KANSAN.COM
ARTS & CULTURE
Alumnus turns basement into coffee-roasting business
BRIANNA CHILDERS
@breeanuhh3
Growing up, Zach Tarhini never dreamed about owning a coffee roasting company. The idea didn't formulate until he started drinking coffee in college and became enthralled with where coffee is grown and why it tastes the way it does.
Tarhini, now owner of Meta Coffee Roasting Co., started working at The Roasterie in Kansas City, Mo. right after graduating from the University of Kansas in 2011. From there, he found a consultant who was able to teach him the finer details of roasting coffee.
Tarhini, a Paola native, opened Meta Coffee Roasting Co. in June of 2015. Tarhini's coffee is currently sold at The Merc in Lawrence, Nature's Own Health Market in Kansas City, Mo., and Brookside Farmer's Market in Kansas City, Mo., during the summer. The coffee can also be bought online.
Tarhini doesn't have a storefront, so he converted the basement of his house, located in Prairie Village, into a roasting facility.
For Tarhini, the locations where his coffee is sold are very important to him.
"We have a focus on organic, single-origin coffee, so I wanted to find
local grocers or places where customers would have the same ideas or values I did," Tarhini said.
Tarhini said The Merc was a place he visited a lot while in college and he initially didn't think about bringing his business back to Lawrence, but it made sense since their values aligned with his.
The Merc began selling Meta Coffee in November. Lowen Millspaugh, merchandising manager at The Merc, said Meta Coffee fits the store's values because all coffee at The Merc is fair trade.
She said the coffee is doing well in the store.
"People these days are
wanting more of a boutique type of coffee, so we have expanded our package offering to Meta Coffee and another local roaster," Millspaugh said. "They are a little higher in price than what we have in bulk, but people don't seem to mind paying for the local factor."
Meta Coffee Roasting Co. offers two to three different coffees at a time from different places of origin, such as Ethiopia and Costa Rica.
Tarhini said he goes through importers and he gets his samples of coffee beans from them, then he roasts the beans to get an idea of what the coffee has to offer. He said he selects
the coffee based purely on the taste and quality.
Tarhini said that when testing the coffee he evaluates it based on acidity, body and depth. He then considers the flavor the coffee has and what he thinks he can bring out of the coffee.
"Being organic is something I really care about in my everyday life so I thought it would only make sense to carry that over to a coffee company I was trying to start," Tarhini said.
He said although there are a lot of different coffee companies out there that are delicious, being a completely organic
company is his company's niche. While the whole process of roasting coffee is fun for Tarhini, he said he would be lying if he said he didn't like drinking the coffee.
"Trying the coffee to figure out what to buy and what we offer to customers, profiling a coffee that we have, and how various roast types of the same coffee react differently is all pretty cool," Tarhini said.
- Edited by Matthew
Clough
Paige Stingley/KANSAN
Zach Tarhini pours out a serving of coffee beans into the roaster, which is the first step in the roasting process.
Once the beans are cooled off they are poured out of the cooling tins into small bowls, where they are prepared for packaging.
Paige Stingley/KANSAN
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