The Big Idea

We start with a simple premise, with a complicated backstory: it’s about the coffee.

It’s about the coffee. Not about milk and cream, or charred beans. Not about a cause, or a price. We believe that if more people who drink coffee also understood more about great coffee—how it’s grown, roasted and brewed—the rest would take care of itself. Milk and cream will retreat to cereal bowls and strawberries, and charred beans will be relegated to the bean bin of history. When people care about coffee, they will pay its worth, and reward coffee growers for their good work.

We aren’t there yet; not by a long shot. Because really caring about coffee takes work. As roasters, it means we have to source the best coffees in any given season, roast carefully just what we need for the day and test our results. Then we entrust the coffee to you, and this is where the really hard work begins. You need to order just what you need, store it properly, grind just what you need at just the right setting, use the correct portion and discard the brew when it’s lost its life. For espresso, we want you to grind for each shot, check your grind setting throughout the day, tamp with 30 lbs. of pressure, pull 1 ½ oz. shots in 25 to 30 seconds. We want you to toss bad shots. And we want you to maintain your espresso machine with meticulous regularity.

These practices, more than Fair Trade or any other certification program, are what will save artisan coffee and secure the future of skilled coffee growers. Currently the vast majority of coffees are traded as commodities, which puts them in the same class as rice, bananas and sugar. People who learn to care about coffee will lead a movement to raise artisan coffee to the specialty level where it belongs, alongside fine wines and cheeses.

Fair Trade has its uses. In fact, most of our current selection is Fair Trade Certified. It’s a good starting point, but the time is coming for specialty coffee roasters to move beyond it. As far as we’re concerned, rigid dogmatism is a lousy criteria for anything, and coffee is no exception. The fact is, we pay at or above the Fair Trade price for all of our coffees, not because we’re saints, but because great coffee costs more. In our ideal coffee world, small roasters like us would pay a premium for exceptional coffees, grown on exceptional farms, and less accomplished growers would sell their product to large companies at the Fair Trade price. Great farmers would prosper, and those who aspire to greatness would have an incentive that would be even higher than the Fair Trade price.

In a phrase: we care about our coffee, by sourcing the best green beans from small estates and cooperatives, roasting them thoughtfully, shipping them quickly and finally, giving our customers the information and expertise to fully realize our coffees’ potential.

Where to Buy

In Rhode Island:

Elsewhere: