A special report on Montana's Economy and Businesses

Roasting success Lolo coffee company excels at wholesale coffee sales to local businesses By VINCE DEVLIN of the Missoulian The first time that Hunter Bay Coffee Roasters roasted coffee beans, at its first location in downtown Missoula back in 1991, the fire department showed up. On Day Two of roasting, the fire trucks rolled for Front Street again. Small business spotlight Name: Hunter Bay Coffee Roasters, Lolo Owners: Carol and Glenn Junkert Employees: 7 On small-business life: “It can be pretty brutal, because of what any number of small businesses in Missoula deal with: all the costs of getting a loan, buying property, buying equipment, and then you’re left to compete against the big names in America. It really is tough to just get to the break-even point, to make a little profit, to pay your employees a fair wage. It’s hard to provide health insurance (Hunter Bay offers it by matching employee contributions). We do pay above the minimum scale and always have. The benefit comes in working with other local businesses and providing a high quality product. We’ve always focused on quality and let the product sell itself.” – Glenn Junkert “It puts out some smoke,” admits Glenn Junkert, who with his wife Carol and another partner launched the business. “It smells – I think – like coffee, but your darker roasts smell pretty strong. Some people say they smell a little like an electrical fire.” But the specialty coffees proved popular. Over 13 years Hunter Bay has evolved into a coffee wholesaler that prepares special blends for between 125 and 140 retailers, most of them local. The little company began phasing out its retail business in 1997 and moved to Lolo, where it has plenty of room for its growing wholesale venture. Hunter Bay closed its downtown retail location, Junkert says, so the company would not be competing with its own customers who also sell Hunter Bay coffees. “It’s a neat niche,” says Junkert, a former teacher. “Usually when you go wholesale, your options are reduced, and you make seven or eight coffees. We have well over 40, made from the best coffee beans from around the world.” That, too, takes some doing, since giants like Starbucks can virtually sew up every coffee bean produced by entire countries. There remain farmers in Central and South America whose farms are too small for big companies to worry about. Those farmers survived by combining their beans and selling them to the big companies. But small roasters like Hunter Bay are making themselves more attractive because they not only will pay more if the farmer will sell his beans without mixing them with products from other farms; they’ll also put the farm’s name on the label. Hence, Hunter Bay’s El Salvador Santa Julia 100 Percent Classic Bourbon Coffee, from the trees of Alfredo Alvarez Valdes. “It’s great, because you get to know the farmers,” says Junkert, who likens Hunter Bay’s business to that of small wineries or microbreweries. Hunter Bay participates in Cup of Excellence, a Missoula enterprise that helps customers around the globe find the best coffee beans in other nations. People like Junkert travel to places like El Salvador for cupping competitions designed to pick the best coffee beans the country has to offer. Farmers’ beans are rated by the cuppers, and later sold to the highest bidders in an Internet auction. It’s how the Lolo roaster hooked up with Valdes. Now that it’s curtailed retail operations, Hunter Bay does not need the visibility of its location in a Lolo mall so much as it needs the space. Carol and Glenn Junkert have been roasting coffee in the Missoula area since 1991. TIM THOMPSON/Missoulian Aside from a few desks off to one side, its storefront sits mostly unused and dark. It’s in the back room where Hunter Bay comes alive. The rich aroma of coffee fills the large area, and the roaster runs from morning to night to keep up with orders. Raw coffee beans are everywhere, and from everywhere: Yemen, Brazil, Mexico, Hawaii, in plastic drums carefully labeled. What you won’t find much of is roasted coffee beans sitting around. “One of our customers, in Hamilton, called yesterday and needed 10 pounds of espresso,” Junkert says. “We roasted it this morning, bagged it, and it exited this afternoon. Coffee is like pastries, and the longer it sits around, it loses flavor. There are some roasters who consider three or six or nine months as fresh coffee, but I say after 10 days it’s not. People who know coffee, just like people who know fine wines, know coffee runs in a seven- to 10-day cycle.” So Hunter Bay doesn’t roast it and wait for someone to buy it. It waits for someone to buy it, then roasts it. Junkert remembers drinking the coffee his grandmother, of German and Russian descent, brewed in her home in eastern Montana. “She loved it, but she brewed it so strong,” Junkert says. “Nobody else liked it but me.” As a teen, he also recalls tasting his first truly great cup of coffee, at an Italian restaurant in Tacoma, Wash. “I fell in love with coffee in high school, and I’ve always loved it,” he says. When he was looking for a way to retire from teaching, he and Carol decided to start Hunter Bay. They had a partner, and the name of the business was taken from the women’s maiden names (Bay is Carol’s). Carol Junkert is president of the company. The partner exited after a year. “We weren’t open four months, and the original owner of Bernice’s Bakery came in and told us, ‘You need to sell me coffee to sell in the bakery,’ ” Junkert says. “So Bernice’s was our first wholesale coffee customer, and we’ve roasted coffee for them twice a week ever since. They sell a lot.” Hunter Bay does get some business from its Web site, and has customers in places such as Bloomington, Ill., and Atlanta. But the bulk of its business is local, and they’re excited to be teaming up with Big Sky Brewing to market Kaffe Moose Drool. “It started as a joke,” Junkert says. “Brad Robinson over at Big Sky Brewing said, ‘I brew beer, and I drink coffee. I’ve got a beautiful brown ale – rich, dark, slow-brewed. Do you have a coffee like that?’ ” Hunter Bay crafted a rich, thick, dark-roasted blend, slightly sweet, with a smooth aftertaste. Big Sky Brewing put it in its tap room, and Kaffe Moose Drool is now sold in stores as well. Robinson has moved on – he’s now the head of the Montana Natural History Center – but Junkert says Robinson taught him a lesson: “Brad always said if local companies would work together instead of competing with each other, we would create a much stronger marketplace,” Junkert says. “Like Bernice’s blend. It’s selected by the people at Bernice’s, and they’re marketing their coffee. That’s how you build the local economy and compete with the big names.” Hunter Bay is considering adding another roaster – they can cost anywhere from $60,000 to $200,000 – and may move some of its back-room operation into the mostly empty storefront. The business is growing, the Junkerts say. And the fire trucks no longer roll every time the roaster is fired up.