Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
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ROASTERS REALM BY LUKE WILLIAMS The nitty-gritty profitability of going green s Kermit the Frog famously put it, "It's not easy being green." While he may have been referring to the color of his skin, his sentiments also could be applied to being an eco-friendly, sustainable company in the coffee industry. It's clear that roasters need to make an effort to be good stewards of our environment and communities, but how can we make sure our efforts will actually make a difference? And more importantly, how do we participate with a limited budget? Boyer's Coffee Company is a medium-size roaster-retailer located in Denver. Founded in 1965 by Bill Boyer, its genesis was in office coffee services. As the company grew, Bill expanded into retail, and Boyer's Coffee now is sold throughout Colorado. When Bill passed away in November 2009, he left a company that was operationally efficient and staffed with experienced and dedicated employees. Boyer's Coffee had developed a well- earned reputation for roasting excellent coffee sold at fair prices. We did not, however, have a reputation as being an eco- friendly company. We wanted to change that perception, and our first step was to get help. We hired Renewable Choice Energy (RCE) to do an ener- gy audit of our facility. RCE reviewed our processes and measured our carbon footprint, determining that our company actually was rather energy efficient. The biggest downfall found was in the amount of waste produced. With that in mind, we began looking into where we could make changes that would up our efficiency, both environmentally and financially. We decided that the best course of action was to direct our 54 Fresh Cup Magazine freshcup.com efforts locally, avoid greenwashing and thoroughly measure our results. We were not interested in taking on any sort of project just to say that we were being "green." And once we started look- ing, we found several areas where unnecessary waste was being produced and could be fixed inexpensively. Our first area of focus was packing. We were using different labels for each individual blend, and this meant the machines needed to be stopped and someone had to manually change the type of film being used for each variety of coffee. Each time the film was changed, 12 to 15 bags worth of material was lost. On top of that, production stopped during the change-out. In response to this issue, we decided to completely change our packaging. We switched to a bag that could be used universally; by leaving the front of the bag blank, we could apply a sticker that labels the blend type—no longer did we have to print directly on the bag. We went from using 11 different films to using just four: a bag for regular blends and a bag for decaf and other coffees, in two different sizes. Through this simple change, we eliminated the physical waste inherent in changing films as well as the wasted time and labor involved in the process. The move also let us save money by placing larger orders for the same films. In total, we estimate we cut packaging costs by 20 to 30 percent. What's more, inventory-carrying costs were reduced by more than $200,000 because we no longer needed to hold inventory of old bags that were not being used. Another area that had potential for improvement was the cardboard boxes used to deliver to retail locations. Some of our PHOTOS COURTESY OF BOYER'S COFFEE