From Passion Project to Thriving Business: How Monticello Coffee Found Success with Bellwether Coffee

Annette Taylor and her daughter Lore Ward had a passion for visiting craft coffee shops and sampling different roasted bean flavors, but no experience in the coffee industry. That didn't stop Annette from deciding to open Monticello Coffee Company when she moved to Arkansas in 2018.

After attending "coffee school" to learn the basics, the mother‑daughter duo sourced beans from a popular roasting company in Texas to serve in their new cafe. Though they had no connections in the local small town of 10,000 people, Monticello was quickly embraced by the community.

"We were super lucky. There was no other coffee shop near us or around us, and the town that we're in supported us 100% ‑ they embraced us from the time we unlocked the doors, and it was great," recalled Annette.

But the out‑of‑state roaster led to supply chain challenges. Beans took 3‑5 days to ship, delays could leave them without stock, and ordering the right quantity was tricky. This led to one early morning panic between Annette and Lore: "We were like, what do we do if we don't have any espresso beans? It's not like you can run to the grocery store and grab some!"

Sourcing from other roasters located over 100 miles away proved too expensive. Some wouldn't even work with Monticello due to their small size and lack of reputation.

After a year of operation, Annette noticed regional cafes that roasted their own beans didn't seem to have these problems. "I think I had noticed that other shops in the larger cities that are about 100 miles from us weren't having issues with making sure there was enough coffee in‑house, and they all were roasters,” she explained.

That discovery led Annette to start researching local roasting options. She stumbled upon Bellwether Coffee, the pioneer of an all‑electric, ventless, automatic coffee roaster. "When I told [Lore] I was bringing a Bellwether roaster in, she was like, 'Oh, no, we're never gonna be able to roast coffee ‑ we don't know anything about it,'" Annette recalled. But after comparing costs, logistics and environmental impact, Bellwether's Series 2 roaster won her over.

"It just took the major scariness out of it, because I didn't have to know everything there was to know about roasting to have a really good coffee in‑house," she realized.

In February 2020, mere weeks before COVID‑19 would shut down dining rooms across the country, Monticello installed their first Bellwether roaster. The Bellwether team trained Annette and Laurie on using the machine and sourcing green beans through their online marketplace.

Annette found she could easily fit roasting into her daily work. "I can put a roast in in the morning and still make drinks, or go through paperwork, or go in my office and do payroll, and then I can hear it drop into the bucket, and I come back out and I reload it again," she described.

When COVID‑19 forced their cafe to close for four months, the Bellwether roaster and ability to sell retail bags helped Monticello survive through a drive‑thru and increased online sales. Their existing roasting operation made pivoting simple.

Today, Monticello roasts up to 150 pounds weekly on a newer Bellwether Series 2 roaster and Annette credits roasting with increasing profitability and opportunities. The confidence from controlling quality and costs motivated Annette to start planning expansion into additional locations.

"Roasting your own coffee kind of takes you to a new level,” she explained. “It gives you a little more control, because when you're buying from a different roaster, you don't have control over quality and quantity.”

Annette also noticed an enthusiastically positive response from customers about their in‑house roasted beans, even when compared to coffees from bigger cities. “Now that we roast our own, people come in and are like ‘Oh my gosh, I was just on vacation in New York, and I went to all these different coffee shops, and none of them were as good as yours.'”

For Annette, the creative process of cupping various beans to blend Monticello’s unique espresso, drip and single origin profiles is the best part. Bellwether gives us a starting point for the flavors,” she explained. This helps guide their experiments to find just the right combinations of tasting notes.

The mother‑daughter duo love getting creative and trying out new roasting recipes together. “Sometimes we even fight over who’s gonna roast the coffee!” laughed Annette.

Monticello Coffee’s growth from hobbyists to serious business owners in just a few short years shows how Bellwether Coffee’s innovative roaster and green coffee marketplace can help small business owners pursue their passions. The ability to control costs, quality, and production empowers cafes to expand and meet demand. And the sleek, user‑friendly machine makes roasting simple for total novices. “It’s the Tesla of roasters!” raved Annette.

Her story proves that with Bellwether as a partner, anyone can turn a passion for great coffee into a thriving roastery and cafe. As Annette put it, “Bellwether just makes it so easy ‑ it’s the future.”