Heart Coffee Roasters bags, featuring a plain white bag with Futura type and color to represent each coffee. Needmore Designs photo.
In this week’s episode of Unpacking Coffee, Kandace and Ray check in with Wille and Rebekah Yi-Luoma of Portland’s Heart Roasters, which has two existing cafés and a third on the way, as well as wholesale accounts throughout the country.
A former professional snowboarder, Wille is known for his meticulous sourcing and roasting practices, applying an athlete-in-training-like approach to the craft. He explained to Kandace and Ray his preference for only sourcing washed-process coffees — some of which will on the La Marzocco Cafe bar in Seattle beginning today as Heart begins a month-long stint as featured roaster there — while offering the following blunt advice to aspiring roasters:
“If you really want to make money, don’t get into coffee.”
Unpacking Coffee is a weekly show discovering new coffee roasters one episode at a time led by Kandace and Ray of the Portland-based studio Needmore Designs, which specializes in coffee, wine and lifestyle brands.
Nick Brown
Nick Brown is the editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine.
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