BUSINESS
Wallowa County Chieftain
A6
Wednesday, June 9, 2021
More premium coff ee arrives in county
BIZZ BUZZ
By Bill Bradshaw
E
NTERPRISE — Another
premium coff ee outlet is
coming to Wallowa County.
In fact, it’s already here, as
True Mountain Coff ee is importing
green coff ee beans from Costa Rica
and roasting and selling them here.
Lyman Warnock, of Enterprise,
is working in conjunction with a
longtime friend, Gustavo Rodri-
guez, of Tilarán, Costa Rica, and
Warnock’s wife, Mildred — Rodri-
guez’s niece — to bring the Ara-
bica beans from Central America.
“About two years ago, I started
talking to Gustavo about this cof-
fee. (I told him) It’s a really grow-
ing business, and we’ve got to
look into this,” Warnock said. “So
I started studying it on the inter-
net — I didn’t know anything
about the coff ee business. We usu-
ally drank Costa Rican coff ee, but
not the premium stuff . He came
up for Christmastime 2019 and
he brought us some coff ee and we
started talking and contacted some
growers down there.”
Since then, he’s been working
to develop relationships with Costa
Rican growers and even has found
a local coff ee purveyor who can
roast the green beans. Beans desig-
nated “green” are simply those that
have been harvested and dried, but
not yet roasted.
Warnock met Scott McDonald,
of Joseph Creek Coff ee in Enter-
prise, who has the needed equip-
ment to roast the beans. Warnock
packages and sells his own.
“He sells locally, and I really
don’t want to compete with him,”
Warnock said. “He’s doing me a
good turn — we have a good busi-
ness relationship.”
Bill Bradshaw/Wallowa County Chieftain
Lyman Warnock pours a measure of Arabica coff ee beans from Costa Rica into a bag Tuesday, June 1, 2021. He will
sell the locally roasted beans from his Enterprise home under the True Mountain Coff ee brand.
Warnock is still developing his
own retail outlets.
“I really have not yet estab-
lished a retail outlet where I sell
wholesale to people who sell it,” he
said. “But that won’t happen until
I’ve secured my source (of imports
from Costa Rica) and have a cou-
ple thousand pounds of beans.”
Only Arabica beans
Tilarán sells exclusively — and
by law — only the Arabica beans.
As the community’s local chamber
of commerce representative Ener-
vey Ramirez explained, it’s against
the law to sell anything of a lesser
quality.
“Only Arabica. If we want to
compete, it’s better to compete
with quality,” Ramirez said.
According to the Costa Rica
coff ee website, https://tinyurl.com/
CafebrittArabica, Arabica beans
are a specifi c variety of beans that
is more diffi cult to grow than other,
hardier stocks. The result when the
beans mature is rich, full-bodied
fl avors leading to premium blends.
The beans Warnock imports are
all from small farms of 20 acres or
fewer.
“It’s all hand-picked, hand-
sorted and sun-dried,” Warnock
said.
COVID setback
His business has had some dif-
fi culties getting off the ground, like
many over the past year because
of the coronavirus pandemic. He
and Mildred traveled to Costa Rica
in February 2020 and were stuck
there for an extra three months
because of travel restrictions. They
used the time wisely to learn more
of the coff ee business, but it still set
them back.
“Because of getting set back,
we’re about a year behind where
we were scheduled to be at this
point,” he said. “I was hoping to
have 10,000 pounds instead of
2,000 pounds. If I secure 10,000
pounds, I can sell to the big compa-
nies and take a lesser margin.”
The bigger companies, such as
ones in Portland or Seattle, do the
roasting and can provide Warnock
with a higher volume of sales.
“You’ll want to double your
money. That’s the whole key,” he
said. “If you don’t double your
money, you’re losing money. I
have a higher profi t margin because
I have less product to sell.”
At present, he sells his coff ee
beans — unground — for $15 for
a 12-ounce bag. He often sells six
bags for the price of fi ve, giving
purchasers a bonus. He now bags
the beans from home, but hopes
to expand in the future by add-
ing employees. Right now, he sells
about 60 pounds of coff ee beans
every two or three weeks.
“There’s a certain amount of
shrinkage in it,” he said. “At 12
ounces, you’re about breaking
even on a pound of coff ee because
you’re losing like 15-20% of the
weight when it gets roasted — it
goes up the chimney.”
Warnock also is considering the
purchase of a roaster, but they can
be spendy, so that’s in the future.
“Roasters can cost $30,000-
$50,000,” he said.
The next step, he said, is to
engage in professional marketing.
“The whole idea is to take this
to more than Wallowa County —
all over the Northwest, the West
Coast,” he said. “Volume is the
name of the game with margins.
If you don’t have a huge volume,
your margin’s got to go up. With
a big volume, your margin can go
down and you can really off er (a
deal) to people.”
For more information or to
order coff ee beans, call Warnock at
541-263-2153 or 541-426-3638, or
email lymanwar@hotmail.com.
———
Bill Bradshaw is a reporter for
the Wallowa County Chieftain.
Have a business tip? Contact him
at 541-398-5503 or bbradshaw@
wallowa.com.
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