Lexington’s robust and expanding coffee scene is fostering new businesses, diverse offerings and a newfound focus on local, small-batch roasting.
New local businesses focused on roasting and delivery have emerged in recent years, as have several new Lexington coffeehouses, including Main Street’s The Roastery, Southland Drive’s Southland Perk and North Limestone’s North Lime Donuts & Coffee.
Some of the new businesses have a model that expands beyond coffee and snacks, such as Broomwagon, which doubles as a bicycle shop and venue space, and Elkhorn Village’s Coffee Pub, which offers alcohol and recently expanded hours to offer a dinner menu. The forthcoming Lussi Brown Coffee Bar, slated to open in the coming months on Ballard Street (off Jefferson), will feature craft cocktails as well as coffee drinks.
According to Schuyler Warren, of the local roaster Magic Beans, the focus on local coffee has been embraced by retailers and restaurants in the area as well as farmers’ markets and other initiatives.
“A big plus here is that we have an audience that is receptive to trying quality local products,” Warren said.
Retail and wholesale
Among the factors that distinguish the city’s coffee landscape today is growth in both wholesale and retail sectors. A pioneer of combining both is the local coffee institution Lexington Coffee & Tea, which owner Terri Wood started in 1981 out of a garage. Within a few years, she moved into the Moore Drive location where the business still resides, alongside its sister business Coffee Times Coffee House. Lexington Coffee & Tea provides coffee to hundreds of local restaurants and retailers.
Wood says that when she broke into the local roasting business, there was virtually no one else in city doing the same.
“It’s become a much better retail environment,” she said.
The roasting process itself is intricate. Most Lexington roasteries take pride in using exclusively beans from Arabica plants. The variety constitutes 70 percent of the world’s coffee production but is susceptible to damage by pests, low temperatures and improper handling. It requires more attentive cultivation and roasting than Robusta, an alternative that mega-corporations will sometimes plant to save time and money. Most commercial beans typically are roasted at 400 degrees for 12 to 20 minutes, with variations occurring due to drum size and the desired darkness of the roast.
Wood said one key to the popularity of small-batch roasting is the flexibility it affords. Coffee plants are influenced by a multitude of factors (soil, sunlight, rainfall and altitude, to name a few) that provide each bean with a unique flavor profile that can be either enhanced or softened based on the roaster’s techniques. Thus, no two small batches are the same. Some roasteries even use Profiling Dynamic technology, a real-time data-logging system that allows for highly calibrated roasting.
“We do not roast all of our coffee the same,” Wood said. “We believe in all types of roasts, and we do a lot of blending.”
When Wood opened shop, her goal was to provide customers with options that are “not what you’d normally find in office settings.” Other Lexington coffee-makers have followed suit — today, you can walk into almost any coffee shop in the city and find diverse offerings, ranging from specialty flavors such as bourbon ball and Southern pecan, to widely sourced coffees from locales including Guatemala, Ethiopia, South Africa and Sumatra.
“There’s a lot of great locally roasted stuff out there, and Lexington’s roasting scene has grown by leaps and bounds in the four years since I moved back here,” Warren said.
Quality wins
Nate Polly, owner of local roasters Nate’s Coffee, said quality control is key to customer satisfaction. Nate’s Coffee sponsors tastings at local shops and even partners with “bean ambassadors” at North Lime Coffee & Donuts to ensure that customers receive coffee they love.
The presence of local roasters and distributors such as Nate’s is making high-quality coffee more accessible to places that want it in the city. With door-front delivery to its buyers, Polly said, “We can assure that it’s going to be the freshest coffee.”
Polly said his business has been growing fast, and he hopes to open a storefront soon. Over the summer, Polly organized a Kickstarter campaign that eventually raised over $7,000 to provide a bigger space and a 15-kilo blue-plated roaster affectionately dubbed “Big Blue.” Despite the expansion and store plans, Polly insists his focus remains on his customers’ needs.
“We want to make sure we never lose focus on coffee,” he said.
Community over competition
Established coffeehouses also are increasingly getting in the roasting game. Last year, Common Grounds began roasting its own coffee on a weekly basis, and while A Cup of Common Wealth will continue to promote a variety of local roasters, the downtown shop recently announced an official partnership with Magic Beans, which operates out of the Sixth Street multi-use warehouse known as The Bread Box, which is also home to West Sixth Brewing.
The partnership shows a spirit of cooperation and community that is characteristic of Lexington’s coffee scene, according to A Cup of Common Wealth co-owner Salvador Sanchez, who said he said he would like to organize a “coffee pub crawl” as the options grow.
“The great thing about the coffee industry is that we always want to work together,” he said. “Each coffee shop provides something different for the consumer.”
Wood, of Coffee Times, agreed that the players in the local coffee scene don’t see competition as a zero-sum game.
“It seems that everyone is really welcoming of each other,” she said. “I’m thankful that the city has been so supportive.”
Despite the wealth of options and growth in recent years, Magic Beans’ Warren said the local coffee scene still has room to expand.
“The market is still underdeveloped,” he said. “It seems crowded when you’re in downtown, but zoom out to the citywide scale or even region-wide, and there’s just so much opportunity for growth.”