Pittsburg shops have nearby specialty coffee source
Martin Rojas and Scott Glover met by chance or by design.
They joined forces to turn their shared passion for coffee and servants’ hearts into a new business venture that supplies specialty coffee blends to local and regional coffee shops, including The Daily Grind and Main Street Market in Pittsburg.
Rojas, the general manager of Glover’s new coffee roasting business US Roast based in Mount Pleasant, met through a mutual friend.
Rojas’ neighbor went to school with Glover, and after a conversation about his plans for the business, the neighbor introduced him to Rojas, who owned a coffee farm in Nicaragua that funded a school ministry he helped found there and roasted coffee in his garage.
“I’d been going on mission trips twice a year with friends and wanted to do something more, so four years ago we founded a school out of a chicken coop taking these kids out of a trash dump and giving them an education,” Rojas told the Pittsburg Rotary during a presentation recently at its weekly lunch meeting.
The ministry built the school on a piece of property a friend willed to Rojas – 106 acres in the prime coffee-growing region, so to sustain the ministry long-term, he and his ministry partners began planting coffee beans on the land.
Fast forward to today and the crops have matured, and the school is growing through the profits from the harvest.
Glover also has a nonprofit, The Mid America Flight Museum at the Mount Pleasant Regional Airport that offers free flights in vintage warplanes to veterans.
“He’s an incredible Christian man, and we see eye to eye. This [new partnership] is a wonderful thing. I just happened to be roasting my coffee to support to support my preschool and working in software sales. I love coffee, and it was the good Lord working everything out for us,” Rojas told the Gazette.
The business currently operates out of a 5,000-square-foot facility on the north side of Mount Pleasant while a 21,000-squarefoot building is under construction near the Mount Pleasant Regional Airport near the flight museum.
Rojas, who joined the company full-time in April 2017, said the company anticipates completing construction in about three months and estimates hiring a workforce of possibly 20 in the next 18 months.
The roasting operation also supplies Jo’s Coffee Shop in Mount Pleasant, The Chop House on Bankhead in Mount Vernon and others in Gilmer, Longview and Dallas.
Rojas explained the different varieties of coffee beans and how they start from green coffee beans before being roasted, comparing the process of creating the blends to creating fine wines.
“We have 7-8 different types, like Ethiopian, Columbian, Sumatran, and Papua New Guinea and we’ve been working on our blends and sourcing excellent green coffee,” Rojas said after the meeting. “There are a lot of pieces that we are working on to give the best specialty coffee that we can. The better the ingredients, the better; hopefully, the end product is going to be.”
Rojas said each vendor chooses from the blends he custom creates for them.
“You have to understand how the different coffees taste together. You’re going to put a little Ethiopian for higher acidity, and then a mid-palate type coffee like a Columbian or Guatemalan and you’re going to finish with a stronger-bodied type coffee like a Brazilian or Sumatran,
Rojas explained. “It’s about synergy and creating something much more flavorful across your palate and your taste spectrum than one single coffee.”