Roasting Coffee To Perfection:

   The Benbow's Story

Twenty something years ago we decided the so called" Gourmet" coffee being sold in the United States lacked character. Our European customers told us over and over again that American mass produced coffee was more like generic tea. On a trip to Europe we investigated and found fine estate coffees being produced by small regional roasters overseen by a master roaster. These artisans had strong relationships with the farmers who produced their coffee and they had a love of their finished product. They also had a unique style of roasting.

When we returned we had a new mission: to find a regional roaster who could fulfill our markets needs. We had no luck so we took the next step. We found an industrial engineer in Massachusetts who was willing to build us a machine modeled after those we saw in a few towns in Europe. The object was to force hot air over the beans so that they would float in hot air rather than churn over a hot flame and burn. Thus was born our first roaster.

We began roasting for our own store and by the end of the fall we began receiving calls form other markets in New England asking us to roast for them. Tourist's had gone home and requested their own stores carry Benbow's coffee.

We accepted as many accounts as we could handle and those markets have been loyal every since. They have been grateful for our consistent quality as have their own customers.

Although our roasters (we had 3 built by the mid 90's) served us well, we were unable to accept any new accounts. Primarily concerned with producing high quality, we were limited in output and simply did what we could. A major decision making process began nearly three years ago. We would either have to expand and build a bigger roaster or we'd be toiling with fixing and repairing our aging machinery for years. We began the arduous task of sampling beans from roaster manufacturers all over the country. We were very discouraged.

Enter Loring. Newly designed with cutting edge technology, the beans roasted in this machine matched our profiles exactly. We were delighted and began talking with it's designer and were even more encouraged that it not only worked with our unique system of hot air, but was the first low emission system in the industry.

It took time for our machine to be built and in the interim we had to tear down and rebuild our coffee roasting plant to suit our new machine. Everything came together in June of 2005.