“How did you get into coffee roasting?”

After 10 years, I still get asked this question frequently and it’s a fun story to tell. When we lived in Harrisonburg VA for 4 years, it was there that I first discovered others doing coffee roasting as both a hobby and a small commercial enterprise. I had already been drinking coffee for close to a decade and had only very recently started to expand beyond bad office coffee and basic drip coffee at home. But there in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, I discovered the huge difference that quality and freshness make to the coffee experience.

When we moved back to our home state of Iowa, we entered a “Good Coffee desert” and I had to solve that problem. Instead of constantly ordering fresh-roasted specialty coffee online, I decided to look into the home-roasting that I’d learned about back in Virginia. So I reached out to a friend and former pastor who ran a small business out of his basement, selling green coffee to local home roasters in Harrisonburg, and it was off to the races. There was also already a wealth of information online for home roasters, from which I drank deeply.

In December of 2013, I roasted my first batch of coffee on a hot air popcorn popper in my basement, which stunk up the whole house, and I was immediately hooked. Seventeen months later, in April 2015, I incorporated Ross Street Roasting Company LLC with the state of Iowa and we were an official business.

“I was born in a small town”

Small towns in rural areas are difficult places to start new small businesses. Knowing my new business would never be able to sustain itself on solely local customers, combined with my background in software product development (including ecommerce), I created a website with an online store immediately and our online business has been a pillar of our sales since Day 1. 

As a business, RSR has always been a “food manufacturer” in the eyes of the state, meaning: We don’t have a retail/café operation attached to the roasting business. Despite many local customers rightly calling for a coffee shop in Tama-Toledo, we have intentionally decided to focus solely on roasting coffee. It’s right there in our name. This focus allows us to keep things lean & mean as business owners that are juggling other commitments. 

RSR’s first Big Win in “The City” 

After starting with exclusively online/direct-to-consumer sales through our website, I also knew that we could eventually develop a more solid, higher-volume side of our business selling fresh-roasted specialty coffee to businesses. Coffee shops are a good fit for that, naturally.

To get connected with a broader network of business professionals, in early 2016 I attended a few 10 Million Cups gatherings in Cedar Rapids, just an hour east of us from Tama-Toledo. After giving our startup pitch at 10MC and asking for help growing our commercial business, I was given the card for an owner of a local coffee shop in the New Bohemia district, called Brewhemia. After a good phone conversation, sending samples to them, and following up a week or two later, I secured RSR’s first “big account” with Brewhemia which continues to this day. 

For the past decade, it’s been these two customer groups: Online customers buying coffee for at-home consumption, and local/independently-owned coffee shops that have been the 2 pillars that have kept RSR standing and moving forward - and we are so grateful for that support!