A 200-year family tradition drives Cape Cod Coffee Roasters
by Glenn RittIn 1997, about 3 percent of Americans drank gourmet coffees. Today, that number has more than quadrupled. One in 10 now drink only gourmet brands and do so every day to the tune of 2.5 cups. These statistics, from the National Coffee Association, are what has Demos Young so optimistic at 75 years of age as he resurrects Cape Cod Coffee Roasters from his Mashpee headquarters – located across the street from a Dunkin’ Donuts shop.
Behind a charming but unassuming retail store, Young has constructed a state-of-the-art, fully computerized coffee roasting plant that is part of a $1 million investment. He also has recruited two junior partners and embarked on a nationwide marketing and product-placement campaign that celebrates not only his family’s centuries-old coffee-producing roots, but also Cape Cod’s global branding power.
Why now, at a time when Young could be joining his contemporaries in retirement?
For one, he smells a good business opportunity.
Secondly, coffee defines Young’s life. For 200 years, both sides of his family have produced, traded and sold coffee worldwide – Europe, Africa, Latin America. He was educated as an engineer so he could design roasting equipment and plants. He lived on coffee plantations in Kenya, developing a connoisseur’s acuity for smell and taste. He worked as a coffee consultant worldwide. His family, after settling in Salem, built its own coffee company in Massachusetts. He was trained by his father Earny and grandfather Demos; and he worked with Joe Martinson, whose mass-produced coffee was considered gourmet in the New York metropolitan area at the time.
Thirdly, Young will acknowledge, there is an element of financial necessity. After opening the Cape’s first-ever full-roasting plant in the 1970s, he had the opportunity to sell out to another company in the mid 1990s. He agreed to remain and tend the retail store. “I still liked the coffee business and I could stay out of my wife’s hair,” joked Young.
Unfortunately, Young also agreed to hold paper on the deal, and soon he was watching it turn sour. The new owners didn’t understand the coffee business and they spent insufficient time managing the operation, said Young. Watching a business he nurtured from scratch head downhill was tough enough; seeing payment jeopardized on his seven-figure note was too much. He took back the business and found himself starting almost from scratch as he entered his 70s.
He has spent $600,000 without incurring debt to build a fully computerized plant, while spending hundreds of thousands more to create a marketing and distribution system that can handle up to two million pounds of roasted coffee annually over the next three years.
Young had to design a highly intricate business plan that ties production, marketing, sales and distribution. He could not recruit a specialty coffee distributor and develop a consumer market until he could guarantee sufficient coffee production. Similarly, he couldn’t design and implement a marketing campaign – from an Internet site to trade show exhibits to point-of-purchase shelving – until he had the right distributor in place.
The entire process has taken several years to unfold, with continued expenses and limited revenue opportunities. At the same time, Young recognized that at age 75 he had to recruit not only qualified employees, but equity partners whom he most likely would have to train from the ground up in a business and technology he has been mastering since childhood.
Now, all the pieces appear to be coming into place.
His two partners – J.D. Thuet and Rick Brooks – are engaged in production, finances and marketing. Thuet discovered Cape Cod Coffee Roasters by chance while staying at his then second home in Mashpee. At the time, he was a partner in a company that owned coffee stands in the greater Boston area, but he was trying to relocate entirely on the Cape. His affinity for coffee was a natural connection; and soon Thuet had equity and a new occupation as a 50-something learning the art of roasting. Brooks, meanwhile, came with a strong background in finance and is now the CFO.
Meanwhile, the new computerized technology has been tested and re-tested to ensure not only exacting production standards but also the requisite volume, if Young achieves his goal of $1 million in sales this year.
Equally important, Young has managed to attract distributors – no easy task for a relatively small roaster in a market full of competitors fighting for limited retail shelf space.
The distributors include Millbrook Distribution Services, which started out of Worcester, and Haddon House Food Products Inc., which began 40 years ago as a Philadelphia-area company specializing in olives and pickles, as well as Millbrook distributors. Today, Haddon is one of the largest specialty product distributors in the country – 15,000 products and 1,000 brands, from David’s Kosher Salt to Jane’s Krazy Mixed-Up Seasonings.
The key to success lies in the link between sales and production. Had demand in the marketplace picked up before he could supply the product, Young would be courting disaster. In his business, he explained, demand could pick up exponentially and require rapid-fire ramp-up in roasting.
He’s now capable of roasting up to 5,000 pounds a day of 50 varieties of coffee beans.
In addition to distributing roasted beans to retail stores – from grocers to gift shops – Young is intent on developing a network of restaurants that will serve Cape Cod Coffee from his own brewing machines. Each location represents a $1,500 investment, Young said, but creates a powerful sales and marketing network, with menus promoting the brand and restaurants exposing diners to his coffee, which they can subsequently purchase in retail food shops for home consumption.
Young’s face lights up, however, when the engineer in him talks about prototype packaging that will let him store beans directly in cans with special breathing technology – thus ensuring an aroma and taste as close as possible to what is achieved hot right from the roaster, an industry first.
In his highly competitive business, such innovations are critical to differentiate product, Young explained. That’s why he also is so high on leveraging the Cape Cod brand.
“Cape Cod conveys a clear message for the discriminating consumer,” Young said. “We’re known as a relaxing place with a special quality of life. It wouldn’t work if we called it Jacksonville Coffee or Naples Coffee.”
Young is targeting several hundred locations on the Cape in time for the summer. In the past, the brand could be found at Christmas Tree Shops. Despite its wild popularity, however, that retailer is not the environment Young seeks now, as he scraps previous packaging for a more elegant design that could begin appearing hundreds and even thousands of miles from the Cape.
Demos Young on coffee:
Coffee taste characteristics fall into three categories: body, taste and acidity. Body is the description of fullness, an overpowering palate sensation or a full mouth feel. This sensation is described as light, medium or full. The next characteristic is flavor. Flavor is described as strong, mild, sweet, citrus, woody, or smoky; or a combination of these characteristics. The last is acidity. This can be described as slight, mild, heavy or reasonable.
When the acidity is countered by the body and the flavor, the coffee is characterized as well balanced. If the balance is not quite complete, it is characterized as reasonably balanced and with, for example, a mildly acid, sweet, citrus finish. The finish is the lingering impression on the palate, also referred to as mouth feel.
Superimposed over the previous characterizations is the starting, as well as ending, perception of the aromatic compounds.
Coffees with good body characteristics tend to taste smoother because the body overcomes any extreme flavor notes. Coffees with weaker characteristics tend to have stronger flavor taste because the flavor factor tends to overcome the moderating ability of the body.
Darker roasted coffees have a more pronounced, smokier taste. Only high-grown dense beans should be used in dark roasts so that they can withstand the longer roasting time without carbonizing and tasting burnt. Properly roasted dark roast coffee should actually have a slightly sweet note.
Glenn Ritt Glenn Ritt is editor and co-publisher of Cape Business Publishing LLC. He is the former publisher of Cape Cod Community Newspapers and editor of The Bergen Record in New Jersey. 
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