn over his raw material supplies every month.

“Otherwise it’s like a bag of unspent money just sitting there,” he said.

He also supplements his single-source clients doing select contract roasting, including work for a philanthropic cause called Simply Smiles, whose profits help impoverished children and families in Oaxaca, Mexico, who are engaged in, or who want to become engaged in, coffee farming.

Demonstrating the roasting process, Mr O’Keefe will pour 30 pounds of raw beans straight from the burlap sack into a hopper on the front of his refrigerator-sized roaster. Once the gas-fired ceramic heating elements reach the proper roasting temperature, he pulls a lever and the beans slowly filter into the spinning drum.

As spokes and fins within the churning metal drum circulate and separate the beans for uniform roasting, he watched through a tiny porthole as the contents turns from a greenish taupe color to a deeper honey or orange, and finally to some degree of light to oily dark brown.

“It has to be good coffee, but it has to look pretty too,” Mr O’Keefe said, adding that scorched beans in the mix are a sure sign of a lack of care and attentiveness in the roasting process.

Then he pulls another handle and the aromatic roasted contents pour out into a cooling platform, which draws room temperature air through the beans until they are cool enough for packaging.

“Each roasting accounts for about a 17 to 30 percent loss, so an average 30 pounds of raw beans going in will give up about 20–25 pounds of roasted coffee,” he said.

Besides coffee, blends and decaf by the pound, Redding Roasters also sells gift boxes of ground coffee.

“A lot of people are choosing fine coffee as a gift item these days instead of alcohol,” he said.

Redding Roasters regularly features more than three dozen varieties of straight bean or blended coffee, as well as nine decaf options. Mr O’Keefe also offers a selection of Simpson & Vail whole leaf teas.

The shop, at 81 Greenwood Avenue in the rear, is closed Sunday and Monday, is open Tuesday and Wednesday 10 am to 5 pm, and until 6 pm Thursday and Friday. Saturday, Redding Roasters is open from 10 am to 4 pm.

Call 203-739-0510 or check out the store’s website, reddingroasters.com.