Local coffee roaster scores ‘A’ on new blend

Roaster Justin Freeman watches the beans and monitors the control panel to achieve the perfect roast. Freeman worked with Andrew Bowman, Tony's head roaster, to develop the Summit Winter Blend, which scored 90 points in December on Coffee Review, a leading review site.

He’s the morning person’s version of a beer brewer: In a large warehouse, lit unevenly by fluorescent lights, he stands next to a large round vat that looks like an antique washing machine connected to what looks like a miniature antique furnace – but none of it is antique. His job here is to make sure that the green coffee beans are roasted at the perfect temperature and then cooled quickly.

He is Justin Freeman, a coffee roaster at Tony’s Coffees and Teas who, along with head roaster Andrew Bowman, developed the Summit Winter Blend and in December scored 90 out of 100 points on Coffee Review – a leading review site for the industry – for the blend.

The Summit blend – part of Tony’s new line of seasonal blends – combines beans from El Salvador and Sulawesi, an island in Indonesia, and is roasted at Tony’s Irongate facility on Division Street, where all Tony’s coffees are roasted.

After breaking $3.5 million in sales for 2012, a high-scoring roast could help push sales past the $4 million mark for 2013, the goal that Wendy Owen, director of sales, said Tony’s hopes to reach.

“If I have any say about it, we’re gonna do it,” Owen said.

A score of 90 points doesn’t come easy either, said Rosie Germond, Tony’s distribution manager.

“Receiving a 90 is a big deal,” Germond said.

Prior to this high score, Tony’s has received scores between 89 and 93 for coffees dating back to 2009. Coffee Review scores are based on five scales: Aroma, acidity, body, flavor and aftertaste.

But Tony’s has been in the coffee roasting business since long before 2009. The company has been at it for 42 years.

Though the company started small, roasting small batches in its small Fairhaven coffeehouse in 1971, it has grown into a sizable player in the coffee business, distributing coffees up and down the West Coast and beyond, Germond said.

Last year, Tony’s roasted more than 500,000 pounds of coffee beans. With 17 full-time employees in its entire operation– including four drivers – that much work requires everyone to be flexible, Germond said.

“We all wear a lot of hats here,” she said.

Although Tony’s won the high score for a blend – and plans to release a Homestead Spring Blend soon – Germond said there is a shift in coffee tastes now that is moving away from blends and toward single-origin coffees like what Tony’s offers in its Taste of Place program.

The Taste of Place program brings coffees from small, fair trade, certified organic farms for limited roasting runs based on seasonal availability, Germond said.

Though the Taste of Place program has been active for a couple years, it has only recently picked up steam, Germond said. Last summer, the program brought coffees from two farmers in Honduras – Jose Marel Portillo and Luz Zelaya.

While all Tony’s worldly beans are now roasted at the Division Street facility, the roasting operation was previously located on Irongate Road, according to commercial real estate broker Steve Moore.

The roasting operation itself is overseen by one person standing next to an oven connected to a large round vat, known as a drum-type roaster. Bright lights illuminate the vat as freshly roasted beans are poured out of the oven and spun around with forced air to cool them quickly. The beans are roasted at temperatures varying from 460 to 520 degrees fahrenheit depending on how dark the roast is meant to be. The overseeing roaster watches the temperature and pushes a number of buttons on a control panel to keep the operation moving smoothly.

In addition to its Bellingham roasting facility, Tony’s has operations further south on the West Coast.

Tony’s operates a distribution center in the San Francisco area which services distribution to stores and coffee houses in that area.

The company recently turned its Seattle Cupping Lab – where new roasts are sampled to determine quality and flavor – into a full coffee bar open to the public and offers free tasting every Saturday at noon.

Although Tony’s sticks to its small-town roots with its products, dealing primarily in fair trade, certified organic and direct-trade coffee beans, it also sells to some major players in the retail industry, including Fred Meyer and QFC, Top Foods and Haggen, The PCC and Whole Foods stores located in the Northwest, Germond said.

Germond said that while Tony’s continues to grow and sell to a wider market, it maintains sustainable practices in its roasting and distribution facility, participating in the Working Towards Zero Waste program. Germond pointed out that the entire roasting facility has only one standard-size garbage can and recycles or reuses all the rest of its waste.

Beyond reducing its own waste, the company donates to local organizations helping the environment, like the Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association.

These practices keep Tony’s connected to its roots, Germond said.

Germond said she expects to see these practices continue in the next few years.

“I feel like we’re going to continue to have that small company feel,” Germond said. “Maybe the future for us is having our own flagship stores, like the Tony’s coffee house. A coffee house that’s our house.”

New building to go to the dogs, and cats, as Humane Society's new shelter

The Whatcom Humane Society will combine its two shelter operations under one roof in a new building on Division Street by July of this year, according to Sarah Hansen, animal care supervisor at the Baker Creek Shelter.

Hansen said the new building will replace two facilities – the Williamson Way Shelter and the Baker Creek Shelter – which are poorly equipped, in need of repairs and expensive to operate.

“Having two buildings and working out of two buildings (in different locations) is very expensive and a pain,” Hansen said. Additionally, Hansen said the lack of space at the two shelters is a major problem when taking in new animals and trying to avoid euthanizing animals that have not been adopted.

“Once an animal goes up for adoption here, it stays up as long as they’re healthy and we have the space, space being the biggest issue,” Hansen said.

The 18,000-square-foot facility, which is currently under construction, will relieve space, drainage and ventilation issues faced at the current shelters – which will close down once the Humane Society moves into the new building – and will have a larger veterinary and surgical area as well as in-house x-ray systems, Hansen said. The lack of x-ray facilities at the current shelters is a major problem when diagnosing injuries to animals, she said.

The shelter will also have a cat colony room, where well-adjusted cats can play together in a large room rather than stay in cages; an indoor-outdoor puppy area, so puppies can have protected outdoor space; and outdoor dog areas with space for dogs to run. The facility will include a large outdoor area where volunteers can walk and play with dogs.

The Whatcom Humane Society reports that it serves over 5,000 animals each year.

Construction of the building, at 2172 Division St., is on schedule to be completed by June 1, according to Ken Pike, jobsite superintendent for The Franklin Corporation, the company handling construction.

Construction began shortly after the 12-acre property was purchased with a donation in December 2011, according to Laura Clark, director of the Whatcom Humane Society. Tax documents list the sale price at $1.5 million.

The design of the facility was a collaborative effort between the city of Bellingham, the Whatcom Humane Society and people at the University of California Davis School of Veterinary Medicine/Shelter Design, Clark said.

Though the Humane Society has been in need of a new facility for years, Clark said the lack of resources was what held it back.

Hansen, who has worked at the Baker Creek Shelter for five years, said she has been hearing about a new facility since she started but had never seen it materialize.

“Even two years ago, when they said we were getting a new building, I didn’t believe it was really happening,” Hansen said.

One of the major issues at the existing shelters is drainage, Hansen said. The current drains are small and the screens don’t properly stop hair from getting into them, she said. As a result, the Baker Creek Shelter uses a chemical drain cleaner regularly to deal with the clogs from hair and other things getting into the drains, Hansen said.

“Three years ago, we had water backed up in all the dog kennels,” Hansen said. The drains at the new facility have been designed to keep hair and everything else that isn’t liquid out of the drains, she said.

The Baker Creek Shelter, Hansen said, was not designed properly as an animal shelter facility.

“It wasn’t built by anyone who knew what they were doing,” she said.

Hansen said the new facility will address all of the issues facing the current facilities, but at a substantial financial cost.

She said that construction costs for the month of February alone had exceeded $250,000 and they expected costs for March to be higher.

Funding for the project has come largely from donations, including an anonymous donor from the community who agreed to match donations up to $1 million. The Human Society website currently shows donations totalling $800,213 but the deadline for donations that will be matched is April 15.

Hansen said the Humane Society will need to continue fundraising after moving into the new facility in June or July of this year, as the initial operating costs coupled with residual construction costs will be much higher than current operating costs. In the long run, however, the operations costs will be much lower with all its services in one place, she said.

Beyond shelter, adoption, education and other programs, the Whatcom Humane Society has contracts to handle all the animal control services for Whatcom County and several local municipalities, including Bellingham. Animal control services will also be based out of the new, Division Street building once it is complete.

The Baker Creek Shelter, which is owned by Whatcom County and leased to the Humane Society, was formerly owned and used by Security Specialists Plus in their contracts handling animal control and work-release inmates for Whatcom County. Both of those contracts were cancelled after a controversial animal abuse case and misconduct by a SSP guard in regard to a female inmate.

The Williamson Way Shelter is owned by the Port of Bellingham and is also leased to the Humane Society. The Humane Society also operates a 10-acre horse and livestock facility in Everson.


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New chemical mixing plant to be built on Midway

The lot where Cesco's new plant will be built sits just behind Cowden Gravel & Ready Mix Inc.'s main operation. With the foundation-only permit approved, construction of the plant will begin soon.

Cesco Solutions, Inc., an industrial chemical company based in the Irongate industrial park, will at least double its business with the construction of a new mixing plant at the east end of Midway Lane, according to owner and president Karl Larsen.

In addition to mixing equipment, the 13,000-square-foot building, at 2215 Midway Lane, will house a larger research and development laboratory and upstairs office space, allowing for larger operations than their current plant at 3715 Irongate Rd., Larsen said.

“We’ll have the ability to have things laid out more efficiently than we do now,” he said. “And as the company grows, we’ll have the ability to support that.”

Construction of the facility will likely take six to eight months, according to Larsen. The facility will be built by Credo Construction, Inc., of Bellingham.

Brian Smart, a planner with the City of Bellingham Planning and Community Development Department, confirmed that a binding site plan had been filed and a building permit was under review. He also said that a foundation-only permit had been issued to allow work on the foundation to begin.

Dawn Harju, who runs the Whatcom Construction Resources Plan Center across the street from the site, said she doubts the new facility will affect her business much. Although it is prime walking territory for her dog, Samson, she said.

According to documents filed with the City of Bellingham Planning and Community Development Department, the new facility will have a low impact environmentally.

Larsen said Cesco focuses on making products for petrochemical, pulp and paper, transportation, water treatment and food processing applications that are more environmentally friendly than traditional products.

“People think about solvents being harmful, but we use products like soybean-based solvents,” which are low-risk to the environment, Larsen said. “We try to develop products that replace more hazardous products.”

Larsen said Cesco has developed soybean-based solvents for oil cleanup which are far less environmentally harmful in both production and application.

Jeffrey A. Hegedus, an environmental health supervisor with the Whatcom County Health Department, said the production and use of soybean-based products is healthier for the community and makes sense for oil cleanup.

“The first thought that comes to mind, as a chemical engineer, is the old adage that ‘like cleans like,’” Hegedus said. “And soybean oil would be desirable because it’s readily biodegradable and it’s not toxic.”

Hegedus said that production of soybean-based products is preferable from an environmental standpoint compared to traditional, petroleum-based solvents such as acetone – often used as paint thinner for oil paints – or methyl ethyl ketone.

“Acetone, MEK, you know, these very light ends of the crude oil refining process, they’re dangerous because they’re ‘hot,’” Hegedus said. “They have low flash points so they could blow up. They (also) generate odors that are toxic and so when you’re working around it you have to be very careful, far more careful than if you’re extracting soybean oil.”

Hegedus also said that leaks and spills of highly refined petroleum products would require a hazardous waste cleanup operation, where soybean products likely would not.

“I think...it’s going to be way better for the community, because it’s not going to blow up, it’s not toxic and it’s not persistent in the ground,” Hegedus said.

Beyond soybean oil products, Larsen also said the company uses citrus-based products for detergents and other applications.

Before purchasing the company in 1992, Larsen was a sales representative for Cesco in the mid-1980s. He soon began making products custom fit to their clients’ applications and eventually led the company in a new direction, Larsen said. He said the company has grown consistently since he took over and expanded the application of their products.

Larsen said he will keep the main plant after the new facility is complete. The company also operates a plant in Baytown, Texas.

From backyard to barnstorm: Natural chicken feed company scratches its way to the top

Diana Ambauen-Meade, 54, says her chicken feed is healthier for chickens, and in turn, for people. Here, she sifts through a tub of finished feed, showing what her popular mash-style feed looks like.

It turns out, chickens are particular about what they eat – or at least that’s what Diana Ambauen-Meade said she believes and is one of the motivations behind her feed mill in Irongate.

Scratch and Peck Feeds is a small-scale feed mill, located at 3883 Hammer Drive, that uses only locally sourced grains and soy-free products to produce chicken, hog, turkey and goat feed. It is the first feed company in the U.S. to receive non-GMO status and will soon also receive official organic status.

Though the feed business is dominated by behemoth companies, Ambauen-Meade, 54, said she has cornered a growing niche market for feed made from whole grains and high-quality ingredients. Her company sold more than $1 million worth of feed last year. Scratch and Peck is also currently a finalist in Whatcom County for Outstanding Business Achievement as a start-up

A growing list of retailers around the northwest and beyond are carrying Scratch and Peck products; Ambauen-Meade said that her company is now the number one seller of chicken feed on Amazon.com.

Neil Montacre, co-owner of Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply in Portland, Ore., said he began carrying Scratch and Peck’s mash-style feed because his customers loved that type of feed and Scratch and Peck was able to deliver where another supplier couldn’t.

“We had a lot of demand for that mash-style feed because it smelled better and the chickens got really excited about it,” Montacre said. “We’re really happy to have it.”

Ambauen-Meade said she plans to build a silo at her current location as well as seek property for a larger feed mill. She said building to suit her business’ specific needs would streamline production and allow her to meet her goal of being the largest producer of locally sourced feed by 2018.

And it all started in her own backyard.

When Ambauen-Meade first started raising her own chickens in California during the late 1990s, neither her nor her chickens cared for the standard pellet-style feed available on the market, she said.

“You can’t really tell what’s in a pellet,” Ambauen-Meade said.

As an alternative, she chose to mix her own feed and continued to do so when raising chickens later in Washington. Her friends began asking for her feed and soon she decided to see if there was market for it.

“I bagged it up, I got a business license and I advertised it on Craigslist,” she said.

After six months of hand-delivering feed around the Seattle and Tacoma areas, Ambauen-Meade realized that she couldn’t handle the demand milling feed in her backyard and she contracted with a mill to do the work.

The mill, however, was in Oregon and there were high shipping costs with so much movement of the product, so she decided if she was going to continue, she would need her own mill.

“I decided that building a mill can’t be that difficult, people have done it for generations so it’s not rocket science,” Ambauen-Meade said. “So I just kind of started my own little feasibility study to figure out the cost and figuring out what to do...it was months of doing the discovery process on my own.”

Once she made up her mind that it could work, her husband Dennis Meade, 62, and son Bryon Meade – who had just finished a degree in business management from WWU in March 2010 – got on board with the project. Together, they decided to move from Bremerton to Bellingham to build the mill.

The trio found a building, bought some old equipment and began to set up the mill in May 2010. But it didn’t happen overnight.

“We were totally naive, we had no idea what went into it,” Ambauen-Meade said. “We thought we could just do it. It was a major learning process.”

However, once things got going, they went quickly, Ambauen-Meade said. The person they hired to do the fabrication work in the mill arrived by coincidence and helped bring the project together.

“He just randomly showed up in our lives. It was like he fell from the sky,” Ambauen-Meade said. “Then it was like: ‘We can’t not do this.’”

Ambauen-Meade said her motivation for producing a natural feed product stems from her understanding that people are affected by what their animals eat. Soy, in particular, has become a major allergen and its prevalence in most feeds can cause people to be allergic to eggs due to the high levels of soy the chickens ingest, she said.

Ambauen-Meade said she maintains the quality of her product by making connections with the local farms she buys from and visiting them to view their operations.

Her son, Bryon Meade, 26, said he also believes in producing a high-quality, natural product and the experience with Scratch and Peck has been fun, to say the least.

“My mom came to me with this idea and we just went for it,” Meade said. “We had no idea what we were in for but it’s been quite a ride.”

Though he initially did most of the production process, Meade has now backed off to mainly administrative and planning tasks as the business has grown.

“I left Alex (Ekins, 30, the mill production manager) to do that,” Meade said. “I like to think that I’m the all-around guy.”

Meade is currently looking at building the silo so they can store grain more efficiently and move it less. It is currently stored in large bags on shelves in the feed mill which require more work when unloading 30-ton trucks of grain and when moving it into the milling process.

Meade said he is looking at other ways to maximize the space they have for at least the next three years – the length of time they expect to stay in the Hammer Drive location.

“I’m kind of just trying to plan our future demand and meet that with what we’ve got,” Meade said.

Meade, a full partner in the business, said he plans to carry on once his parents retire.

“I’ve always wanted to run my own business and this has a lot of potential,” Meade said. “ And I don’t think my parents are going to want to run this 10 years down the road.”

Meade said he expects Scratch and Peck to continue to grow in the backyard chicken feed market in those 10 years.

“I see us here in Whatcom County still,” Meade said. “I see us at the lead of this market...at the national level, but still maintaining our core values. The top dogs, or chickens.”

Beyond the roughly 175 tons of feed Scratch and Peck is currently shipping out each month, the company also sells garden hoop kits – called “Hooplas” – which consist of hoops, clamps and plastic for setting up a 4-foot-by-8-foot greenhouse garden plot.

Jail Work Center to be sold when new jail opens

This plot of land, to the west of Labounty Road and near Sunset Avenue in Ferndale, is currently under consideration for the new jail site.

A new Whatcom County Jail would likely trigger the sale of the county’s Jail Work Center on Division Street, according to Wendy Jones, chief of corrections at the Whatcom County Jail.

If it became available, the facility and adjoining property would be a sizeable space for one or more potential businesses.

The Work Center, which houses up to 150 inmates, cost $7.9 million to build and was financed by a voter-approved sales tax increase of 0.1 percent. If the building were sold, Jones said the money from the sale would be used toward paying off a new facility.

“But I think it’s all kind of up in the air right now,” she said, and added that the building could be considered for a potential treatment facility instead.

The Jail Work Center, housed at 2030 Division St., was never meant to be a permanent facility, Jones said.

“The original plan was to sell it (once the new jail opens)," Jones said. “It was constructed to meet industrial criteria so it would be easy to retrofit for industrial or manufacturing use.”

Steve Moore, owner of Moore and Co., a commercial real estate company, said that he had a hand in leading the county toward constructing the building as an industrial building, rather than just a jail.

“I told them, ‘You can’t sell a jail,’” Moore said. “I told them they needed to build an industrial building” so it could be sold later.”

That later may come soon, as the county is moving forward with the planning process for the new jail.

At the Whatcom County Council meeting on Jan. 29, council members approved a contract with DLR Group, Inc. to begin planning the new jail.

Although the timeline on the Build A Safe Jail website – referenced by Jones – indicates the jail would not be completed until as late as May 2019, Ferndale City Councilman Keith Olson said that would be too long.

“I don’t think they can wait that long to get a new jail,” said Olson, who recently retired from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and saw the jail on a regular basis. “The one they have is crumbling. I don’t see how it (the new jail) could be any more than three to three and a half years out, instead of six.”

Olson said he thought the project would get fast-tracked as the need is so urgent.
Jones agreed that the current jail is “falling down.”

A $3.1 million overhaul was set to begin in fall 2011 to repair some of the most dire issues with the current jail, but reports indicated that even with those repairs complete, the need for a new jail won’t lessen.

The county is currently considering a location in Ferndale at Labounty Road and Sunset Avenue. County documents indicate the site is 40 acres total and the Build A Safe Jail site reports that a facility as large as King County’s new SCORE facility, which houses 800 inmates, would easily fit on the site.

The SCORE facility was also designed by DLR.

Planning documents indicate that the new jail would be a single-story facility, as this requires fewer guards to monitor.

The county chose DLR from seven proposals which were submitted last summer. DLR was recently voted number-one architect by ARCHITECT magazine and had done more than 100 corrections or detention center projects before.

The current jail building will most likely be torn down when a new facility is completed, Jones said. Most estimates show it would cost more to repair the building for another use than to simply tear it down and start fresh, she said.

Currently, there are no estimates available for the cost of the new facility or the value of the Division Street Jail Work Center if sold.

At the time the idea came up to construct the interim Jail Work Center, police officers and sheriff’s deputies were unable to make arrests on low-level offenders due to excessive overcrowding at the jail.

Although some of the overcrowding has been relieved by the Work Center, the jail still frequently operates double capacity.

Welcome to the Irongate Journal

Welcome to the Irongate Journal, a neighborhood news site covering the Irongate neighborhood in Bellingham, Wash.

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