Q&A | Bella's Beans
Bella’s Beans, a small-batch coffee roaster in Granville, Ohio, has a big-picture vision for its community and the planet.
What started as a connection over coffee turned into a business when friends and co-owners Ryan McGuire and Aaron Olbur launched Bella’s Beans amid the pandemic in 2020. Their mission was simple: to bring fresh, high-quality coffee and unique flavors from around the world to fellow coffee drinkers in Ohio. After four years in business, the pair have perfected their craft while prioritizing sustainability and a commitment to their community and beyond. McGuire shares more about Bella’s Beans subscription-based service, its small but mighty operation and how they are brewing change one cup of coffee at a time.
It all started with a bond over coffee. So how did you and Aaron first meet?
RM: I started this club while living in Iowa called the Sunrise Coffee Club. My wife and I would go to a local park and invite anyone, all they had to do was bring a mug. We would hand-grind the coffee, boil it on a camp stove and make pour-over coffee for anybody that showed up. Then we’d all watch the sunrise together.
When we moved to Ohio, we continued the Sunrise Coffee Club in Granville. Aaron Olbur and his family showed up regularly to enjoy coffee and the experience. It was this way we connected over coffee.
You’re not like most coffee roasters. You only roast a single type of bean each week, and every batch tastes different.
RM: A lot of coffee roasteries have several different coffees you can choose from. But being a coffeehead, what you learn is that a lot of people think they know what they like—a light coffee or a dark coffee—but what they don’t realize is that light and dark coffee is all subjective to the roaster. There’s no set standard and it’s all based on the color of the bean. So we developed this process to roast the coffee for each bean, do a unique bean every week and roast it to the best flavor of that bean. You don’t have options and you don’t have wasted beans.
As a subscription-based service, you don’t sell at grocery stores or weekly farmers markets, but deliver directly to customers anywhere in Ohio. Why?
RM: Our subscriptions are designed to ensure you are always drinking fresh coffee, so you can choose a delivery frequency based on how much coffee you drink in a week or two.
Usually, you’re getting the coffee one to four days from coffee roast time. The smell is intoxicating, and it’s something unique in that every week it’s different. We’re not trying to be a big-name house blend. We’re trying to be an experience while also supporting the big picture of the farm industry.
The coffee industry faces some ethical challenges—from fair pay and gender inequities with farmers, to gray areas surrounding fair trade certification. What makes Bella’s Beans so different from other coffee roasters?
RM: We want to source really high-quality beans, support women farmers and organizations that are trying to make it. There are big companies that try to exploit farms in less privileged countries by trying to get the lowest cost for poor quality products. Then, there are these cool distributors—we work with an independent importer and distributor called Café Imports—that are trying to find, support and create initiatives that help pay farmers a fair wage. That helps provide the farmers education to improve their business and get them better tools. So if we support organizations that are supporting farmers like that, then we’re actually helping not just us make money, we’re also helping the global coffee industry.
Let’s talk about your emphasis on environmental sustainability. Along with sourcing quality coffee beans, each facet of the business is mindful of the planet.
RM: Bella’s Beans is about 99.9% plastic free and we’ll be almost 100% plastic free with our next order of plastic-free cups. Even the stickers we use are made from recycled vellum.
We’re probably one of the very few coffee roasters that don’t use plastic, airtight bags. Most use plastic bags with a small gas-release valve to keep the coffee fresh. The problem is, as soon as you open that bag, that valve is obsolete—so you have all this waste. And that’s what happens with coffee bought in bulk or put on grocery store shelves.
Our model is to try to get people to buy coffee that they’re going to consume in a week or two, so we don’t need plastic bags. Instead, we use paper containers. The whole goal with Bella’s Beans is to buy coffee based on your consumption habits, so you’re always drinking the freshest coffee.
Connecting to the local and global community is an integral part of your business. Along with regularly supporting non-profits in your area, Bella’s Beans has contributed to planting thousands of trees in Kenya to support agro-ecosystems for food-insecure villages. Recent efforts are focused on planting trees closer to home. Tell us about Bella’s Beans tree kits?
RM: The tree kits came as part of our initiative to plant trees locally. We developed a process to recycle our packaging as a growing vessel, partnering with Tilth Soil out of Cleveland to supply soil made from composted food scraps. Each kit comes with the soil, a compostable dome that helps to create a humidity chamber, and a Kentucky Coffee tree seed, which is a native hardwood tree in Ohio.
The sustainability of the process gets people thinking. And as a customer, you get to see it and be a part of the process versus just having somebody else doing the tree planting.
What do you think other small businesses can learn from Bella’s Beans?
RM: I think something that has been helpful for us and a lot of the things we’ve done, is when you think about starting a business, consider how it can support your community and support the world at the same time. Yes, the priority is to make money, because that’s why you started the business—but it makes it so much more rewarding to actually do the business when you consider the bigger picture. We’re hoping that we’re also acting as an inspiration for other people starting businesses and that they look at us like, “Hey, I can do positive things with a business.”
To check out more about Bella’s Beans, visit bellasbeans.com.
--Jill Span Hofbauer
© The Perennial Wildflower, 2024
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