I started roasting coffee in 2020, always with the intent to start a roasting business, though my journey here was not exactly a straight line. I run another business called backpackinglight.se / .dk / .fi here in Umeå as well. A site that sells ultralight outdoor gear. Tents, sleeping bags and so on. In this site I wanted to offer an own coffee brand. The concept from the beginning was to outsource the roasting completely. After starting a proper roasting and branding project with a small roaster in Zambia - (the idea really started to percolate in 2019 when me and my family lived in Zambia).
The original concept was to make a brew and brand that we could sell both in Scandinavia and in Zambia, with a certain percentage of the profits going back to the different orphanages in Zambia. (My youngest son is adopted from Zambia). As we started to progress in the process, Covid hit and basically all contact with Zambia disappeared along with it. So I had to change the strategy a bit and search after a roaster in Scandinavia to do this for me instead. This however became a very difficult process as no roaster in Scandinavia that I could find were willing to do branded coffee.
So from there I made the leap to "I should just do it myself". Which is what I did. I bought my first roaster in 2020 and since then I have been roasting and perfecting my skills until finally I decided to scale up a bit and do it for real. So here we are, July 2023 and I finally have a concept to work with. I found that during the years of me trying to get this project going, it showed itself to be a very difficult process, from not just finding green beans, but finding roasters, wholesale suppliers and branding partners. So my choice was rather laid out in front of me: I don't want to run a café which is where most roasters turn to for profitability. I have had a restaurant in my life and I never want to repeat that process. But I do like helping others, I do love roasting, and I want to share in the joys of roasting. So I thought, why not supply everything around roasting as well as roast my own beans.
Now, 2023 we have Beanroasters.se which is a site dedicated to all things Roasting coffee. Here you can buy your Roaster, your green beans for roasting, get lot's of information around roasting and hopefully be a valuable resource for you in your own roasting journey. On top of this I created my own coffee brand called Bud's Beans.
Next is to find a way to drive profit inorder to restart my non-profit in Zambia. I would love for you to come along on this journey.