TOPSHAM

Wicked Joe President and CEO Bob Garver and his wife, Carmen, started their fair-trade, organic coffee business in 2004. They roasted coffee themselves and had no employees, but had faith that their business would catch on.

Although Wicked Joe has since grown into a nationwide distributor, with international coffee farming partners in Central and South America and a new roasting facility in Topsham with 20 employees, Garver has remained dedicated to the Midcoast community that gave him his start 13 years ago.

The Times Record recently sat down with Garver to discuss the company’s Maine-centric re-branding, his new state-of-the-art coffee roaster and what it means to be community-based.

The Times Record: Tell us about Wicked Joe’s recent rebranding.

Bob Garver: We’ve been talking about re-branding for two years. You’ll see that the state of Maine is pictured on the front and back of the new coffee bag. We are proud of our community, we are proud when we see other companies get out there and represent Maine nationally. And now we are kind of doing that.

Our distribution is national, and even before we went national we could see that the potential was for that to happen. We really wanted to be thoughtful about how we grew. I think Carmen would agree with me that the more we go out into the world, the more we want to remind ourselves and be active in the community at home; our local community, our greater Midcoast community and our Maine community. Because really, Maine is a small town. There’s a lot in the way that we designed our package that was focused on maintaining our sense of self and sense of community.

We changed our certifier, became MOFGA certified — that is Maine’s own organic certifier as opposed to the international certification that we previously held. So it’s interesting: as we are growing out into the world more, we are also sinking back into Maine more, and that’s who we are.

TR: What are some other things you guys are doing locally?

BG: We are working right now on a partnership with the state parks in Maine where we sell a coffee blend specifically named after a park. We will make a contribution to the first-time campers program and to the state parks, which is really about getting children outside, because we believe the more people are outside the more they will care about the environment. That is important to us. It’s a way to facilitate environmental care without being preachy.

We’re also working on new labels for our state park blend, and working with the Allagash Wilderness Waterway organization to do a similar project that will be launching later this year.

We also work with the libraries in Topsham and Brunswick, and with the schools in those towns on fundraisers and projects like that. We’re doing a lot of stuff out there quietly, a lot more doing than saying, because I feel like you should just do stuff because it’s good to do.

It’s been our intentional focus, even as we are growing, to partner with local organizations within our own community. Part of that is we want to remember who we are. We are a small Maine company. These are values that we are proud of.

TR: What has the Midcoast community meant to your business since you started Wicked Joe in 2004?

BG: We would not be who we are without the support of folks right here in the Midcoast, who understood our values from the beginning and appreciated that we were willing to work hard to gain their confidence and trust.

It’s interesting because Maine is a challenging business climate. It’s not a wealthy state and we are selling a premium product. Not only is the product high quality, but it costs more to grow food organically, and it costs more to certify fair trade. All these things add costs to the raw product. Farming coffee in this way is expensive.

As difficult as the business climate is here, we wouldn’t be who we are in any other place. The community contributed to who we are not only by supporting us, but we have adopted a lot of the wonderful qualities of the Midcoast. It’s our neighborhood. We are grateful to the communities here that were willing to support us with this idea that was not mainstream in 2004.

Even though they could get a different product for less cost, they shared our values and enabled us to grow. We have very deep roots with some of the local food stores here, and local individuals who have been following us since our inception. We have people who are still coming to pick up their 2.2 kilogram bags of coffee because they have done that from the start.

We had some advice during our re-branding that maybe it wasn’t a good idea to have the state of Maine pictured on the coffee bag, because that would tell folks in other parts of the country that we are not local there. And we said, “well, thank you for your ideas, but that was just not something that’s on the table.” It’s important to us to let people know we are from Maine.

TR: Tell us about some of the new equipment at your facility.

BG: Our newest roaster is the same as our two older ones, only a slightly newer model. These are state-of-theart roasters that are linked to our computer systems so we can analyze every roast, every cup. We are doing everything that big companies do. Our thinking is: what would we do if we were those guys? We don’t want to wait to be great.

We also installed this bridge crane system so our roasting staff doesn’t hurt themselves. You connect the hook to the coffee bag and it lifts the bag up. I’ve never seen this setup at a coffee place, and it’s working very well.

We also have bucket dumpers so our staff aren’t lifting heavy buckets. This is all geared toward making the quality of life better for our staff. It doesn’t make us faster, but it reduces the wear and tear on our staff members, and that’s really important to us.

bgoodridge@timesrecord.com