Behind the roastery: who actually runs this place

Customers mostly see the bar, the tip of the thing. Behind the glass wall there's a smaller operation running on a chalkboard, a roast schedule, and the kind of routines that only exist because someone wrote them down once.

The crew is five: me (owner, dishwasher of last resort), Dana (roasts, buys green coffee, argues about processing), Oscar (wholesale, deliveries, fixer), Sam (head barista, trainer), and Priya (bar, latte art, the person who remembers your order). Nobody's job matches their title. That's small business.

The chalkboard runs the week

Monday: wholesale roast and deliveries. Tuesday: production roast, café gets fresh bags. Thursday: cupping night and the vote on next month's feature. Friday: second roast, weekend restock. Saturday: workshops. The board lives behind the roaster and hasn't been erased fully since 2023, layers of erased markers count as our company archive.

Weeks where everything goes to plan are rare enough to remark on. A delayed container of green coffee, a broken water line, a surprise rush, the board gets rewritten in real time and the espresso keeps coming anyway.

Roastery work is 20% coffee and 80% moving heavy bags around.

Why we stayed small

We get the expansion question roughly monthly, second location, food program, franchise somebody's cousin pitched. The answer's still no. One room keeps quality personal: Dana tastes what the bar serves, the bar feeds back what customers say, and the loop stays tight enough to matter.

If you want to meet the crew properly, Thursday cuppings are the honest way, whoever roasted that week is usually hosting. Or read the about page for the longer version of how a print shop turned into a roastery.