Q: What’s your favorite part of working at Infusco?
A: I like that Sawyer is growing into something and since I live here I get to be a part of that growth that Infusco is contributing to.
Q: What’s your favorite thing to do in the are that you’d recommend to visitors or anyone who hasn’t done it?
A: I like all the antique shops. I like that I can drive in any direction for twenty minutes and find unique shops and antique stores. And I can pick fruit wherever I want.
Q: What’s something big in your life that you’d like to share?
A: I just bought a house in Sawyer! And I have the most adorable dog.
If you’ve been to visit our shop in Sawyer (and if you haven’t you should!) you might have noticed these fun shirts for sale on the merchandise table. For those who don’t know what they are, aside from the impression of a man’s hairy face, the message of these shirts is to Support Locally Grown Facial Hair. A clever play on words, these shirts make a great conversation starter for anyone who wears them!
On a serious note, the creator of these shirts, Wade, was recently in a bad work-related accident. He’s going to be out of commission for a bit. Wade is a great friend of Infusco, so we’d love it if you came over and took some of his merchandise home! If wearing eyebrows and a beard on your shirt isn’t your thing, Wade also hand carves wooden rings which are also available in the Infusco shop.
So next time you stop in for coffee, Support Locally Grown Facial Hair, too, and bring some good news to a friend of a friend.
We’d like to take some time to introduce to you the wonderful baristas who serve your coffee every day! Stay tuned for more.
Q: Where are you from?
A: Originally Chicago, but I’ve spent summers in Sawyer forever.
Q: What is your favorite thing about working at Infusco?
A: The coffee, the people, the whole atmosphere. It’s really friendly, and we get to educate people about coffee and learn new things about how to make coffee. It’s very different from Starbucks!
Q: What’s your favorite thing to do in the area that you think visitors or anyone who’s never done it should try?
A: I like spending time at the beach, but I actually surf. Most people don’t know you can do that on the lakes. I also play music at the Acorn Theater in Three Oaks – they have open mics on Tuesday nights.
Q: What’s something big in your life that you’d want to share?
A: I’m about to release and EP! I’ve been recording in Grand Rapids this past winter, and it comes out in two weeks. It’s indie rock – title TBA – and it’ll be sold in the shop!
Q: What’s your favorite coffee drink?
A: Ethiopian Sidamo pour over. I also like, from the secret menu, iced dirty chai, which is chai and milk with espresso.
Q: What else should people know about the secret menu?
A: We can pretty much make anything! With espresso.
Infusco Coffee Roasters has a very exciting announcement: on July 19th at 7PM, the shop will be hosting it’s first ever coffee cupping event!
What is a coffee cupping, you ask? Much like a wine tasting, a coffee cupping is an event where attendees have the opportunity to try many different varieties of coffee, compare and contrast their differences, and discover which types actually suit each individual the best. Whole beans, grounds, and brewed coffee are available for each variety.
There are a limited number of 50 tickets available for this event. Tickets can be purchased for $30 each by stopping into the Infusco Coffee Shop or calling (269) 213-JAVA to reserve tickets for pick up before the cupping. Each ticket provides the bearer with entrance to the event, desserts provided, and a small bag of Infusco Coffee for your at-home brewing pleasure. Additionally, each ticket will be entered in a drawing for an Infusco t-shirt and mug!
More exciting, however, is that 100% of the proceeds from this event will go to support local community members – the Brown and Silva families – in their goals. To read more about each of these families and how getting them overseas might benefit Infusco, keep reading.
Jeff and Tammi Brown are great friends of the Siris who volunteered time back when the space where coffee is now enjoyed was still just a roasting facility. They are preparing to take their family to San Jose, Costa Rica, where they will work for Reach Global as administrators of Latin American and Caribbean missions. They will also be working with both men and women of all ages who are victims of the sex trafficking industry, which is legal in this part of the world.
You can find out more about the Brown family and their goals at their website.
Ronny and Kari Silva, also good friends of Infusco (you’ll recognize Kari as one of our wonderful baristas!), are raising funding to go as a family on a second trip to the city of Trujillo, Peru. While there, they intend to do church planting among indigenous peoples through the Pioneers missions agency.
For more information on the Silvas and their mission, check out their Facebook group page.
Costa Rica and Peru are both known for their coffee farms, and these families have hopes of discovering farms that might enter into direct trade with Infusco Coffee Roasters! Infusco is working to obtain licensing to trade with other coffee farms, through the gifting of the farm in Kenya. You can find out more about the Kenyan farm in the video below, and in some old blogs written by Rich. Farms the Browns and Silvas discover will likely be similar to this.
We hope to see you at the coffee cupping – buy a ticket today!
Infusco has been overwhelmed by the support of our loyal friends and families! But for those who are new customers, just discovering our coffee, we want to share the story of Infusco Coffee Roasters with you, too.
Rich’s interest in coffee shops first began way back in 2001, when he was going to school in Mishawaka and visiting Higher Grounds coffee shop in South Bend (no longer in business). Coffee shops in general were pretty new to the SW Michigan/NW Indiana area, but Rich was in youth ministry at the time and thought a coffee shop would be a great place to connect with teenagers. Research was done through Alex Fisenko, who runs a consulting business intended to help individuals get started with their own successful coffee shops. This research revealed that New Carlisle, where Rich and Stacey lived, was not an ideal location for a coffee shop to thrive. Watching coffee shops fail one after another was discouraging. Rich has a love for tinkering, and as a hobby he had begun roasting coffee in a pizza oven he had converted into a one pound roaster. The concept that a roasting company with it’s own brand of coffee could support a coffee shop in an area like Sawyer began to emerge as a sustainable option.
The one pound roaster made roasting slow going, but it was the convergence of friends that pushed Infusco out the door. Some friends of the Siris were talking about opening a brewery in downtown Sawyer (hm, wondering what that could be?), and their excitement was catching. Other friends, Seth and Shannin Vander Ark, expressed interest in a coffee business, and a partnership began. Meanwhile, Greenbush ordered 30lbs of Infusco coffee to use in their Mr. Hyde Java Cream Stout. Confident that at least this order would come again, Infusco decided to invest in a larger roaster in 2011.
Infusco has only grown since then, most recently with the opening of the coffee shop located in downtown Sawyer behind the old fire station. The Vander Arks withdrew from the company in early 2014 due to family complications – if you’d like to read about their journey, you can keep in touch with Shannin’s blog at Don’t Doubt Jack. Meanwhile, Infusco’s vision to provide a delightful coffee experience, build relationships, and be involved in the local Sawyer community while supporting orphans and widows in Kenya remains.
One last thing you might be wondering is, where did the name “Infusco” come from? Rich and Stacey homeschool their three children, and back when the company was getting started the oldest son, Noah, was taking Latin. Stacey realized that the word “infusco” meant “to make dark or blacken,” and when the logo was made the name was to stay. (Another of the Siris’ goals with Infusco is to educate their kids about running a business – Noah even proofread the business plan!)
On Memorial Day weekend the Infusco Coffee Shop opened its doors to the public for the first time – and was met with overwhelming friendship, support, and success!
Many customers loved the incredible space that the Siris have put together for them to enjoy good coffee, and promised to bring friends back with them. People were united in the opinion that Sawyer had always needed a coffee shop, and customers thanked Rich and Stacey for opening one. Throughout the day friends could be seen playing games and laughing, older couples were sitting outside at the bistro tables to enjoy their cappuccinos, bicyclists pedaled many miles to pit-stop at the shop, and many friends and family came to show their support for Infusco.
The shop did exceedingly well this Memorial Day weekend, and managed to triple the normal sales of the Infusco coffee cart of 2012-13. The sales, which are necessary to keep this shop open for all to enjoy, were impressive, but not what primarily touched the shop owners. Stacey Siri says she “had to busy myself often to hide the tears of joy that might spill over… I didn’t hide my bawling when my sister showed up with her jaw dropped wide open at how awesome she thought the place looked!”
Stacey’s sister was not the only one impressed with the space Infusco has created. Customers had positive things to say left and right:
“Stopped in for coffee at this wonderful new establishment in Sawyer today. Amazing! Great people — great coffee. Bonus: a window into the roasting room!”
“I just got my first house latte here this morning – most excellent. More importantly, you can feel the love in this place. Thanks Rich.”
“So happy for you guys. You have enhanced the ambiance of Sawyer.”
“Love your coffee!”
“Coffee was great today guys! Congratulations on a great looking coffee shop too… I always buy Infusco Coffee – Kenyan roast… delicious!”
Everyone at Infusco hopes that when you stop by to try it out for yourself you’ll heartily agree and become one of many beloved customers. Come check it out!
Today we meet a mother and her daughters. Starting left to right we have Julianna(mother), Eunice and Ruth. They also belong to the Kamba tribe. Julianna and her daughters live in Kyandote (pronounced Chee-an-dotay.) This area of Kenya is one of the more impoverished areas and has been hit very hard by the poor coffee prices. If you look closely in the background of this picture you will see that these women are hoeing up corn or maize. A few years ago the coffee market took a very hard decline in Kenya and most farmers either stopped caring for their crop or cut it down and planted corn in its place because it is more useful for feeding their families. These ladies are actually in the process of taking the corn out from around their coffee plants. If farmers like Julianna and her husband Sammy were able to get a fair price on their coffee, they would not need to plant the corn every year. Since, coffee is harvested yearly without being replanted the cost in growing it is just the time it takes to care for it.
As we drove up to these three ladies, we drove past a mud hut with a thatched roof. When the rainy season comes (March) the hut will erode more and more. The roof will no doubt leak through the straw and sooner or later the straw will collapse in. When the roof gives way it will rain on someone, maybe an adult, maybe a child, but there will be no escaping the elements at that point. What I realized while I was there was that all of the stories we hear and pictures we see sometimes cause us to grow calloused and that behind every picture and story is a person. These people are just like us, they get cold and wet in the rain, they cry when they are sad or alone. We can see how people live in another country and see the depths of their poverty and then somehow move on unaffected.
Meet Jones, he is a coffee farmer from the Kyuu (pronounced Choe) area of Kenya. Jones is part of the Kamba tribe. We found Jones pruning his coffee plants as we drove by. His story was a familiar one and being very friendly he shared with us what he was doing and how coffee farming has affected him as he continued to prune his plants. Just down the hill behind Jones is a coffee processing plant which is run by the local co-op. In April and May as Jones harvests the coffee cherries (which we will show you in a later post) he takes them down the hill to the processing plant. When he drops off the coffee cherries, he waits about one week and then gets paid a very small fraction of the price of his crop. He then waits about 12 months to collect the rest of his money, which is the first tragedy in the whole situation. The second tragedy here is that the money he gets paid, in total equals about $0.38 per pound of coffee cherries. This is what keeps most coffee farmers impoverished in Kenya. The final problem with this whole situation is that currently the price to buy green coffee (un-roasted) is about $5.27 per pound, which means that the system has been setup to take advantage of these farmers that produce one of the best coffees in the world. Before we left Jones, he said to us “If there is anything you can do to help us, please help!” There is more to this story please stay tuned…
Over the next couple of posts, I hope to introduce you to Kenya. This picture is of one beautiful scene we encountered while there, but my hope is to introduce you to the Kenyan people, specifically the Kumba tribe.
From the moment we arrived in Kalimarket (a little village about an 1 and 1/2 hours outside of Nairobi) to the time we left we were warmly welcomed. The children and adults were friendly and curious about the “glowing skinned” people who had come to their village.
Infusco Coffee 