There’s more than meets the eye at a little coffee shop nestled at the back end of Hunter Road.
Cherry Hill Coffee is both a roaster and manufacturer of coffee, roasting green beans from around the world using a massive roasting machine from the 1960s.
The beans tumble for 15 minutes, roasting at their peak temperatures dependant on the bean, over 200 C.
David Bigelow, president and owner of Cherry Hill Coffee, said the flavour of the coffee comes from the beans.
“We sell everything from the beans to the machines and we service all of them… so we really do everything, from the bean to the end,” he said. “The coffee is from a cherry tree, just like we have here, it’s picked and harvested but instead of the fruit that we want, it’s the seed.”
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David, along with his brother Jeff and his father Don, have been in the coffee industry their entire adult lives.
In 1995, Don and Francis Bigelow moved from Winnipeg, where Don opened a coffee shop/coffee roaster at Cherry Hill.
Now owned and operated by his sons, Jeff and David, the pair expanded the shop and began distributing the coffee to roughly 600 different clients.
“It’s the typical story where you want to do your own thing and get involved in the family business and take it to the level you want to take it to and follow the entrepreneurial dream,” David said.
With his father, it started as a retail storefront with roasted beans in the back for the consumer, but when David and his brother took it over, they began the distribution to cafes and golf courses.
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“You gotta love what you do. The one thing that happened in the early 90s was the gourmet coffee industry started exploding. It really went to the next level with organics and at that time we started importing organic coffee which we found just to be the best,” David said. “We’re importing, roasting, forming and delivering all in one room.”
The coffee is 100 per cent organic and they’ve been certified for the past 13 years.
“When you have a certain food that you can smell and it has that fragrance, so you always want to have the best product available.”
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He hopes his children will continue his legacy.
“They’re pretty excited about it, they think it’s pretty cool… but there’s no exit strategy yet,” he said.
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