Something Special Brewing

Award-winning Coffee Keeps
Fidalgo Bay Roasting Company Humming

In these times of retail coffee wars and struggling chains, one company in Mount Vernon, Fidalgo Bay Roasting Company, is steaming ahead with modest plans to expand as a result of rising revenues and greater local acceptance.

Started in Anacortes on Fidalgo Island (hence its name) in 1992, Fidalgo Bay Roasting Co. has grown significantly each year, allowing owner-operator Gary Sawyer, his wife Sandra and their new partners, Bob Evans and his sons David and Derek, to build the business one stage at a time.

“We’ve never really had a dip in business. Our highest (annual growth) was 35-38 percent and our slowest 25 percent,” says Sawyer.

“I know we have an exceptional product,” he enthuses, “because every week, customers tell me: ‘This is the best coffee I have ever enjoyed! I’ve become addicted to your product.’”

In December 1995, they built a million-dollar roasting plant and retail store at 1600 E. College Way in Mount Vernon. The gray, towered building halfway between the old malls and Skagit Valley College has the homey atmosphere of a small-town café but the aromas (inside and out) of a true coffee roaster. A friendly staff prepares gourmet coffee and tea drinks for customers from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday. (The store is closed Sundays.) Snacks are available, but not restaurant food.

 

Instant success

The Sawyers came to Anacortes looking for a place to start a specialty coffee-roasting operation, using Gary’s extensive experience in roasting, which he learned 40 years ago at age 19 in San José, Calif. He and his wife were quickly accepted by the townspeople and ran a very successful coffeehouse there until they outgrew the facility in about three years.

“We ran out of room in our Anacortes building,” Sawyer recalls. “We looked for a long time for additional space in that city but decided to stick with what we had started in Mount Vernon.” They decided to move everything to Mount Vernon last October.

In the meantime, the Sawyers — who started out as high school sweethearts — met Bob Evans and his boys through their church and began discussing partnership. “Trust, of course, is important, but we wanted to do something that was more family oriented,” Gary points out. All three Evanses were ripe for the challenge and, in July 1999, entered into an agreement under incorporation with the Sawyers.

Gary, still owner-operator (“we have no titles here”), turned over much of the daily business grind to David and Derek, general and operations managers respectively. Each is married with no children, David to Ariana and Derek to Ellen. Their father, Bob, remains in the background.

The other part of the “family” involves the nearly 20 other employees, 300 wholesale clients and scores of regular customers who come and go all day long.

“Retail actually is a very small part of the operation,” Gary continues. “But the aspect of the coffeehouse is to be able to come in for a cup of coffee in a very relaxed atmosphere.”

 

‘We treat people right’

“We like to treat people right,” David Evans adds, referring both to customers and employees. “Our wages are comparable to industry standards and way above those locally. We also want the public to come in and see who we are and what we’re all about. They can even see the coffee being roasted.”

Huge glass windows along one end of the shop allows customers to peer in at the nearly-two-story-tall bright-red roaster, currently manned by Ralph Hutchison. Gary and Derek also roast, and a repairman, Joe Hopper, is undergoing training.

“Roasting isn’t for most people,” David explains. “It takes lots of patience. It’s the reward in doing it just right every time. I’m too creative and want to experiment too much. Coffee roasting is a matter of a few seconds’ difference in quality.”

Gunnysacks of raw beans, weighing up to 152 pounds each, line the backroom warehouse and roasting room, which is fairly hot but humidity controlled. Following the day’s list of orders in a spiral notebook, Hutchison keeps close tabs on various beans he’s poured into a round kettle as they slowly turn and cook to perfection before being prepared for delivery.

“We roast, pack and sell our coffee within a couple of days,” says David. If possible, he adds, the beans are on the shelves the next day — at grocery stores, espresso stands, hotels, minimarkets and restaurants. They ship mostly to outlets in the four counties north of Seattle, but one customer, a Marriott hotel chef, has a blend sent all the way to Florida and another customer is in Baltimore, Md.

Although Fidalgo Bay Roasting Co. sells only the best arabica coffees from as many as 20 countries, its latest push has been with Peruvian coffee, supplied through a broker under the name Café Selvanica del Perú.

“Coffee must be grown along the Equator and it’s important it have the right shade, moisture, elevation, soil conditions and temperature, which can’t vary too much,” David Evans explains.

“What we like about Peruvian coffee is that all these things are true, and it is hand picked, sun dried, organic, has rain-forest sponsorship, fair trade and is endorsed by the Audubon Society — it’s bird friendly,” Gary Sawyer adds.

 

Cutting out middlemen

Another aspect unusual in the coffee trade is that the broker, Jungle Tech, owned by Casey O’Keefe and Steve Anderson, has cut out all of the middle merchants that make coffee so expensive.

“We’re basically their only customer and buy 400 bags a year,” says Sawyer, adding that a ship container would hold about 250 bags, or about 40,000 pounds.

“O’Keefe gives a high-grade price to the farms to make a better product,” Evans puts in. “He cuts out two or three middlemen in the process and instead of trying to get rich, passes the savings on to them.”

Fidalgo has all the other types of coffee as well: Northern European, Vienna roast, French roast, straight varietals, organics, flavored blends and decaffeinated coffees. Quality also is high on the agenda, and Sawyer keeps a sample in his office of a competitor’s chipped and broken beans with which to compare his own whole-bean product, showing its superiority.

It also carries an excellent line of espresso machines and grinders and supplies advice, training and support to those wanting to start their own business.

Fidalgo doesn’t consider Starbucks, Tully’s and others like them competitors, by the way, because they are mainly retail. “Our niche market is different,” says Evans.

The next step for Fidalgo Bay Roasting Co. willl be another milestone in its short history.

“We hope to add onto this building,” Sawyer says. “We have a total of 10,000 square feet, of which 8,000 is being used by us and the rest by Domino’s Pizza and Great Clips (their two tenants). We hope to build 2,200 square feet more.”

To bolster Fidalgo Bay’s success, the Sawyers have entered their brews in a couple of major taste tests in recent years with outstanding results. They were judged “Best of the Best” in the prestigious McCormick and Schmick’s contest in Seattle two years ago, which also involved Batdorf and Bronson of Olympia, Black Swan in Woodinville and Austin Chase from Gig Harbor. More recently, Fidalgo Bay went head to head against six other major roasters in a taste-off put on by the American Tasting Institute and got gold medals for each of four blends submitted. The Sawyers were presented their award at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

That’s what it’s all about, Sawyer says in recounting why he likes the coffee business so much.

“Coffee is legal, addictive, with no age limit, no height restrictions and everyone can afford it,” he observes.

The gray, towered building halfway between the old malls and Skagit Valley College has the homey atmosphere of a small-town café but the aromas (inside and out) of a true coffee roaster.