Troy Brett Troy Brett and his spouse Wendy, who bought Orangeville’s Mochaberry coffee shop from its previous owners last April, last Friday installed a fluid bed roaster, taking their coffee business to the next level of fresh by roasting a larger selection of beans in-house.

“The natural progression, I think, for Mochaberry is for us to do something a little different, but staying with coffee, so the next level naturally for us was to get a roaster,” says Mr. Brett. “We’re from the west coast and we’re very familiar with coffee, and what else is out there? So a coffee roaster made sense for us.”

The fluid bed roaster is a one-to-five-pound roaster that he says will differentiate Mochaberry from other Orangeville coffee shops.

“It will also give other people within Orangeville the opportunity to buy locally roasted coffee,” he said. “We’re going to be the first, that we know of, roasterie café in Orangeville and so this will open up the door for everybody else who comes into the café to buy locally roasted coffee.”

He says the idea is that customers can come in and place their order for a type of coffee bean Mochaberry offers. Mr. Brett says if they don’t have that particular bean roasted, they will do it right in front of you within five to 10 minutes.

The need for a fresher and more varied offering for customers has caused the new owners to change from their current provider, a reputable company, to their in-store roaster.

Mr. Brett says the beans they currently have in store are between two and three weeks old by the time a customer purchases them. That is within the beans’ shelf life but it only allows for them to store a small selection of beans in-store at a time.

“When you have green beans they’re not roasted yet so you’ve got a longer shelf life and then it’ll actually expand the offerings to the customer,” he said. “We won’t be inventorying 90 different beans but right now we have 12, and we’ll probably have 30. It also gains us access to exotic beans.”

Along with the import of the fluid bed roasting machine they were required to install between 70 and 80 feet of venting along with some minor electrical additions.

“I think there’s truly a whole market there that we’re not hitting, that nobody in Orangeville is hitting,” he explained. “Obviously sticking with our core business, still offering the same coffee blends that we currently have, that’s not going to change. What it allows us to do is allow us to tweak things to what our customer wants or needs along the way.”

The co-owners agree that this new venture is very exciting. They said this can cater to anyone looking for a specific or original coffee blend as well as coffee connoisseurs looking for exotic beans from different areas.

They currently offer a selection of fair trade and organic coffees but will be adding to that selection in the weeks to come.

“We do offer fair trade organic coffees, Rainforest Alliance and all that kind of stuff, we’ll still offer that but we’ll have more offerings along those lines as well,” said Mr. Brett. “It allows us to go even further and fairer trade coffee.”

They say doing business as ethically as possible is important to them. The are also hoping to educate their customers on the ethics of coffee so they can make more educated choices when looking for the most ethical fair trade coffee.

“Buying locally is extremely important right now. It’s big in the market place and Wendy and I have always tried to buy locally,” said Mr. Brett. “It just makes sense for us, the fair trade, the organic, and then the customization part of it.”

They say customer response to the idea has been very positive. Mr. Brett says having voiced his ideas to the previous owners they are all fully supportive of the idea and think it will be a great addition. Mochaberry will be have a unveiling scheduled for mid-February to make the addition to services official.

“Our goal is for Mochaberry to be the local experts in coffee. We’ve educated ourselves and our staff as much as we can, and if someone has a question about coffee they should be able to walk in here and ask,” he said.

“We work with people that have been in the business for over 20 years, so we’ve got access to all that knowledge, and we want to share it.”