Roasting Jamaican Coffee (on Video!)

As I mentioned in my last blog post, and as some of you might have seen on our mailing list, we are doing a promotion on Jamaican coffee for Father's Day. As expected, we're selling quite a bit of the coffee, so Joe roasted a couple batches this morning, and began teaching our new intern Ben about the coffee profiling process. I shot the video of the beans coming out of the drum and into the agitator and then panned over to show the roast profile on the roasting control unit. If you ordered Jamaican Moy Hall from us yesterday or through this weekend, this is most likely the batch of coffee you'll be getting.



If you're interested in learning more about Jamaican coffee, and why it is so expensive and hard to find, please check out these posts from last year:

The Price of Excellence, Part I

The Price of Excellence, Part II


Enjoy!
Matt

The Move: Part 2

As of yesterday, we are all moved in to the new spot (with the exception of computer and computer desk for the office).

Here are some shots of the uhaul on one of our trips over, us moving about 7000 pounds of coffee in, and the roaster installed in it's new home.

We're hoping to be up and roasting by Thursday night. We'll keep you posted!

Cheers,
Matt

We're Moving!

Happy 2008 to all of our loyal customers! Freshcoffeenow.com is excited to announce that next Monday we are moving our roasting center to Burlington! For those of you from far away places, Burlington is the town that is next door to Winooski, our current location. It is the largest town in our small state, and it will be a great place for us to operate in. For starters, we have about twice as much room to warehouse coffee. We also wont have to walk down 25 steep stairs when getting coffee to and from our roaster.

For the customer, the biggest difference is that we won't run out of coffee as often (although certain Fair Trade co operatives, and Jamaican coffees will still be hard to find). We also won't be bothered with the restaurant that was above the old roasting facility, allowing us to focus more on coffee, our website and the wholesale business. This should make everything a bit smoother, and our jobs a bit more fun.

Here's some "before" pics of the new space. Look for more pictures next week as we install the roaster and bring over some coffee!

The Blog is Back!

Hello fans of Fresh Coffee! I realized last week that neither Joe nor I had made a post to the blog in over a month, so I decided to post an update on what’s been going on here in Vermont. Rest assured we didn’t forget about you, we have just been busy trying to make changes to our website.

I guess the most important (and evident) thing we’ve been working on is the new website, www.freshcoffeenow.com. With the help of our web development team, EpikOne, we’ve built a new website, which we feel looks a lot better, and is easier to use for both our clients, and Joe and I. The site launched about 6 weeks ago, and has been going through a testing phase. We think we have worked out all the glitches, and recommend that everyone tries the site!

Some other things we’ve been working on are holiday gift options. We’ve always sold gift packages, but this year at the request of some of our customers, we are in the process of adding some new features. The gift packages will now come in nice, round wicker trays, and a gift card, making them a better looking present. Also, we will allow the addition of the wicker tray and gift card to any order, not just a gift package. We will have electronic gift certificates, and two coffee clubs (Jamaican, and the regular Fresh Coffee Club) available as well. We expect all three of these changes to take place on 12/1/8, and are really excited to launch them.

Last but not least, the biggest change for us is that we are preparing to move to a new roasting facility shortly after the new year. We’ve finally outgrown our basement hideout in Winooski, and we’re moving back to Burlington! Our new facility is about four times as big, and will allow us to warehouse more coffees, take deliveries easier and ship packages for handily. Most importantly to Joe and I: we won’t be in a windowless basement!! I’ll post some pictures of the new spot as soon as we begin to fit it up.

Speaking of the basement, it’s time to go back and pack some orders. Please let us know what you think about the new website, and have a great Thanksgiving!