McDonald's tries Gavina blend to keep coffee lovers coming.

F. Gavina & Sons can thank McDonald's for waking up and smelling the coffee.

The Vernon-based roaster, whose coffee has supplied McDonald's Corp.'s restaurants in California, Utah, Nevada and parts of New Mexico for 20 years, has developed a proprietary blend of coffee for the fast-food giant.

The new blend is being offered to 900 McDonald's restaurants, about a third more than Gavina had previously supplied. If it's a success, there's a chance the roaster might become a national supplier for McDonald's 10,300 domestic restaurants.

"Something like that would take a long time, but you can hope," said Leonor Gavina-Valls, vice president of Gavina. "The McDonald's business is very important for us. They're the biggest quick service restaurant in the world."

One of a handful of regional commercial roasters, Gavina is profiting from a change in tastes that has seen more Americans get their coffee from premium coffee shops such as Starbucks and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf.

While those specialty retailers still make up only a fraction of restaurant coffee sales, they are having a disproportionate effect on the market, prompting fast-food chains to improve their own brew in an effort to protect their valuable breakfast revenues.

"Over the last couple of years, we've been getting inquiries at our restaurants, by customers asking for a more sophisticated blend of coffee. Their taste in coffee has changed, and we have to change with them," said Clay Paschen, Jr., president of the McDonald's Operator Association of California.

Bob Sandelman, president of Sandelman & Associates, a restaurant consulting firm, said McDonald's had no choice but to improve its coffee given the competition arising from the specialty retailers who are siphoning away customers. "Our contention is that Starbucks and others that are strong in morning sales, are attracting a different type of customer, one interested in a higher quality coffee product," he said.

Breakfast constitutes about 12 percent of sales for fast-food chains nationwide, according to Sandelman, but it's about double that at McDonald's. McDonald's will now account for about 12 percent of Gavina's business, up from 10 percent. The company also supplies to Costco Wholesale Corp. and various supermarket and restaurant chains. That business is growing as well, with the roaster shipping 30 million pounds of coffee last year, about 5 million more pounds than 2003.

Revenues last year hit $80 million, compared with $67.6 million in 2003. The privately held firm does not release its earnings.

Gavina had to customize a blend that would pass muster not only with McDonald's executives but focus groups, whose comments ended up in a tweaking of the final product. In the end, the chain and supplier developed a roast based on a higher grade of beans that was more flavorful but is not as strong as many specialty brews.

Gavina is making money on the deal by supplying additional restaurants, but it is also paying more for the blend--mostly mountain-grown Arabica beans from Central and South America. The boost in McDonald's business comes at an opportune time for the roaster, which was founded in 1967 by Don Francisco Gavina, a Cuban who fled the Castro regime. The company is in the final stages of a five-year effort to consolidate operations from eight buildings on separate sites to a 240,000-square-foot 10-acre facility, which integrates its roasting, packaging, warehouse, distribution and front office operations.

"We've doubled our capacity. If we had been in the old plant, we probably wouldn't have been able to handle the bigger supply deal," Gavina-Valls said.