#1 Rated Coffee Roaster in WNC – Dynamite Roasting Co.

 

Just outside of Black Mountain, NC on Highway 70 lies the retail cafe for Dynamite Roasting Co, a locally born, award winning, artisan-roasted organic coffee company that goes to great lengths to source sustainably-grown coffee from small farms around the world.

Dynamite Roasting Company is led by visionary owner and founder Andy Gibbon.

Like a lot of college students, Andy worked his way through his first two years of college at The College of Wooster serving as a Barista at a local coffee shop.  Traveling sounded much more appealing than being stuck in a classroom, so Andy packed his bags and set out to travel the world.  He supported his travel habit by working as a journeying Barista.  When he had saved up enough money he would continue on his nomadic journey and move on to the next destination.  What he couldn’t fully appreciate at the time was that this experience would light the flame for his coffee passion for so deep that it would one day launch a business entirely centered on coffee.

After years of traveling to numerous cities and countries, the mountains, music, and artisanal culture of Asheville lured Andy in.  Like so many others who visit and fall in love with the culture here, he decided to settle in and call the Western North Carolina mountains home.

Inspired by Asheville being a craft beer mecca (only one of a handful of cities that have earned the title of “Beer City, USA”), Andy turned his attention to craft beer.  He began brewing beer at home as a hobby and would later become Catawba Brewing’s first employee at their Asheville location.  Andy later took his professional brewing talents to Highland Brewing Company and remained there for a few years focusing on brewing a Highland favorite, Gaelic Ale.

Taking cues from craft beer brewing, Andy began experimenting with roasting coffee at home in his kitchen.  It wouldn’t take long for his passion for coffee to be reignited and soon he and his friend, Josh Gibbs, were brainstorming on how to turn coffee roasting into a business.  At the time there were only a couple of very small roasters in Asheville and none in Black Mountain.

Between Andy’s passion for coffee and Josh’s marketing background, and essentially no one else doing what they envisioned, the duo put together a business plan to start a coffee roastery.

Oh and by the way, the year was 2008…the middle of the market crash and Great Recession.

Fueled by passion, persistence and commitment to excellence, Andy and Josh “bought a small batch roaster on eBay, loaded it in the back of a pickup, drove back to Black Mountain, and Dynamite Roasting was born.”

They purchased the site of the current Dynamite Roasting café in Black Mountain, NC and officially opened October 2008 with the plan of being a wholesale coffee roastery, not a retail café.  People started knocking on the door wanting to purchase a cup of coffee.  Typically, the answer was, “no we just do wholesale” until the first month’s rent was due…and out of necessity, the no’s quickly turned to yes.  In December 2008, Dynamite made its first wholesale sale and with the steady stream of walk in customers quickly erupted into a fulltime café.

“Opening a business in a recession made us stronger.  We learned how to operate lean and mean.  If we could survive during that period we were confident we would be good to go once the economy turned around.”

After eight years of brewing for café customers, growing wholesale business, and the need for more room to meet the roasting demands, the time was right for the café to become its own thing and expand into a separate production facility in 2016.  Even with the larger production space it wasn’t long before they had to rent the space next door to expand again.

Since 2008, two key ingredients have been the bedrock and markers of their success…quality coffee and personal relationships with their farmers.  It is no wonder Dynamite earned the coveted top spot for coffee shops and roasters in Mountain Xpress Best of WNC 2019.

 

Quality Coffee

Green coffee has a shelf life of 9-12 months.  Flavor falls off, so when you deal with specialty coffee like Dynamite Roasting Co, maintaining a fresh inventory of green coffee is vital to their mission and customer satisfaction.

Coffee grows in a narrow band around the globe in regions that are mountainous, high altitude, and tropical – yet still cool enough for the seed to develop slowly and develop the sugars properly.  Each region has its own flavor profile, much like wine grapes, and its own growing and harvest season.  And then there are hemispheric differences in coffee as well.  Honduras in the northern hemisphere is harvested December/January.  It will be ready for export in March.  Peru is in the southern hemisphere and is harvested in Autumn.  Indonesia and Sumatra continually harvest, and Colombia harvests two times per year.

Regularly visiting their growers and importing their coffees at various times throughout the year, Dynamite is able ensure the beans they roast are as fresh as possible.

There are also tiers of coffee much like there are tiers of wine.  Chardonnay in France is quite different than in a Chardonnay California.  Climate, temperature, soil, humidity, harvesting practices, and even the various levels of altitude where the coffee is grown all play in part in the tier flavor profile and tier level of coffee.

Dynamite only selects beans in the highest tier to ensure the freshest, best tasting coffee possible.  Another reason Dynamite Roasting Co is an award winning coffee roaster.

Personal Relationships

Dynamite doesn’t just simply purchase their beans from exporters and importers.  They want to know their growers.

For over nine years Dynamite has been visiting farmers from different growing regions to ensure they have fresh green coffee year-round.  The growers and farmers have come to understand the flavor profiles Dynamite is looking for so by the time Andy and his staff arrives, they have pre-selected a sample of coffees that are consistent with the flavor profiles that have become iconic to the 17 different types of coffee that Dynamite roasts.

“The farmers have become our friends.”

When Dynamite returns to Honduras next month they will kick off their visit with a week-long beach trip simply reconnecting and building deeper relationships with their growers.  Then it will be time to taste and plan for the import of their favorite coffees so we can all enjoy that fresh taste we’ve come to love with Dynamite coffees.

A Plan For Growth

Dynamite has become the region’s largest specialty coffee roaster and the demands from the wholesale business have made it necessary to expand again.  In 2020, Dynamite will open an 8,000sf production facility that will allow them to meet the growing demands of their increasing wholesale footprint.

When asked if they had an ultimate goal of how large they wanted their footprint to ultimately be, the answer was less about the size of production and reach of territory, but more about staying true to their mission and quality of their coffee.  “We’ve always been about organic growth…our best customers are the ones who see the value of our brand, and that we’re not just another coffee.”

“Our best customers are the ones who see the value of our brand”

It’s clear that coffee is more than a daily pick me up for Dynamite Roasting Co.  It’s a passion, way of life, and a conscience decision to concentrate on serving their local community with the best coffee from around the world.

 

 

Cafe Location: 3198 US-70, Black Mountain, NC 28711

Coffee Bar & Retail Hours :  Weekdays: 7am-7pm I Saturdays: 7am-6pm I Sundays: 8am-6pm