[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 41 (Wednesday, March 12, 2014)] [Senate] [Pages S1577-S1579] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] VERMONT COFFEE COMPANY Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, Vermont is known for its small and large businesses alike. Vermonters take pride in [[Page S1578]] buying locally, and as a result, businesses like the Vermont Coffee Company have been able to expand and become forces in their respective industries. When Paul Ralston started the Vermont Coffee Company over 30 years ago in the small town of Middlebury, VT, he did so based on the belief that coffee creates community. Today, he continues his commitment to a high-quality farmer-friendly coffee blend by using only fair trade, certified organic coffee beans from around the world. Paul's passion for coffee has created an opportunity for him to forge his own path to success, and he has expanded Vermont Coffee Company's distribution to retail outlets throughout the Northeast and along the Atlantic coast. His business continues to expand, and his success is just one hallmark of the respected Vermont Brand. I congratulate his success, and I ask that the text of an article appearing in the Burlington Free Press on February 20, 2014, about his success be printed in for the Record. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: [From the Burlington Free Press, Feb. 20, 2014] Middlebury Coffee Roaster Still Growing After 30 Years (By Melissa Pasanen) Middlebury, VT.--Vermont Coffee Company in Middlebury was ahead of the curve when it started roasting organic, fair trade beans 30 years ago. Its continued success is based on a simple philosophy. In the front hall of Vermont Coffee Company's offices and production facility, dozens of photos of happy people, some with coffee cups in hand, smile down from the wall. In keeping with the company's longtime tagline--``Coffee roasted for friends''--these are not just customers, founder- owner Paul Ralston clarified on a recent tour: They are friends. ``Before there was Facebook,'' Ralston, 61, said. ``We had our friends' wall.'' Ralston has always been a little ahead of the curve, since his first foray into roasting coffee beans some 30 years ago as a tiny bakery-based operation. There have also been plenty of curves in the road he has traveled since then, but this year Ralston expects Vermont Coffee Company to purchase half a million pounds of green coffee beans, which will be roasted in its recently doubled 15,000-square-foot facility and shipped to accounts ranging from a small, highly regarded group of New York City coffee shops to Costco. Coffee culture It was during his ownership of Bristol Bakery from 1977 to 1983 that Ralston first stumbled upon the smoky and aromatic process of coffee-roasting in Manhattan's Bowery neighborhood while shopping for used bakery equipment. The smells conjured up memories of the strong espresso his Italian grandmother carefully brewed every Sunday when he was a child. When he came back to Bristol, Ralston serendipitously found a classic turn-of-the-20th-century roaster, installed it in the bakery's front window and began roasting batches of green coffee beans well before the trend of small, local coffee roasters swept the country. After selling the bakery, Ralston returned to school at Burlington's Trinity College to study business administration and planned to pay some of his tuition bills by running a Church Street espresso cart. But Starbucks was just opening its first Seattle coffeehouse and most people didn't know what to make of his cart. ``It was a huge flop,'' he said ruefully. More than a decade went by, during which Ralston spent time in the San Francisco Bay area working in nonprofit arts management and appreciating the region's vibrant cafe culture before he and his wife, Deb Gwinn, returned to Vermont where he helped grow the cosmetics and skincare company Autumn Harp to $6 million in annual sales. That led to a job with The Body Shop in England where, he noted, ``There was a coffee drought, so I drank tea.'' Brown-bagging it In 1997, Ralston and Gwinn returned again to Vermont and to the antique Royal Roaster #4, which had been gathering dust in their Bristol garage. ``I hooked it up in the garage and started roasting and taking the coffee to gatherings for feedback,'' Ralston said. As he developed his new business idea over the next few years, he kept things simple, both by design and by default. Like back in the Bristol Bakery days, Vermont Coffee Company used brown paper lunch bags to package the coffee and a friend made a rubber stamp to label the bags. ``The brown bag was the starting principal,'' Ralston said. ``When you would get something fresh and from a local shop, there wouldn't be a lot of packaging.'' ``We started with just dark and decaf,'' he said. ``What else do you need?'' And the coffee was available only as whole bean. ``We refuse to grind coffee. As soon as you grind it you start the staling process,'' Ralston explained. Ralston's approach was also influenced strongly by his former boss, Body Shop founder, Anita Roddick, who he described as ``a pioneer in trade, not aid,'' cultivating mutually beneficial trade relationships with developing countries and communities to help them become self-sufficient rather than simply providing financial or other aid. When he first told Roddick he was thinking of getting back into coffee, he recalled that she said to him, ``Your coffee should be 100 percent organic and 100 percent fair trade.'' There wasn't a brand like that at the time, ``and it turned out there was a good reason for that,'' Ralston said. ``Everyone thought I was nuts. At the time, organic was just gnarly vegetables.'' Window of opportunity Count Vermont coffee expert Dan Cox among those who thought Ralston was a little nuts. Cox had been the first full-time employee of what was then Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. He worked there for a dozen years before he founded his own Burlington-based coffee-testing business, Coffee Enterprises, which does analysis for many major national coffee companies. ``Paul came to me and said, I want to learn everything about roasting,''' Cox recalled. ``He told me he wanted to be like Peet's [a leading San Francisco Bay area coffee roaster], which is like the Guinness of coffee. I said, This isn't the Bay area. The East Coast is not into dark roast. Like with Guinness, for every customer you turn on, you'll turn four off.''' In addition, Cox remembers Ralston outlining his ``folksy'' marketing plan with the brown bags and emphasis on selling to friends. ``I said, That's a little far-fetched, pal.' And he said, That's all I've got.''' Ralston spent six months learning how to evaluate green coffee beans, blend, roast and control quality and despite Cox's initial concerns, he carved out a niche and grew steadily. ``He was still there in five years and then another five,'' Cox said. ``He was very savvy, always asking for a better way to do something . . . and he has stayed true to his style. His packaging is still relatively unsophisticated but it works for him. He makes a respectable coffee and a pretty darn good decaf.'' A few other factors worked in Ralston's favor, Cox added: ``Number one, he had a passion for it, and number two, nobody really came right after him. He had a window of opportunity that doesn't exist today.'' Solid focus As Cox noted, the competitive frame is very different today with new micro-roasters popping up regularly, but Ralston has stayed focused on his initial vision. Since its official launch in 2001, Vermont Coffee Company has expanded to retail outlets all over Vermont, as well as New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire with distribution growing at a healthy clip around the Northeast and down the Atlantic coast. The company has about 23 employees, about half of those full-time and many part-time by choice, older and partly retired or younger with children. ``Part of our business model is a flexible workforce,'' Ralston explained. Ralston, who is sole owner, would not share sales figures but Vermont Coffee Company projects 20 percent growth in 2014. The flagship line of retail packaged whole beans remains simple and straightforward in its descriptors: Dark, Medium, Mild and Decaf. The down-to-earth brown bag packaging remains, although it takes the form of a brown box for Costco. With the exception of one line from the Dominican Republic, rather than emphasizing single-sourced coffees from specific regions like many other small roasters, Vermont Coffee Company has always led with its blends. ``We are blenders. There's nothing magical about our beans,'' said Ralston. ``The goal is to keep our blends tasting the same, month to month, year to year.'' Vermont Coffee Company buys certified organic beans following principles set by the International Fair Trade Federation, Ralston said. The annual coffee harvest occurs at different times in different climates and over a year beans could be sourced from Ethiopia, Indonesia, Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala and Nicaragua, among other countries. The beans are stacked high in burlap bags in a large storage room in Middlebury all tagged with their country, producer, and lot number. As he demonstrated how the beans are pulled for evaluation through a long hollow spiked tool that can dig deep into each bag, Ralston explained how different beans contribute to the overall blend. Coffee from Guatemala, for example, he said, ``We call them our spice beans. They add fruity and floral notes.'' The company's modest marketing budget still emphasizes grassroots relationship-building (now via social media), coffee sampling and offering loyal customers Vermont Coffee Company merchandise such as t-shirts and mugs for returning proof-of-purchases, which they do by weaving strips of brown bags into quilts, folding them into origami and even, in one case, using them to craft a collage of Johnny Cash drinking coffee ? black, of course. Another thing that has not changed, Ralston noted with a smile: ``We always smell like coffee. When we go to the bank, they know who we are . . . It's a sensory business. We're in it for what it smells and tastes like.'' Slow roast, slow growth Changes have come gradually, many in the form of process improvements such as the [[Page S1579]] adoption of the Japanese production scheduling system, Kanban; new pieces of equipment to mechanize jobs previously done by hand like bag-folding; and increased roasting capacity. In the roasting room recently, a brand new, shiny stainless steel roaster with capacity of 150 pounds was in the process of being installed. It cost about $350,000 to purchase and install and would double Vermont Coffee Company's roasting capacity, Ralston said. ``The thing that makes it big, bold coffee is how we roast it,'' Ralston explained, pausing in front of one of the company's two smaller roasters where a small circular window gave a peek into the pre-roasted, dull grey-green beans while the glossy dark brown, roasted beans swirled below. Vermont Coffee Company roasts its beans about twice as long as many other larger roasters, Ralston said. He believes the longer, slower roast is key to building rounded flavors, similar to slowly caramelized onions or the depth of a long-cooked Cajun or Creole roux sauce base. ``It's a long, slow caramelizing roast,'' he said, ``which results in coffee with more body and sweeter, chocolate, caramel notes and a smoky tang and lower acidity.'' With a similar careful approach, Ralston has planned and budgeted for growth. Over his varied career, Ralston said, ``I've made all the mistakes you can make.'' He has seen firsthand, he said, that ``growth offers new ways to screw up.'' ``We follow a model called bootstrapping,'' he said. ``We use yesterday's cash flow to finance growth. We're not extravagant.'' The company's credit line, he said, usually has a zero balance. An additional challenge these past four years has been Ralston's commitment to the Vermont legislature to which he was elected in November of 2010. He ran, he said, because ``I think there is a need for more people with active business experience in the legislature.'' He feels good about what he has accomplished there, he said, but it's been ``very hard'' balancing the four-month, four-day-a-week commitment with running an actively growing business. ``I think we would be further ahead if I hadn't done it,'' he said. Looking ahead 15 years, Ralston said with a smile, ``I hope to still be grooving on coffee.'' He also hopes to be able to spend more time ``at origin,'' in countries where coffee is grown. ``It happens to be warmer than here,'' he added. At home in Vermont, Ralston imagines a slightly bigger office ``with a wood-burning stove, a couch and a bigger coffee table where friends will come by to visit and sit to have a coffee.'' ____________________