Coffee Depot History
After a few years of running two drive-thru coffee shops in Cortland, Craig and Michelle began to think about just what the next step would be. Many people wanted them to open another location. Perhaps a sit down establishment. Coffee roasting had been in the back of their minds for years, quietly lurking, waiting for an opportunity to rear its crazy head.
On Halloween, 2005, they were driving around Cortland with a real estate agent friend, looking at houses, hoping to move a little closer to where they spend all their time. On the list of places to stop was the old freight depot on South Avenue, not to live in, but just to look at, because it seemed intriguing.
The outside of the building was pretty run down , with crumbling masonry and peeling paint, but it seemed substantial.
When they turned the key and went inside the old building it was very dark and cold. The windows had been boarded up for years and the power had been turned off. Craig had only a tiny light on his key chain, so he was elected to go first. As they progressed through the building, opening the big roll-up doors in each room, the potential of this old railroad building reveled itself. “Wow, this would be a great place to store all of the supplies for our drive-thrus!”
“Yea, this would be a great place to roast coffee!!”
The “bones” of the building seemed solid: Cement floors and walls, 14 foot ceilings, a heavy-duty electrical system, it’s own rail spur, a nice loading dock. It all looked good.
They mulled it over for about two hours and put an offer in!
Their offer was pretty much accepted right away and after the excessively long time that attorneys and banks take to sort through these kind of things, they were able to take possession of the big old building in mid February, 2006.
Over the summer of 2006, they began renovations to the inside of the building to prepare it for coffee roasting. They knew they couldn't do all this work alone, so they called Craig’s life long friend from Seattle, Greg White. Greg was instrumental to getting the majority of renovation work done that summer. Beginning with fixing a rather large hole in the roof, then moving on to un-boarding up the windows and replacing about a hundred panes of broken glass, to painting the walls and floor, fixing the bathroom, you name it, it had to be done! Craig and Michelle sincerely thank Greg for all of his work, and look forward to his visits in the future. You can see more of Greg’s artistic handiwork anytime you visit Coffee Mania on Port Watson street, where Greg is responsible for painting the mural on the shed.
As Greg toiled away on the building renovations, Craig and Michelle were busy shopping for their coffee roasting machine. They visited Coffee Fest, in Washington D.C., a coffee industry trade show, where they were able to compare several machines side by side, and after much research, decided to order a Diedrich IR-12. This amazing machine was all hand built in Sandpoint Idaho at the company owned by the legendary Stephan Diedrich. Craig and Michelle visited the coffee roaster manufacturer in July, and learned the basics of how to use their new machine at classes taught by Stephen.
The roasting machine arrived in late July and they began experimenting with roasting, certainly messing up plenty of coffee beans trying to learn how to control the tricky combination of time, temperature, and air flow that roasting is.
By early September, they felt confident enough to start slowly introducing the public to the first batches of coffee roasted at the South Avenue facility. As the fall progressed into winter all of the coffee served at both Coffee Manias was roasted at Coffee Depot.
Throughout that fall they also had a couple of other milestones, one being hosting a very successful open house at the roastery, and the other being having the privilege of learning about the art of roasting from a true master roaster who also resides in Central New York.
As for the future of Coffee Depot, the renovations to the building are slowly continuing, and a master plan for the nearly two acre lot is being developed. Hopefully the exterior renovations will begin soon, as Craig and Michelle hope to make the outside of their building as warm and appealing as the inside has become. All this, of course being squeezed in between roasting awesome coffee, running a couple of drive-thrus, and of course, raising a family together.