Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 6, 1994 TAG: 9410060024
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KIMBERLY N. MARTIN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
That comes in the form of investment in a state-of-the-art coffee bean roaster and a renovated plant in Roanoke's Statesman Industrial Park.
But they come on the heels of a surge in wholesale coffee prices, which are up about $1.20 a pound in recent months due to two early frosts in Brazil.
Stave isn't worried. H&C Coffee has seen worse times.
The 1985 Roanoke River flood nearly wiped out Woods Brothers Coffee Co., which roasted and distributed the H&C brand for 62 years. Debts from the flood finally sank the company in 1989. The following year the company hit the auction block. Becharas, a Detroit coffee company, bought Woods Brothers and changed the name to H&C. About a year and a half later, Stave took over and moved to a smaller location.
Now, Stave said, the tide has turned toward growth.
The company finished its 18-month renovation of the plant six months ago, and it just invested about $60,000 in the roaster. The gourmet roaster will allow H&C to roast its own beans, which it hasn't been able to do since 1990. The roaster also means fresher coffee for its consumers because it can produce in small or large quantities, said Stave. In recent years, Becharas roasted H&C's coffee.
"The company is now majority-owned and operated in Roanoke," said Stave, who owns the company with Roanoke's Lemon family. "And we can now do everything here that [Woods Brothers] had done 10 years ago."
And in some ways the company can do more, said Stave.
Today H&C not only manufactures its trademark coffee, which can be found on the shelves of Virginia and North Carolina supermarkets and specialty grocers, but it also produces gourmet coffees for other national companies and gourmet coffee shops.
It's the gourmet market that Stave is pursuing.
"The gourmet coffee business is increasing. It gets people who wouldn't ordinarily be coffee drinkers to buy coffee," said Stave.
By targeting both the gourmet and traditional coffee markets, the company has been able to double last year's sales in the first nine months of this year. And because making flavored coffees is labor-intensive, the gourmet business has meant more jobs, said Stave, who also owns a Louisville, Ky.-based coffee brokerage and distribution firm.
When he took over as president, the company had four employees. Today it has 14. He expects that to increase to about 20 in the next six months.
Despite this growth, Stave concedes the company is nowhere near the size of Woods Brothers during its heyday in the 1970s.
Woods Brothers had about 50 employees and two roasters, which could handle 500 pounds at a time. H&C's new roaster can produce a maximum of 150 pounds. In the Roanoke market, Woods Brothers coffee outsold Maxwell House and Folger's national brands, said H&C manager Ed Woods, whose father started Woods Brothers in 1927.
"Once Woods went off the shelf, the competition got a foothold in the market here, and they're not going to give it up easily," said Stave.
But that won't keep H&C's veteran staff, with more than 300 years of combined coffee manufacturing experience under its belt, from trying to repeat past success.
The comeback "is slower than I anticipated," said Woods, who has been in the coffee-making business since he was 6. "But it takes time and money, and I'll keep at it until they roll me away."
"Give us a few years and H&C will be what Woods Brothers was before and maybe more," said Stave.
by CNB