Big things are happening at 5105 Columbia Ave., located at the edge of The Hill and Southwest Garden neighborhoods. Park Avenue Coffee is currently renovating the space to house a coffee shop, a bakery and its first roaster.
Owner Dale Schotte said after purchasing beans from Chauvin Coffee Co. for the last seven years, the new Park Avenue location now roasts its own direct-trade beans using an air roaster for its locations in Lafayette Square and downtown. This method is 91 percent more energy-efficient than a traditional coffee roaster, he related. “It’s a little different. Traditional roasting is very similar to your clothes dryer at home,” he said, referring to the large heated drum traditional roasters use to tumble coffee beans. “Air roasting actually blows the beans around inside the chamber so there is movement.”
According to Schotte, this method produces a more even roast, resulting in a brighter, cleaner cup of coffee. “Once we find the profile we like, we can produce that to the exact standards each time,” he said. “You get much more of the flavor nuances from the bean, and you don’t get so much of the actual roast profile in the coffee.”
While the roaster has already been hard at work for six weeks, Schotte is also renovating the storefront. Originally, he planned to use the building as a roasting facility and a training cafe, but so much community interest in the renovation spurred him to open a third full location. “Park Avenue has always been interested in being a neighborhood coffee shop,” he said. “The Hill and Southwest Garden area has always been a tight-knit community.”
The shop, projected to open in mid-October, will offer the same fare as the other Park Avenue locations, including coffee drinks, fruit smoothies, baked goods and its many varieties of gooey butter cake. The building’s final renovations will see Park Avenue’s baking operations, currently located in Dogtown, move to the new facility in 2014.
Schotte said the new space will give him more opportunities to educate customers on direct-trade coffee and the science behind the roasting process. “Once we open, we will be doing tours of the roasting facility on Saturday mornings, people will be able to come and see how the process goes from buying green beans to roasting, packaging and distributing them.”
This article appears in September 2013.