#WomenWhoRoast

Some of the most exceptional, high-quality coffees made in Alaska right now feature roasts by a fresh, new wave of imaginative women entrepreneurs. In this issue, I visit two of Anchorage’s best and hardest working emerging micro-roasters—my new favorites.

A-Town COFFEE
Lightning in Every Sip
atowncoffee.com
@atowncoffee

Don’t assume “micro-” refers to the boundaries of any individual roaster’s entrepreneurial goals and vision. The micro-roasting process may limit a roaster’s production to small batches of coffee per roast, but Michael (pronounced “Michelle”) Tuttle is setting high goals for A-Town Coffee company. And she’s achieving them.

Prior to A-Town consuming all of her focus and time, Tuttle worked as the assistant to an oral surgeon in Anchorage, pursuing micro-roasting on the side, mostly as a hobby. But in 2018, after her boss retired, she decided to go all-in on her unique, specialty blend and roasts, and she’s never looked back.

A Palmer native, Tuttle began working as a barista when she was sixteen. “Growing up in the Valley, we always referred to Anchorage as A-Town. So, now that I live and work here, the name seemed a pretty obvious choice.”

With no financial backers or investors—but, she notes, with a lot of emotional support from family and friends—Michael began roasting out of her garage in the Government Hill neighborhood. She admits every step of her path since then has been an education from the ground up as she’s worked to create a thriving business in a town rich with coffee options.

Tuttle had to close her café for a time and put some plans on hold during the pandemic. She used that time to give herself an overdue crash course in social media. The work increased A-Town’s reach—an effort that boosted her sales both online and in the local markets.

Building on global butter coffee traditions, all her distinct coffees incorporate ghee (clarified butter) in the fluid bed roasting process. Her own formula is based on a recipe she developed when she was competing in marathons and Iron Man competitions years ago. Her effort to develop a keto-friendly product that appeals to runners and athletes has landed her coffee in a wide variety of outlets. And no one seems more surprised by her growth and opportunities than Tuttle.

Tuttle has found most of her success selling in wholesale and retail markets. She distributes through Amazon and delivers local Anchorage orders to customers directly. Coffee lovers can find bottled A-Town cold brew at Carrs-Safeway and Natural Pantry. Tuttle is proud to recently have secured a huge Alaska wholesale client, Hillcorp and she’s in talks with Fred Meyer about Alaska and Pacific Northwest distribution.

Tuttle loves to seek out ways to support and give back to her community, too. She’s passionate about supporting women and youth through her business.

A self-described hermit and recluse, Tuttle says she spends most of her time at the roastery, despite the crimp it’s placed on her social life. “My friends are always asking me to come over, or to head out and meet them at some cool place or another in town,” she says, laughing. “But I love doing all this, and I love being here, so these days I usually tell them, ‘Yeah, I can hang out, but can’t you come over to the roastery”.

Goldie’s Coffee Roasters
Two Sisters with a Passion for Coffee
goldiescoffeeroasters.com
@goldiescoffeeroasters

Talking with Kristen and Jenna Frederic, Goldie’s co-owners and roasters, I’m reminded of a passage in Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate: “Just as a poet plays with words,” Esquivel writes of her protagonist, “Tita juggled ingredients and quantities at will, obtaining phenomenal results.”

There’s poetry not only in how the two sisters have come to roast and craft their signature coffees, but also in the way they visibly delight in talking about it. They also want to know what others like about coffee, how you take your coffee at home, what draws you to the kinds you prefer, and more.

Kristen and Jenna have operated out of their current drive-up location since 2016, a notably distinct and cozy, soft-yellow oasis on an otherwise nondescript, strip-mall section of Old Seward Highway in Anchorage.

Tell-tale signage during a quick cruise through the region’s drive through cafés reveals that the vast sea of them typically serve coffee by one of only two or three big player coffee companies. From the Frederic sisters’ earliest immersion in coffee, this puzzled them.

“Branding and building up our own business was important to us from the start,” Kristen says. “We wanted to build our independent business and be ourselves, so why would we advertise or promote someone else’s product?”

In the effort to more firmly establish and clarify their identity, and to distinguish their work from obvious trends and gimmicks characteristic of some drive-up cafés, Jenna and Kristen started experimenting with blends of their favorite coffees and integrating these into their menu.

“We would love one thing about one person’s roast and then this other thing about some other company’s roast,” Jenna recalls, “so blending really helped us get to know coffees and to taste the differences till we felt comfortable serving what we thought was really good.”

The itch started there. In time, blending and developing a more discriminating coffee palate also began to reveal inconsistencies in some of the coffees they blended and sold, leading them to decide they wanted more control over the roasting side of the process.

When they first started experimenting with their own roasts, they kept it on the down low. They focused on “finding their voice,” developing and fine-tuning their skills, and keeping quiet about their experiments until they felt confident that they were on to something good and could stand by the quality of their efforts.

Today, customers are buying their fresh-roasted coffees, and their roasting skills have achieved recognition on a national level: their Nicaragua blend took home a silver medal in 2019’s Golden Bean awards. These days, customer orders are the ultimate sign of their success.

“Now,” Jenna with a laugh, “if someone orders a black drip coffee from us, I get so excited.” A fresh roasted cup of coffee is a big step for many customers more accustomed to their Red Bull smoothie or latte of choice, and it’s a vote of confidence for the sisters that customers are responsive to the thought and craft they’re putting into their work.

While they know they’d eventually like to have a larger café space in the community—“where you can sit down, drink a cup of coffee, see the roaster at work, and hear some music”— Jenna and Kristen note that they’re still a small, growing operation and are not anxious to get in over their heads too quickly.

“We want to get it going good and dial it all in first,” Kristen says. “There’s an art to all this,” Jenna adds, smiling.