Caribbean coffee roasters plan local shop
Virgin Islands couple hope to grow business in mainland U.S.
BOYNTON BEACH — Cathy and Ramsey Smith had already planned to expand their specialty coffee-roasting business in the Virgin Islands to Florida; devastation from hurricanes Irma and Maria just pushed them to make that move faster.
The couple await permits before they can officially open Virgin Islands Coffee Roasters on Neptune Circle south of Woolbright Road in Boynton Beach. They sell 10 varieties of single origins, blends and espressos. The coffee beans come from countries including Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Kenya and Sumatra.
They’ll roast the beans in Boynton.
In the Virgin Islands, the Smiths sold about 6,000 to 8,000 pounds of coffee beans per month to resorts — such as The Ritz-Carlton in St. Thomas, Peter Island Resort & Spa and Scrub Island Resort, Spa & Marina — hotels, coffee shops and restaurants. They decided they could grow their business in the mainland United States and have returned to Boynton Beach, where Cathy Smith grew up.
The couple saw similarities in the Virgin Islands and Florida: weather and tourism. And Cathy’s family ties helped the couple decide where to
open in the state.
“It was a natural market to expand to,” she said.
Ramsey Smith has a passion for coffee that likely can go unmatched. But oddly, he never had a cup of joe until his mid-20s. His brother lived in Miami, and Ramsey tried a Cuban coffee.
“It blew my mind,” he said. That’s when he started his research. That led to buying his own espresso machine and roasting his own beans.
“The more I learned, the more I realized the less I knew,” he said.
While drinking a Guatemalan coffee one day in Washington, D.C., where he and his wife once lived, Ramsey realized he could change the taste of the beverage based on how the beans are roasted.
Cathy matches her husband’s passion for coffee with her financial skills. She takes care of the business side of Coffee Roasters, which the couple started about six years ago.
The couple still has their location in St. Thomas and has three employees there. It has its challenges being “on a rock in the middle of the ocean,” Ramsey said.
They have to order the beans far in advance, and they make deliveries by small planes and boat.
And then there are the hurricanes.
The couple started looking into the Florida market about a year and a half ago. But their plans moved much faster because of hurricanes Irma and Maria. The Smiths and their children evacuated St. Thomas by boat for Puerto Rico after Irma. Their building fared much better than others. They were in Florida by the time Maria hit.
“We accelerated everything based on the hurricanes,” Cathy Smith said.
Before the hurricanes, Coffee Roasters had about 80 customers. Now it is down to eight. And it’s the bigger sized-companies like the resorts that have yet to reopen.
“We said, ‘Florida’s looking really nice,’” Ramsey said.
The couple are focusing on businesses in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties. They also will sell and lease equipment, help set up coffee shops and offer training.
But most important to them is making sure their customers have “the freshest coffee possible,” Ramsey said.
Ramsey travels to the countries where he buys the cof- fee to build relationships with the farmers and get to know the products better. When the beans leave the country of origin, they are shipped in jute bags to bean warehouses across the U.S. The Smiths sample the beans from the warehouses and choose which they want to buy. They roast the beans — light, medium or dark — at their Boynton location and sell them. Each bag sold has a label indicating the day the beans were roasted.
All the coffee is specialty coffee, which means it has reached 80 points or above on a scale that measures body, aftertaste, acidity and flavor. The underlying flavor profile, though, is always sweet, Ramsey said.
“People are looking forward to it, our product, and we’re excited to continue to grow the business,” he said.