Home coffee roasting: the next trend.

Roasting coffee at home is nothing new. A hundred years ago, in fact, people were more likely to purchase green coffee instead of roasted coffee and roast a week's supply at-a-time in a pan on their stove. Then commercial roasters came along and advertised the convenience of pre-roasted coffee. "Make coffee more convenient for customers" seemed to be the industry's mantra. The first canned coffees were first sold in whole bean form, then sold as ground coffee, and eventually, sold as instant.

One recent culinary trend, which shuns that convenience mantra, places renewed emphasis on specialty, handcrafted food products, and on the educational process of appreciating those products and learning to prepare them at home. Recent developments in the home coffee appliance market reflect this trend quite clearly. In the 1980s, the coffee grinder was consistent with that trend, and in the 1990s it has been the home espresso machine. For the year 2000 and beyond, a growing contingent of coffee enthusiasts, specialty coffee industry insiders, and home appliance marketing specialists are betting that home coffee roasters will be the trendy home coffee appliance.

Home Coffee Roaster Competition Heats Up

The companies involved in the home coffee roasting movement tend to fall into one of two categories: Home Coffee Roasting Advocates and Home Coffee Roaster Promoters. The first group of companies is comprised of small distributors of home coffee roasters and green coffee who are passionate and dedicated home roasting proselytizers. The emphasis of each of their respective enterprises is to generate enthusiasm for home roasting as an art, craft, and hobby, and to spread the fresh-roasted coffee gospel. They promote their business, and home coffee roasting in general, through consumer education. Their medium to convey their message is the web, and their goal, at least in a couple cases, is to build an on-line network or develop a community of dedicated home coffee roasters that regularly share information with each other as a means of perfecting their past time.

The individuals behind these companies are entrepreneurs who all developed an incurable affinity for roasting coffee at home before coming to the conclusion that there may be a modicum of commercial viability in their hobby. They hope to utilize their passion for coffee as a means to build their business. Because they believe roasting requires tremendous skill, passion, and knowledge, these entrepreneurs tend to believe their businesses fill a niche market and do not necessarily believe they are on the verge of creating a new product category for kitchen appliances. Their optimism for home roasting is reserved.

The second group of companies at the forefront of the home coffee roasting movement consists of the manufacturers of the home coffee roasters. Their mission is to make home coffee roasters accessible, affordable, and appealing to the average consumer. These companies are likely to measure their future success by the degree to which they make a home coffee roaster a common, or at least ordinary, household coffee appliance. They do not believe that home coffee roasting is for the niche coffee player, and in fact, have made bets that a home coffee roaster will be an important new kitchen product. These bets have come in the form of research and development costs. All these companies are nearing the end of intensive, multi-year product development projects for home coffee roasters that feature new coffee roasting technology that make home coffee roasting feasible. Executives from these companies speak just as easily about the screen sizes of green coffee as they do potential household penetration rates. They bring formidable marketing savvy and strong distribution networks to the home coffee roasting scene. They are quite optimistic that there is a sizable, worthwhile contingent of American coffee drinkers with the latent desire to roast coffee at home.

How Do You Convince Someone to Roast Coffee at Home?

With the industry's whole bean sales numbers declining, and the product mix heavily slanted toward drinks, compelling reasons must be conveyed to consumers to persuade them to bear another expense for their coffee habit. Regardless of which group companies fall into, the reasons provided to consumers to engage in the laborious task of roasting coffee at home are essentially the same: Save money, have fun, green coffee has a longer shelf life, and experience the difference truly fresh coffee makes. When one compares the cost of roasting a high quality green coffee at home with the cost of a pound of premium estate coffee from a roaster-retailer, despite shrinkage and a markup on the green, a consumer is likely to come out ahead with a home roaster. One message home roasting enthusiasts are sending, no matter which group they belong to, is that roasting, and learning to develop flavors during the roasting process, is fun. They are also quick to point out to consumers the difference in shelf life between green and roasted coffee. While no one claims that any home coffee roaster could duplicate the quality of roast of a commercial roaster, everyone is quick to point out the benefits of knowing precisely how fresh your coffee is. According to home coffee roasting enthusiasts, as far as cup quality is concerned, the difference that freshness makes more than compensates for the difference in roast quality.

Spreading the Freshness Gospel: The Story of Home Coffee Roasting Advocates

Coffee Project is a Los Angeles-based company dedicated to promoting home coffee roasting. Over their Internet site (www.coffeeproject.com), one can purchase a home coffee roaster, green coffee, or even read reviews of different roasters and coffees. James Vaughn, the company's founder, was first inspired to develop a business dedicated to home coffee roasting after eating at an Ethiopian restaurant in Los Angeles which showed customers coffee being roasted in a pan prior to serving them that coffee in their cup. Home coffee roasting, says Vaughn is "like golf, really easy or really hard depending on what you want to get out of it." Vaughn promotes the benefits of home roasting through a monthly newsletter called Ground Control, that not only offers roasting tips, but also provides in-depth stories about a variety of topics including the growing regions of origin countries and how current events affect the people living in the growing regions. Vaughn's customers, who are, of course, avid home roasters themselves, often write stories for the newsletter. A recent article written by one such enthusiast even discussed the benefits of the infrared heat waves produced by the quartz lamps in another home roaster. In the article, the author explained how the unit correlated bean temperature, measured by the home roaster's thermistor, and ambient air temperature in order to develop roasting grades that are consistent with Agtron roasting grades. Certainly, these "techie" types of discussions are not likely to find a wide audience. In fact, the writers are more reminiscent of the not-quite-mainstream community of software developers that congregated in cluttered garages in the early days of Silicon Valley than they are of hip tastemakers ready to set the next upscale coffee trends.

It is, perhaps, for this reason Thompson Owen, founder of Sweet Maria's Coffee Roastery, says that "home roasting is always going to be a small, niche market." Owen was inspired to develop a business dedicated primarily to home roasters after an unproductive shopping trip for green coffee. "I couldn't find someone to sell me green coffee at a reasonable price. Most roasters wanted to charge me 10% off their retail prices," says Owen. Sweet Maria's is one of the most comprehensive - if not the most comprehensive of - retail stores and web sites devoted to home coffee roasting (www.sweetmaria.com.). Sweet Maria's web site offers a cornucopia of home roasting and coffee brewing products, including several models of home roasters and up to 50 different varieties of green coffee. His emphasis, however, is not necessarily on pushing the product on new home roasting devotees or even on transforming coffee drinkers into coffee roasters, but instead is on creating and nurturing a small, close-knit community of dedicated, passionate home roasters.

The key to building a greater home roasting movement, according to Owen, is education. "A lot goes into roasting coffee," says Owen. "People don't think home roasting is possible." Owen combats this typical mentality by fostering an online community of home roasters who share information with each other as they experiment and learn to roast on their home roaster. Customers use Owen's web site as a home roasting information resource and continually check-in on his web site for updates on the latest green coffee selections, and the latest tips on how make the most out of their home roasting machines. Questions are posted on Owen's site, and if Owen, himself, does not respond to the question, one of his customers inevitably will. "Home roasting is a business distinctly different from selling roasted coffee," explains Owen. "An extraordinary amount of customer communication is required. The web is ideal for educating consumers. We are sharing information that was basically kept in the trade before." His philosophy of sharing as much information and knowledge as possible has led to a brisk business that has surpassed his own expectations. "The business has plateaued at a place where I have more business than I thought I would have," reports Owen.

Two other notable enterprises cater to the hobbyist market. One is BG Media Inc., which sells a video that teaches people to roast the old-fashioned way: on a pan on top of the stove. According to Terry Zimmerman, the company has sold about a thousand videos. "This video was produced because I love coffee," says Zimmerman. "I wanted to stimulate interest and to get people closer to the actual process. The point I try to make is this method is easy, fun, and you can produce amazing coffee with a little practice."

The other notable enterprise is the Home Coffee Roasting Company, which sells the Home Coffee Roasting Cone. The cone is not actually a roaster, but is a chaff collector. It fits on top of the popping chamber of an air popcorn popper and features an electrostatic screen that collects the chaff. The Home Coffee Roasting Company is sold through mail order (1-800-589-8960) and over the web (www.thehomecoffeeroaster.com). The Home Coffee Roasting Company features 53 types of green coffee, including 22 different decaffeinated coffees. Phyllis Everson, who heads the sales department, says their focus is on the quality and selection of their green coffee, and on providing same-day service.

Roaster Technology Hits Home: The Story of Home Coffee Roaster Promoters

Five manufacturers have delved into home roasting, each with their own patented technology and with varying levels of optimism for how the home roasting trend might catch on with the general public. All but one of the roasters are fully-automated, fluid bed roasters that utilize a timer to determine when to cut-off the roast. Most roasters have also been designed with small roast capacities to ensure that customers will roast often to maintain freshness, and of course, to minimize smoke. The roasters vary in size and all are designed to operate from a standard 120V electrical outlet.

Tim Skaling designed the Fresh Roast Coffee Bean Roaster (not to be confused with Fresh Roast Systems Inc. which manufactures a ventless in-store roasting system for grocery stores) and sells the roaster through Fallbrook, California-based Fresh Beans Inc. Skaling first developed an interest in home roasting the way many others do: by tasting fresh roasted coffee, and then learning that he could not settle for anything else. Skaling's brother, who happens to be a roaster on the East Coast, used to regularly send Skaling freshly roasted coffee from the East Coast to California. That is when Skaling first developed an affinity for fresh roasted coffee. After discovering that the coffee tastes significantly better the first few days after arriving from the East Coast than it does several days later, Skaling decided that he wanted to roast at home. He began on a popcorn popper, and soon became more ambitious. He started building his own roaster in the metal shop he owned. After ruminating over the potential commercial feasibility of a home roaster, Skaling began production in 1997, and in July of 1998 made the first shipment of product.

Skaling's most prominent customer is currently Williams-Sonoma, who featured the roaster in its catalog. The Fresh Roast Coffee Bean Roaster is quite compact. It stands only 12[inches] high, is 6[inches] in diameter, and weighs only 6 pounds. A 2 1/2 ounce batch requires approximately 7 minutes of roasting. Skaling conducted a focus group for marketing purposes and discovered that one of the concerns consumers had was that they would have to measure the coffee both before and after roasting. "The 2 1/2 - ounce capacity is designed for a 10-12 cup coffeemaker. There is no reason to measure the coffee after it is roasted." Consumers, however, should note that 2 1/2 ounces of green coffee does not yield enough roasted coffee to comply with SCALA standards for brew strength. A 10-cup pot of coffee, according to SCAA standards, requires 75 grams or approximately 2-2 3/4 ounces of roasted coffee, while a 12-cup pot of coffee requires 90 grams or approximately 3 ounces of roasted coffee. After shrinkage, 2 1/2 ounces of green coffee will yield approximately 56 grams or 2 ounces of roasted coffee depending on roast style.

Skaling says that his customers are still the coffee aficionados rather than the average consumers, but sales have grown every month. Contrary to what one might believe, Skaling eagerly awaits a large, experienced kitchen appliance manufacturer to enter the home coffee roaster market. "I don't mind seeing a 'major' come out. Their presence in the marketplace lends credence to home coffee roasting."

Hearthware may not yet be the major player Skaling envisions, but according to Alan Kelley, vice president of sales and marketing, they are aiming to become one. Hearthware's mission, says Kelley, "is to provide the highest quality, upscale, differentiated home products" for consumers: Their search for such products led them to a home roaster. They purchased a patent for a home roasting device, refined and enhanced the design, and began shipping their roaster last September.

The Hearthware roaster is also a fluid bed air roaster that can reach temperatures near 500 [degrees] F, and has a 1/2 cup (approximately 3-4 ounce) capacity. Similar to the Fresh Roast Coffee Bean Roaster, the Hearthware Roaster uses a mechanical timer to allow the customers to choose a roast style. Kelley points out that there are two important features to their roaster. First, there is a circuit board within the roaster that monitors any change in voltage coming from the power source. Consistent voltage levels ensure consistency in heat levels and between batches. "A 10% change in voltage leads to a 100% change in heat," explains Kelley. Second, Hearthware features a glass roasting chamber which allows customers to view the roasting process and cut-off the roast manually so that they can react to what they are seeing in the glass roasting chamber.

After hearing from customers for years that their air popcorn poppers make fantastic coffee roasters, the West Bend Company decided to develop a home coffee roaster. Their roaster has yet to hit the market, but according Deborah Kumm, vice president of marketing, it will be shipped to department stores and specialty stores beginning in June. After six years of product development, Kumm says that the West Bend Roaster has two main features that will make it stand out from the crowd.

"Most other roasters utilize a counterclockwise airflow pattern that resembles a cyclone," explains Kumm. "The coffee is held by centrifugal force against the side wall. The heat is often too intense and scorches the coffee. Our roaster is more like a fountain. The agitation movement is up and down like a water fountain. It is like a soft, bubbling action, and there is not a lot of heat in any one spot." The West Bend Roaster also uses digital controls, which allow users to set-up their own custom roast cycle.

Swissmar Imports, LTD., a Toronto-based importer of high-end housewares and kitchen products is also planning a summer release (first shipments are scheduled in July) of their first generation home roaster. Three and a half years went into the design and development of the Alpenrost. The result of the project is a unique, sleek design that features a stainless steel rotary drum rotating up to a 1/2 pound of coffee amid a stream of heated air. A microprocessor is the brains behind an electronic control pad that offers 15 roast settings. In comparison to other home roasters on the market, the Alpenrost has a much longer batch time. The number 8 setting is an 18-minute, 20-second batch time. Each numerical adjustment adds or subtracts 15 seconds of roast time. According to Swissmar's Jim Tuck, one can vary the load size and maintain the same consistency of roast, both in terms of time and roast grade. Thus, one could roast a 2-ounce batch of Guatemala and an 8-ounce batch of Guatemala, select the roast setting #8, and expect a consistent roast between the two batches despite the difference in load size. As a means of emphasizing the importance of freshness, an Epivac[R] vacuum canister pump is included with the roaster. The Epivac[R] works similarly to the vacuum kits sold for preserving wine.; the premise is to remove the oxygen from the storage canister in order to retard oxidation.

How Hot Will the Trend Be?

Perhaps the most intriguing question marks surrounding home coffee roasters is how quickly and how much will they catch on with the general public. The degree of optimism varies from expert to expert. Kelley, of Hearthware, is by far the most optimistic. "Consumers are hungry for high quality products," asserts Kelley. He looks at the household penetration rating of drip coffeemakers (i.e. the percentage of American households who own drip coffeemakers) to assess the sales potential of the home coffee roaster. "Drip coffeemakers have achieved an 85% penetration rating. We still have along road ahead, but we believe we can duplicate the penetration of the drip coffeemaker." Kelley is, however, alone in his thinking. West Bend's Kumm and Swissmar's Tuck, both who represent companies with a tremendous amount of experience in marketing housewares and kitchen appliances, provide alternative assessments. Says Kumm: "Breadmakers have a penetration rate of about 21%. The home coffee roaster is much more like a breadmaker than a drip coffeemaker. Approximately 3 million [breadmaker] units are sold annually. I would expect home roasters to top out at 1.52.2 million units per year, and that is perhaps, in the next ten years."

"It's not going to be a toaster or a microwave oven," says Tuck. There is a strong market for it, but it is a niche market." Tuck simply argues that if the home coffee roaster was the second-coming of the microwave oven, then all the major players, from Mr. Coffee to Krups, would be developing home roasters, and according to the experts Tea and Coffee Trade Journal spoke with, they are not. Tuck did say that they do expect a minimum of 30,000 units to be sold in North America and other parts of the world within a year of the product release. Tuck, who is heading Swissmar's international sales campaign, speculates that the markets with the most potential might be international. Tuck cites Algeria as an example. "In Algeria, consumers still buy their coffee green and roast at home in a pan. Maybe home roasters will have a larger penetration rating there, where the consumer has no alternative but to roast coffee at home."

Owen, of Sweet Maria's, who devotes an enormous amount of time, energy, and resources into educating his customers, is the least optimistic about the prospect of home roasting developing widespread appeal. The relationship he has cultivated with his customers is more akin to a relationship one might develop with apprenticing craftsmen learning to become master roasters than it is a relationship of proprietor to customer. Owen simply does not believe a big company, who has the resources to deliver home roasting to a broader audience, would be able to, nor would be willing to, cultivate this type of customer relations. Furthermore, because of the overwhelming need to communicate with customers in such great detail, a large company could not make home roasting a profitable enterprise. According to Owen, the home coffee roasting business requires a significant amount of time to educate customers to the point where home roasting is enjoyable. Because of this, Owen concludes that home coffee roasting "is always going to be small."

Obstacles Advocates and Promoters Need Overcome

One thing is certain: if home roasters are ever going to be purchased with any regularity by average consumers, the price of the roasters will have to come down. Industry experts say this will occur naturally as more units are sold and the market becomes more competitive. However, in order for market mechanisms to exert downward price pressures on home roasters, consumers must learn to deal with smoke and learn to control the roasting process to the degree that their taste preferences demand. "I think the market that we're going to tackle understands that there will be smoke and [consumers] are willing to take the time to educate themselves about coffee roasting," asserts Tuck. If Tuck is right, the control-of-the-roast issue will be overcome as well. All of the roasters have some type of override function, which allows the user to drop the coffee anytime he or she pleases.

According to customer surveys conducted by Fresh Beans and Hearthware, the typical home roaster are 50+, male baby-boomers with previous experience in kitchen gadget tinkering. Their chief concern about purchasing a home coffee roaster, according to Skaling, is not price, but the availability of green coffee. From the surveys, however, it is not clear what needs to occur before the audience widens. Vaughn, of Coffee Project, speculates that "all it will take is The New York Times article and a five-minute segment with a national morning show and home coffee roasting is big."

Still, there is reason for skepticism as well. The product mix of roaster-retailers seems to favor the roaster-retailer rather than the home roaster. Today's specialty market sees a much larger percentage of its sales in ready-made drinks than it does coffee by the pound. Whole bean coffee sales have been unequivocally flat, if not declining, within the specialty industry for several years, and specialty roaster-retailers have not been able to stem the tide. Home roasters are pinning their hopes on this shrinking market. Furthermore, the majority of households who own drip coffeemakers still purchase their coffee at grocery stores. Home roasting is not likely to appeal to these consumers, who are more interested in convenience and not interested in quality and freshness to the degree required for home roasting.

None of those interviewed for the article believed home roasting, even if the trend does take off, will [TABULAR DATA OMITTED] take much of a bite out of roaster-retailer business. However, the day may come, and it would be quite ironic if it does, when roaster-retailers begin offering their coffees green to a burgeoning community of passionate home coffee roasters. On the other hand, the effect of home roasting may be similar to the effect of the in-store roasting trend insofar as it applies greater pressure on roaster-retailers to adhere to more stringent freshness standards and convey more clearly the value their proprietary roasting methods add to the coffee. Both of these trends should raise the bar for roaster-retailers. If home roasters meet with success on the market, and there certainly is no guarantee that they will, roast quality, and the perception of roast quality, will become even more critical to the success of roaster-retailers. Home roasting may accelerate consumers' knowledge of roasting and consumers may become more sensitive to roast styles and consistency than they are now. This may heighten the need for roaster-retailers to be articulate and specific about how their roasting process adds value and is superior to anything a home roaster could produce in their marketing message to consumers.

West Bend Co., Deborah Kumm, vice president, marketing. Tel: [phone]

Hearthware, Alan Kelley, vice president-sales/marketing. Tel: [phone]

Swissmar Imports Ltd., James R. Tuck, International Product Manager. Tel: [phone] ext. 249

Fresh Beans Inc., Tim Skaling. Tel: (1) [phone]

Sweet Maria's Coffee Roastery, Thompson Owen, Owner. Tel: [phone]

The Coffee Project, James Vaughn, Tel: [phone]

BG Media Inc., Terry Zimmerman, Tel: [phone]

The Home Coffee Roasting Co., Phyllis Everson. Tel: [phone]