Herald Express (Torbay, Brixham & South Hams Edition)
Coffee firm thriving in their new Devon base
IF YOU’VE had a cup of coffee in an independent cafe in Devon in the last decade you’ve probably had a cup of Owens.
The only dedicated 100% organic coffee roaster in the South West has a brand new base in Ivybridge, already filled with the rich smell of coffee beans shipped over 5,000 miles from the tropics of Central America.
They transform in the hands of Owens’ almost entirely female staff, from green coffee cherry seeds to the dark brown, shiny beans we know and drink by the gallon.
Lorraine Bridden is the managing director of this mini empire which started out in 2010.
“We really did start with the basics,” she said, sat in the company’s new kitchen - kitted out with some of the shiniest professional coffee machines.
“We’ve roasted from the start. I’m from a science background so that’s the part that really interested me - finding out the science side of coffee roasting.”
There’s more to a cup of Joe than just a boiled kettle and spoon of ground coffee.
“The science is more to do with the roasting process,” Lorraine said.
“As the roasting occurs you’re getting different chemical reactions in the beans so you can really manipulate their flavour profiles depending on what you’re trying to get out of it.
“You get different flavour profiles from different bean origins – an espresso most people would think of as a really dark Italian roast, but we’re nothing like that. We’re more on the lighter side, so you get the flavour of the bean not the flavour of the roast. That might be because we’re 90% female in here so we’ve got a different palate for our coffee anyway.
“We’ve actually turned a lot of tea drinkers into coffee drinkers and stopped people putting sugar in their coffees too!”
It took Lorraine and her team a few years to find their now perfect blends and then they spread from a retail product in farm shops to events and food festivals and now trade.
“Our first trade customer was Rocksalt and they’ve been brilliant customers ever since,” she said.
“It’s escalated from there. A lot of our customers ended up being brought in in a very organic way - word of mouth, getting quite popular with chefs, and we’ve built up.
“We’ve always been very open, come in, have a look and see what we’re about.”
Lorraine’s speaking literally and figuratively, the new base next to Endsleigh garden centre couldn’t be more open - fronted with big gleaming panes of glass.
The beans used in Owens’ blends come from Peru, Honduras, Guatemala, Indonesia, and Ethiopia.
“We’ve got direct relationships with two farmers,” Lorraine said.
“It’s all about traceability with organic and we can trace our coffee right back to the farmer.
“We can prove where it’s from and that no chemicals were involved in its journey.”