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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