Margot and Nathan Jantz, owners of 32 Lakes Coffee Roasters
Interview by Megan Cole
Coffee is big business in cities like Vancouver, Seattle and Portland, but Nathan and Margot Jantz, two brave pioneers in Powell River, British Columbia, decided to take their passion and attempt to roast great coffee for what was a traditionally mainstream coffee crowd. With a love for light-roast coffees and the balls to bring brave new beans to the small coastal town of Powell River, we talked to Nathan and Margot, owners of 32 Lakes Coffee Roasters, about why they started a small-town coffee company, and why people gravitate towards dark roasts instead of more flavourful light roasts.
How did you start roasting coffee?
NJ: We moved to Powell River and we were looking for coffee that was more up our alley. We like more of a light roast and we couldn’t find anything like that here. We met a guy in town and he built little coffee roasters. I started talking to him and told him I was interested, and he said, “If you get the parts, I will make you one,” and a few weeks later he made me a little coffee roaster. At that time I basically threw beans in it and hoped it turned out alright. I didn’t know anything about it, but it got me interested in learning the science behind it. Once I started reading about it, I realized the roasting process was really interesting and scientific, and the most minor changes can make a huge difference. That process got me hooked, and I haven’t really let go since.
How’s it been in terms of educating a small, isolated town like Powell River about the kind of coffee that you roast?
NJ: I wouldn’t say that we’ve been incredibly successful in marketing the light-roast coffees yet, because we haven’t really had an outlet for it, except for when we’re serving coffees and able to talk about them at the farmer’s market. In terms of the coffees we are passionate about, which are the expensive, intricately flavoured coffees that are roasted in a light way, the only way they are catching on is by selling small bags of them and people tasting them, and realizing it’s different than what they are used to, and they will come back and get it again. We’ve seen that happen more and more, but for the most part our regular coffee line, which is our espresso, our dark roast and our Mexican, which is a lightly roasted coffee, but comes across in a rich way, those coffees have been selling really well. It’s small steps we’re going to be making to increase awareness. In terms of education, we need to be serving our coffee more to our customers, and discussing it with them, and we don’t really have an outlet for that right now. We’ve done one brewing class so far, and it was successful, but we need to have more time to do things like that. The summer is always a great time to get out and be able to be with the community more.
Where do you think this preference for dark-roast coffees comes from? Is it places like Starbucks, who have made their money on that style of roast?
NJ: Starbucks has had a big impact on it, but I also think that it is a flavour profile that is bold and interesting, when the only thing people may have had all their lives is shitty Folgers. I still remember opening my first Kick Ass from Kicking Horse Coffee, and brewing a cup and thinking, “Holy crap, this is amazing!” It is different, because it has more pronounced flavour, and I totally understand why people like it as their first step, but where that has turned was having a light-roast coffee that was even more exciting, and realizing the flavours in a dark roast are coming from the roast, and you’re not learning about where the coffee is coming from and what the potential each country and region has to offer. Once you start learning about that and taste all those intricate differences, it becomes exciting to experience it in a different way. But Starbucks coffee, and most coffee that has been advertised as organic/fair trade to the higher-end market, is quite darkly roasted so people have acquired a taste for it.
MJ: It’s a strategic roast, too, and I think for me, because I haven’t been drinking coffee for that long, and the reason was I didn’t like the flavour of it. It wasn’t until Nathan started roasting it for us at home as a light roast that I started liking it. To me, it was like apples and oranges, when you compare a dark and a lighter roast. A dark roast is a burned roast, and I don’t like the taste. I guess it reminds me of how when I was a kid my mom always burned the toast, and I hated toast because of that, but as soon as you have a nicely golden toast you realize how delicious it is. The light roast hasn’t been around, so people have only gotten dark roast for so long. People have grown to depend on that style of coffee, and that’s what they learned to love. Coffee is a very sentimental drink; it’s a part of people’s everyday traditions and customs, and there is a beauty to that. When you take coffee and you turn it into something completely different, it’s a wonderful flavour, but now you’re asking someone to give up on something they’ve grown up with and the sentimental value behind that. I think the motivation for why there are so many dark roasts out there is you can get beans that are cheap and stale and poor quality and monocrops and because it is all about the roast flavour instead of the coffee flavour it will still succeed in giving the flavour that people are looking for which is the roast flavour rather than the coffee flavour.
NJ: That’s not to say that a really high quality coffee wouldn’t taste different as a dark roast, but the differences are going to be less.
Do you ever have moments where you think it would be easier to do this in Vancouver? Or do you think it would be just as challenging to do it there because of the competition?
NJ: I definitely have moments where I think we could be bigger and faster in Vancouver, especially when we look at the success rate of other small roasters who have popped up there and in Victoria. Especially in marketing a certain style of coffee. It is an interesting balance, there is a lot more risk. We pay less in rent, where if we were in Vancouver with a roast shop and a retail space we’d be paying multiple thousands, and we’d have to make that money and wouldn’t be able to miss a beat. For us, we’ve had the time to research the green beans we are buying so we can make informed decisions and make tasty coffee. It would have been a different experience for sure.
32 Lakes Coffee Roasters can be found online, along with a selection of their beans.
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