moving along

oh dear Lord it's been a long time since i've updated this blog. in my defense, life here has been arriving fast and furious and we are in that three month period i predicted two months ago would be, well, fast and furious. the issues right now over at brown are mostly the bottleneck created by the volume of coffee needing to be roasted through our little tabletop roaster (affectionately known as 'little brown') as we await the final touches to be put on 'big brown.' when you have to roast so long so many days out to the week the fun of blogging just isn't.

but let's not dwell on the negative. the good news is we closed on our new roasterie/warehouse/lab across town and this week will see us making our big plans to renovate and build out to suit our needs. our needs aren't very elaborate right now, owing mostly to the fact that we are still a tiny company with a very focused market. but that space will help us take brown to the next level, both in terms of expanding our reach in our current markets (more volume to more customers) as well as to branch strategically into new areas (already we have begun our first toe dip into reselling allied products). and it will be refreshing to be back in a dedicated commercial storage space where trucks can pull up and deliver the goods, instead of me raking out the back two rows of the van and picking up pallets of coffee at the local freight terminals.

as i said, our plans are simple for our new space. we will store and roast beans there; keep retail and related wholesale inventory there (brewers, shirts, bags, boxes, etc.); i will office there; the kids will have a play/learning space there (my wife and i homeschool our children); and i will also build out a lab for espresso play and cupping with eventual regular public cuppings. while we will not be a retail space, we will likely have some dedicated display space and locals will be able to stop in and purchase whole beans and maybe talk a little coffee talk if i'm able.

here are some pics of the space (and the printerie that is behind our building) on my flickr site. you have to scroll through quite a few macro shots of old printing machines first before you get to the 'before' pictures of what the space currently looks like. just keep telling yourself, "these are the 'before' shots."