Today we’d like to introduce you to Drew Smith.
Hi Drew, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
When people ask how Spring Street Coffee Roasters started, the answer is usually: “Well… it kinda started with BBQ sauce.” During COVID, while everyone else was making sourdough, I was experimenting with barrel aging. What started as barrel aged BBQ Sauce quickly turned into a much bigger curiosity. I tried hot sauce and wanted to try honey but was quickly denied. Then I started thinking about what else I could put in the barrel that might take on the complexity and character of the spirit once inside it. Eventually, that led me to coffee, and something clicked.
Coffee, much like whiskey, has layers. Origin, processing, roasting, brewing, it all changes the final experience in the cup. I became fascinated with how different coffees interacted with different barrels. Originally we hired a roaster to roast the barrel aged beans. The more I learned about the roasting process and how subtle flavor notes could be highlighted or transformed the more varieties of coffee I wanted to experiment with.
Meg gave me a small counter top roaster for Christmas and the experimenting became an obsession in the best possible way. Of course we still barrel age coffee, we even do some amazing collabs with Oliver & Sinclair and Corsair, as well as Arrington Vineyards, but there is so much more depth to our line up now. Half the fun of this is meeting with small farmers that get overlooked by big chains. Not because their product isn’t incredible, but because there isn’t enough to fill their needs.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Running a small business is hard. Building one from the ground up is even harder.
There’s a constant learning curve, often in real time. One week it’s figuring out how to photograph your product well, the next it’s building a social media strategy or redesigning your website. Then there are the bigger operational questions: Do we take out a loan or open a line of credit? How do we design packaging that actually reflects the brand?
And that’s before you even get into supply chain realities and ongoing tariff challenges. On the operational side, it’s a constant balancing act. How much inventory do we keep on hand? We don’t want to run out of product, but we also don’t want cash tied up sitting on a shelf. When we invest in new equipment, do we buy slightly ahead of where we are? or two steps ahead? And when we outgrow it, what happens next?
These are the kinds of questions that come up weekly, if not daily.
We’re roasters. We don’t operate a café and don’t currently plan to open one. Instead, we focus on selling online and at farmers markets. We have a strong base of repeat customers during market season, but the challenge is bridging that gap when we’re not face-to-face with them each week.
Driving them to our website is part of that challenge (not just because our current site is a bit clunky. It was built in-house by us and we’re in the process of upgrading it), because staying top of mind between market visits is a different kind of work altogether.
We’re continuing to grow our wholesale business, sourcing unique single-origin coffees and developing custom blends for cafés, restaurants, hotels, and retailers.
Our focus is simple: help our partners serve a coffee that keeps people coming back. When they succeed, we succeed.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
A coffee roaster’s role is part researcher, part taster, and part craftsman.
It begins with curiosity and research. Where did the coffee come from, what region and farm, and at what elevation was it grown? What processing method was used? And what are the producers themselves tasting in the cup?
From there, we work with green coffee samples and begin test roasting. This isn’t a one-and-done process, it involves roasting the same coffee at multiple levels to understand how development changes the flavor profile and to find the sweet spot.
Once we’ve narrowed that in, we move into brewing and evaluation. We test across different methods to understand how each one highlights or shifts the coffee’s character. A coffee might shine as a pour over, show a different side in a French press, and become something entirely new as an espresso shot.
Part of the job is then translating all of that into something useful and accessible for customers. Helping them understand not just what a coffee tastes like, but how to brew it in a way that brings out its best expression.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
A great coffee roaster sits right at the intersection of curiosity, technical skill, sensory training, and good judgment.
It starts with curiosity. The work begins long before anything hits the roaster—understanding where a coffee comes from, how it was grown, and what the producer was aiming for. Without that curiosity, you miss a big part of what makes coffee worth caring about in the first place.
Then there’s sensory skill. You have to train yourself to really taste. Consistently picking up on small shifts in acidity, sweetness, body, and finish, and understanding how those change depending on roast level and brewing method.
Technical control is just as important. Roasting is all about managing heat, time, and airflow with intention. Small adjustments can make a big difference, so there’s a lot of focus on precision, consistency, and refining the process over time.
Patience is another big one. Getting a coffee where it needs to be usually takes multiple test roasts, lots of cupping, and ongoing tweaks. It’s rarely instant, you’re working toward gradual improvement, cup by cup.
And finally, communication. A big part of the job is taking all of that sensory detail and making it simple and useful for other people. Helping customers and wholesale partners understand what they’re tasting, how to brew it, and how to get the best out of each coffee, without overcomplicating it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sscroaster.com
- Instagram: @springstreetcoffee214
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SPRINGSTREETCOFFEE/
