Roasting Without Venting: A Conversation with Bellwether’s Kimberly Noon

Kimberly Noon – Bellwether

Name: Kimberly Noon
Company: Bellwether
Position: VP of Marketing
Based: Berkeley, California
Expos Attended: 2

JJ: Had you been to the Specialty Coffee Expo before?
KN: Yes, we were there last year for the first time, in Seattle. That was also where we launched our product. We introduced the Bellwether Roaster to the world at that show.

JJ: It sounds like quite a year. Can you give me the quick overview of Bellwether?
KN: Bellwether makes a ventless, electric, zero-emissions commercial coffee roaster. It’s the first of its kind. Our system lets café retailers roast coffee right on site and have a direct link to the farm where the coffee was sourced.

JJ: That connection happens through the green bean marketplace, right?
KN: Correct.

JJ: How does that marketplace function?
KN: The roaster is run through an iPad, and that iPad has our software application on it. Inside the app, we have a green bean marketplace—a curated selection of green coffee put together by our green buyer, Gabe Boscana. He’s been in the industry a long time and is highly respected for green buying. Our customers can buy green coffee from that marketplace.

One of the obstacles to entering coffee roasting is that people don’t know where to source green coffee. We wanted to remove those barriers and give people better access to roasting. Buying green coffee was definitely one of the walls we aimed to knock down. By putting the green coffee marketplace in our application, we give people access to excellent green coffee from farms around the world. When they purchase from our market, we ship it in easy-to-maintain, easy-to-store, easy-to-manage 25-pound boxes of green coffee, so it fits neatly in a small café. We also upload a roast profile to their system that our coffee team worked hard to create. When the green coffee arrives, they already have a roast profile in their iPad app, so they can start roasting right away—even if they’ve never done it before. That’s pretty awesome.

JJ: What’s the ideal café for a Bellwether?
KN: It’s funny you ask, because it’s kind of all over the place. The small neighborhood café that really wants to own its coffee but never thought it could—that’s one of our customers. The café down the street that might roast at another location with a bunch of roasters available, but has always wanted to roast in-store—those are our customers too. And then big brands that currently roast at one central location and ship coffee all over the world: this lets them roast onsite, in stores, and have that connection to the customer. The customer can see the coffee roasting in the store, which creates a deeper connection all around. So those are our customers as well.

JJ: What are you hoping to get from this year’s show?
KN: Same thing—just getting in front of more people. Being on a different coast is great. We have a lot of connections and relationships in California and on that side of the country. But actually bringing the machine out here so many more people can see it has been invaluable so far. And seeing people we met last year who come up to the booth this year, surprised that we actually have a “big kid” booth—that’s really fun. Seeing those people again, you remember them because the connections we made last year were so great. Then coming back this year and saying hello and seeing the machine roast—last year at Expo we weren’t allowed to roast because of the power requirements, and it was kind of a last-minute thing anyway. We totally understood. The SCA was a huge supporter of us being able to roast last year, but it just didn’t work out with the convention center in Seattle. This year we planned ahead with SCA support, and we were able to get it done. People who wanted to see the machine roasting last year and weren’t able to get to see it this year, which is really exciting.

JJ: Who are some of your initial clients that are actually roasting coffee with the Bellwether?
KN: There’s one in Denver called Unravel Coffee. Steve Holt is the owner and founder, and Steve is an icon in the coffee industry. He’s been a longtime supporter of Bellwether. He’s been along on the journey with us since near the beginning, actually. To be able to give him a roaster at his coffee shop that he just opened was really awesome for both parties. He’s kind of seen us grow up as a company, and then being able to give him one of our first machines was a really cool experience.

JJ: Any advice for future equipment manufacturers when they come to Expo? What have you learned along the way?
KN: Something that has always served us very well is this: we are not a technology company that made a product and forced it upon an industry. From the very beginning, we had the coffee industry help us build this thing. So many of our team members grew up in the coffee industry. The hands that made this machine are the hands of the industry. Just having that relationship, and that deeper connection to the industry itself, respecting the craft of coffee roasting—which we carry throughout our technology inside the machine, to everything you see on the outside, the software itself—all of that was built with the user in mind. All human-centered design philosophy throughout the hardware and the software. The biggest thing for us was having the industry along for the ride from day one. Anytime we iterated the product or had something new to show, we showed it to as many people as we possibly could. They gave us feedback, we incorporated their feedback into the next iteration, so that’s something we’re super proud of, and it’s something that has served us very well over the course of our journey.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.