Focus on quality gains praise for Olympia Coffee Roasting

Don’t worry if you, the consumer, aren’t sure about the right balance because when you buy a bag of coffee from Olympia Coffee Roasting it comes with directions and a tag so that you can take notes.

All of that attention to detail, including a training facility for baristas who will be making their coffee, has paid off for Olympia Coffee Roasting Co. when it was recognized by Roast Magazine as the 2013 Micro Roaster of the Year, an award given to a coffee roaster who produces under 100,000 pounds of coffee annually.

Owners Stormshak, 35, and Schroeder, 29, were former employees at the business before they took over in November 2010. Sam Schroeder’s brother, Andy, who has an MBA, provides advice, while Stormshak and Schroeder are full-time employees. Schroeder oversees the retail side of the business and Stormshak is in charge of the wholesale operations. The retail side of the business is the larger of the two, but the wholesale side is growing, with the business now making a weekly delivery to the Seattle area.

The base of its roasting operations and one of its retail businesses can be found in downtown Olympia on Cherry Street. Open the doors to the business and you’ll find an espresso bar and customers lining up to get their morning coffee. Beyond that is the roasting operation, with employees roasting beans and filling orders for customers.

Both owners say they are “super passionate” about coffee, and though they have grown the business since buying it, they also said they bought an existing business with “good bones.”

Stormshak was so set on running his own coffee startup that he was prepared to compete against Olympia Coffee if he wasn’t able to play a larger role at the business, he said.

Stormshak has worked in specialty coffee for 17 years, first inspired by his grandfather. While his parents were drinking Folger’s, his grandfather would make Italian espresso and serve it with sweetened milk, making it taste almost like hot chocolate, Stormshak recalled.

“I love the ritual of coffee,” he said.

Customers, too, like the taste of the coffee, including Joe Ruth, owner of a relatively new cafe in Port Townsend called Velocity Coffee.

Ruth has worked in coffee since the late 1990s, finally opening his own business this summer. He knew Stormshak and the company’s roaster, Will Frith, so decided to go with their product, calling it delicious. “It’s always been consistent and is getting better,” he said.

He also prefers working with a company that offers a personal touch, avoiding the problem of dealing with several employees, or what Ruth calls “too many channels of information,” at a larger company.

“They are always there to take a call when I’m having a problem with a bean or a machine,” Ruth said about Olympia Coffee.

Olympia Coffee Roasting Co.

Owners: Oliver Stormshak, Sam Schroeder, Andy Schroeder

Location: 108 Cherry St. NE, Olympia

Employees: 12

Service: Retail and wholesale coffee roaster

Online: olympiacoffee.com

Did you know? Olympia Coffee Roasting Co., in addition to its wholesale business, has two retail locations – one downtown and one in west Olympia – but it also is considering two more retail locations, possibly in the city’s South Capitol and Eastside neighborhoods. Big Truck is the name of the company’s best- selling espresso blend.