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Our history
One drum roaster in a garage off Oxford Street, and a list of forty names.
Eight years of Tuesdays
The first roaster was a second-hand four kilo drum, bought off a bakery on Kojo Thompson Road and rebuilt in a garage behind Oxford Street. It ran on gas, and the last two minutes of every batch had to be turned by hand.
Forty people were on the list that first year. They paid on a Thursday, collected on a Friday evening, and said plainly when a bag had come out flat, which is how any of us learned to roast at all.
Not much about that arrangement has changed. We still roast on a Tuesday, we still take the note when somebody tells us a coffee tastes thin, and the Friday list is now a standing order that leaves in a van.
What has changed is where the coffee comes from. We buy off four farms now, we agree the price sitting down with the person who grew it, and we pay it before the sacks are on the road.
What changed, and when
Five turns in the road, in the order they happened. Each one came out of something going wrong, or of somebody asking for a thing we did not yet do.
A drum in a garage
Four kilos at a time, behind a house off Oxford Street. Forty people paid on a Thursday and collected on a Friday evening.
The counter on Oxford Street
We took the front room of the building we had been roasting behind. It sat eleven people and ran out of milk twice a week.
Buying at the farm
The first trip up to Kwahu, and the first price agreed face to face. We have not bought a lot through a middleman since.
Labone, and then Spintex
A second room on Boundary Road, and the drum moved out to Spintex where it could finally be wider than a doorway.
Anywhere in Ghana
A van of our own and a Tuesday roast that goes out the same afternoon. Twenty two people are on the payroll this morning.
Where the eight years went
Counted at the end of last quarter. We change them when they change, and not before.
8
Years at the drum
4
Farms we buy from
18
k
Bags roasted last year
22
People on the payroll
The three who decide most of it
There are twenty two of us now. These three settle what gets roasted, what gets bought and how a room runs on a Saturday.
Ama Serwaa
Head roaster
Decides when a batch is done by ear, and has been right about it since the garage.
Kofi Adjetey
Green buyer
Spends four weeks a year on the hills at Kwahu and in the Volta, agreeing prices in person.
Nii Amartey
Runs the Labone room
Opens at seven, knows the order of half the street, and trains everybody who works a bar.
Taste what eight years taught us
The Osu counter opens at seven, and there is usually something on the cupping table by nine.
