North Dakota Coffee Roastery hosts open house in Grand Forks

GRAND FORKS — To the people who run North Dakota Coffee Roastery, coffee means coming together.

“When you think about coffee, it’s what people do when they’re connecting,” said Sandra “Sandi” Luck, owner of the North Dakota Coffee Roastery and Bully Brew Coffee House. “You sit at a coffee shop and you see people put away their phones, and they’re visiting and connecting.”

North Dakota Coffee Roastery staff celebrated one year of operation at their Grand Forks roastery headquarters with an open house on Monday afternoon, June 26. The building, which is usually locked and off-limits to all but the 11 people who work inside, was opened to the public for tours, tastings, and visiting.

“We wanted to give the community the opportunity to come in and see our space,” Chief Marketing Officer Rachael Page said, “and really just get to experience the amazing amazingness of the building and the magic that happens within it.”

The North Dakota Roastery sells wholesale coffee, including single origin, signature blends and custom blends for different wholesale customers. Coffee drinkers in the region might recognize the company best as the roasting and production side of Bully Brew.

The 20,000-square-foot building holds office space, an area for loading and packaging, a coffee school and a coffee tasting room.

The roastery itself contains two roasting machines, jokingly but fondly referred to as the little big brother and big little brother by Shelby Rice, tour guide and manager of Bully Brew’s Fargo location. The machines are used to roast each of North Dakota Coffee Roastery’s signature and custom blends or single origin coffee.

“Coffee is really an art form,” Page said

Even though the roasting room may be where the magic happens, the office spaces are where the magic is planned. The building is full of spaces dedicated to collaboration. Wide rooms with tables and chairs are flanked by offices with open doors and wide windows that face those common areas. The top meeting room is up a small flight of stairs and is referred to as “the Cloud,” another room filled with white boards. The office side of the warehouse is built to encourage that sense of family so many of the employees talk about.

“I wouldn’t be able to do the job I do without the women below or above me,” Chief Operating Officer Jordyn Weber said. “We’re a very tight-knit family.”

Despite the roastery industry being mostly male, the North Dakota Coffee Roastery upper management and store managers are all women, a source of pride at the company. Rice believes this is a factor in their success of building such a strong company.

“We oftentimes feed off of each other,” Rice said. “We’re all somewhat maternal, of each other and of our stores. … It’s not just a job for us.”

North Dakota Coffee Roastery staff do not want to keep the knowledge they have gained to themselves. Instead they are teaching courses and sharing their knowledge of the coffee out of the coffee school, which hosted a latte art competition during the open house.

Opening the coffee school felt like a natural move for Luck, who recently retired from teaching at UND.

“I love teaching. That’s one of my passions,” she said. “And I have been consulting with a lot of the coffee companies around that we work with … getting the message out there to people about how to have a successful coffeehouse.”

The coffee school offers three courses: a one-day barista training, two-day manager class, and a three-day owner class. All of them are designed to advise people who work at different levels in the coffee industry.

“It’s a dream that we talked about for a long time,” Weber said. “We think that we have the coffee business model down, so why not share it with other people so they can succeed as well?”

Even if someone does not work in the coffee industry or buy coffee for their business, North Dakota Coffee Roastery staff still want people to get those same uniting benefits just from having a cup of their coffee.

“I want them to feel the love that we have made it with,” Luck said. “And the joy that we have when we make it.”

Maeve Hushman is from San Diego, California, and is a student at University of North Dakota. She is majoring in communications with a minor in sports business.